dogs/txt/dogs.md

% The Emissaries of Guenašk

The senator from the Ultaian delegation tries to look nonplussed, but the coloration of their neck fronds betrays a frantic nervousness. The Expeditionite pirate pushes her blaster hard against the Ultaian's scaled back, twists its cold barrel, and growls at you.

"Please, I've done nothing, I'm a senator," they say with a quavering voice, their alien vocal tract elongating vowels and nearly dropping consonants. "Please—"

"You've been harvesting from our bio-stations for years now," she says. "Your synthdrones, twice every cycle. It ends now." She nods towards you. "You, Guenaški. You tell them."

The Ultaian's three eyes widen, and both theirs and hers turn towards you. What do you do?

The Emissaries of Guenašk is a game about space, the peoples who have set out to explore and live in it, and those individuals who are tasked with mediating peace between those people. These individuals, the Guenaški, travel from planet to planet, station to station, star to star, equipped with the uneasy and contingent trust of an interplanetary coalition, and attempt to serve as peacekeepers, healers, mediators, and explorers to those they find, sometimes to their joy and sometimes to their chagrin.

The stars are limitless and varied, and the Guenaški are tasked by both convention and conviction to help keep them stable and avoid another war like the Last War. Sometimes they travel to the Shining Core and mediate political debates among the hundreds of thousands of political entities that exist in the galaxy, and other times they provide humanitarian aid to colonies or outposts in crisis, and yet other times they shut down smugglers or free political prisoners from the very edges of known space.

Before you Play

[...]

Characters

A character in The Emissaries of Guenašk is described by four broad things:

• The character's general adeptness and skill, as represented by the character's Stats.
• The character's specific areas of skill or experience, as represented by the character's Traits.
• The character's history and interactions with people, groups, or organizations, as represented by the character's Relationships.
• The character's belongings and tools, as represented by the character's Objects.

Each of these is represented in the game by a rating in dice, written like 3d6. The number before the d represents how many dice, and the number after represents how many sides those dice have, so 3d6 means three six-sided dice. This game uses four kinds of dice: the d4, the d6, the d8, and the d10. Some things in the game might tell you to "go up a die size": this means you'd increase a d4 to a d6, a d6 to a d8, or a d8 to a d10. There's no way to increase the die size of a d10.

Creating a Character

To create a character, follow the following steps:

1. Choose a Background. Your Background will give you dice that you can use in subsequent steps: in particular, it tells you the dice you can use for your Stats, your Traits, and your Relationships.

2. Select your Stats. Your Background specified a number of stat dice: take these and divide them up among your four Stats. The minimum value for a stat is 2d6, and there is no maximum beyond what your stat dice allow.

   Your four stats are Body, Mind, Soft, and Hard. Your Body stat indicates your physical prowess, which might be strength, agility, flexibility, dexterity, or endurance. Your Mind stat indicates your mental or spiritual prowess, which might be knowledge, knack, wisdom, or empathy. Your Soft stat indicates how well you work in non-confrontational situations or situations without direct pressure. Your Hard stat indicates how well you do in confrontational situations or situations with active and observable pressure.

3. Decide on your Traits. Your Background specified a number of trait dice: divide these up to give your character Traits. A Trait is a phrase or sentence that describes a feature of character's personality, acumen, or history that is interesting to your character's story. Assigning dice to a trait means that you think that the trait in question is important in a way that will affect the outcome of a conflict, which means that not every feature of your character needs to have a trait! You can, for example, decide that your characters is very talