Core Rules

How to do anything.

There are a few concepts you need to understand about Inciting Incident before you can create a character and play. This section will cover how you can use your character's uniqie abilities, talents and skills, as well as the way that the narrative is structured.

Abilities & Talents

Each character has three innate Abilities: Fortitude, Perseverance, and Nimbleness. These represent the inherent core strengths of the character. they cannot be used actively, instead they are only used when the character's basic instincts take over in an emergency. A character's Abilities drives their defences and maximum hits taken (talked about more in the conflict section), as well as the number of Talents they can have.

Talents are a character's special skills, each one is unique to the character. Talents are what set this character apart from the average person, and are what the character draws upon when trying to solve problems. Characters are assumed to be generally competent at most other things, meaning that they can pass obstacles without using a Talent, but that doesn't go as smoothly as using the Talent might. The player and the GM must work together to determine an appropriate name for the Talent, and agree what it generally means. They also should come up with a brief description, and a few limitations for it (there are details on how to create a Talent in the character creation section). Players may freely describe what their characters do with their Talents, allowing them to be used creatively.

Each Ability and Talent has a level between 0 and 9. This level determines the dice you use when determining the outcome of an action (shown in the table to the right). Each Ability can only have as many Talents assigned to it as it's level, and each Talent's level cannot exceed it's parent Ability's level.

Advantage & Disadvantage

While the base difficulty of an Ability or Talent Roll is set by the GM at the start of each scene using Rising Tension (or by the defences of the character being attacked), the number of d6s rolled can be further modified by Advantage and Disadvantage. Advantage and Disadvantage can be earned through Skills, the Terrain, the GM spending Rising Tension to give Disadvantage, or the GM may award Advantage for especially well justified narration of an action. They can negate each other, so a Talent Roll having 3 Advantage and 1 Disadvantage will result in just 2 Advantage. The amount of Advantage or Disadvantage needed to further change the difficulty scales for each d6 in either direction, as shown in the table to the left. beyond 10 Advantage or Disadvantage, there is no more effect.

Crisis

Crisis represents the stakes of individual scenes. It can represent increasing danger, passing time, unwanted attention, or many other things. Almost every action a character can take will increase the Crisis level of the scene. The GM creates a set of Triggers, many of which are repeating at regular intervals, that are activated when the Crisis level passes. Triggers can cause a number of things, such as damaging traps, changing terrain, enemies showing up, timers running out, being caught up to, and so on. Triggers always primarily effect the character who caused the increase in Crisis level that caused it.

Rising Tension

(This content is a work in progress, and thus subject to change)

Rising Tension represents the broader high level stakes of a story. It is generated by player actions, any time a player chooses to pass an Obstacle without rolling, (other things...), and story specific conditions set by the GM. The GM can spend the Rising Tension to put obstacles in the way of the characters, to add Triggers to a scene, and to add enemies to conflict. The players can occasionally reduce Rising Tension through certain restful scenes, but this is limitted.

Scenes

Telling your story will involve several kinds of scenes. Each type of scene is handled a little different by the rules. A scene is defined as involving a specific set of characters in one location (or a set of adjacent locations in the case of a walking or chase scene) for a single continuous amount of time. A new scene must start if the location changes, or if time passes. This includes if a character who is not present (and couldn't logically have been said to be there the whole time) wants to join or needs to be fetched. However a scene can be counted as continuos even if time passes, if the setting and characters do not change, for example if the characters are sat around a campfire and two seperate conversations occur at different times, it is okay to consider this one scene.

The first type of scene are Cooperative scenes. These are scenes where there are no stakes and no one is taking actions against each other. Often these are roleplaying, planning, or downtime scenes, and can involve arguments, although if an argument escalates to violence or taking opposing actions, then the scene type changes. These scenes can be used for Characters to learn, upgrade, or change their Talents and Skills, or to heal their wounds. Each scene may only be used to change, upgrade, or learn one Talent or Skill. Having many Cooperative scenes in a row will generate Rising Tension. The first raises it by nothing, but beyond that each new scene will generate 1, then 2, and so on, Rising Tension.

Cooperative scenes may be done as a montage. This means that the scene doesn't need to be roleplayed in detail, instead it is sufficient for the players to give a brief overview of what they wantto do, and they may gain the benefits of a cooperative scene, although it does still generate Rising Tension for the GM.

When the stakes are raised then the scene becomes an Action scene. The GM creates a set of Crisis Triggers, and a sequence of Obstacles that the characters must overcome to achieve their goals. An Action scene involves the characters taking actions against the world and overcoming challenges, if a scene would involve another party taking actions to hinder the characters, then that is instead a Conflict scene, which requires some additional rules. In an Action scene, the characters must beat Simple and Complex Obstacles, while trying to avoid generating too much Crisis.

Conflict scenes are for when characters are actively trying to work against each other, most commonly in the form of combat. This is similar to Complex Obstacles, but uses a balance of power, called the Flow of Battle, instead. Each side in the conflict takes Regular Actions to gain the advantage, and then they may attempt a Decisive Action to cause damage, or gain a significant victory. Details on Conflict scene rules, especially for combat, can be found in the conflict section. Conflict scenes can even be scenes where the opponent is not physically present, for example hacking a well defended system, or investigating a covered up crime scene.

Simple & Complex Obstacles

A Simple Obstacle is a single challenge that requires just one action to solve. It can be something like climbing a rockface, getting through a slowly closing door in time, or leaping across an endless void. A Simple Obstacle is presented to a single character, usually the one who would naturally struggle with it most. Who that is can be decided by the GM, or agreed upon by the group, if there is no clear answer then you can select the confronted character randomly. Once that character has passed the Obstacle, you should assume that the other characters are able to also pass without difficulty. In rare circumstances all the characters must individually pass an Obstacle if it would be challenging for each of them in different ways.

To pass a Simple Obstacle, the player must choose to either automatically pass the obstacle, increasing Crisis by 4, or to use a Talent Roll, only increasing Crisis by 2 on a success, or by more on a failure. An automatic pass represents the character using their mundane skills to overcome the obstacle, such as their strength, or just being able to come up with a quick solution. Whereas using a Talent Roll represents using the things they are uniquely good at to pass the Obstacle with a lot more confidance and ease. A Talent Roll is made up of rolling difficulty dice and adding Talent dice. The difficulty is set per scene, the GM decides on a number of d6s between 1 and 9, with 5 being the most common, the GM can then modify that per Obstacle, or if a character's choices would make it easier or more difficult. When making a roll, each die has a chance to Explode: if it rolls the maximum result possible on that die, then you may roll an additional die of that type. Once all the dice results have been added up, a total of 20 or more is considered a success, the Crisis level is increased by 2 and the Obstacle is passed. If the total is less than 20, then that is considered a failure, the Crisis level is increased by the difference between 20 and the result, and a minimum of 2. However the Obstacle is still passed and the scene moves on, often with a significant change due to the increased Crisis level.

Complex Obstacles require more than one action to overcome. These are things that require more thinking, or effort to get past. A Complex Obstacle is primarily represented by an Obstruction level, this is the number that must eventually be beaten to pass. Characters may use Regular Actions to reduce the Obstruction level, these function the same as actions for Simple Obstacles. Characters may take actions in any order, although a character cannot take two actions in a row. A player may choose between automatically reducing Obstruction by 4, in exchange for 4 Crisis, or to make a Talent Roll. On a successful Talent Roll you may reduce Obstruction by the amount the roll total beats 20 by, increasing Crisis by 2, however on a failure you increase Crisis by the difference between the total and 20. For each use of a single Talent beyond the first for Regular Actions, Crisis is increased by an additional 3 per use. To pass a Complex Obstacle, a Decisive Action must be taken, this is a Talent Roll against the Obstruction level. If it equals or exceeds the Obstruction level, then it increases Crisis by 2, and the Obstacle is beaten. If the total is less than the Obstruction level, then Crisis is increased by the difference between the roll total and the Obstruction level and the Obstacle is not passed. The characters get between 1 and 3 attempts at a Decisive Action, on the last attempt they will automatically pass, but must deal with the consequences of the amount of Crisis they have caused. The GM should clearly communicate the Obstruction level at all times, so that the players can properly choose when they wish to attempt a Decisive Action.

Skills

Each Talent may have a number of Skills, which either effect how Actions or Attacks work, or makes an Advanced Action with a specific effect. Modifier Skills can change the amount of Crisis an action generates, protect from Crisis Triggers, change the difficulty of rolls under certain circumstances, alter an actions effectiveness, or create additional effects. Advanced Actions can interact with the game systems in ways that regular actions cannot, for example reducing Crisis level, intervening in a Crisis Trigger to change the outcome, healing wounds, and more. Some Skills allow other interactions, such as allowing a player to add an extra Crisis Trigger that is beneficial to them or works against their enemies. More details on how Skills work can be found in the character creation section. And a list of available Skills can be found in the Skill reference list.

A character may attempt to recreate the effects of any Skill that they do not have with a Talent Roll, so long as it makes physical and logical sense to do so and does not violate any of the Talent's limitations. Doing this generates Crisis equal to the cost of the Skill being attempted. The difficulty of the roll is set by the cost of the Skill that the character is trying to replicate. Starting at 5d6, then equal Disadvantage to the Cost of the Skill. On a success the Skill is successfully recreated, either allowing an Advanced Action to be attempted, or the Skill effect to be applied to the Action or Attack being made. On a failure the Action or Attack may still be attempted without the Skill effect, but with 1 Disadvantage for every 5 cost of the attempted Skill, if an Advanced Action was attempted, then nothing more occurs. When using the optional Skill learning rules, successfully using an unlearned Skill is necessary before being able to learn that Skill.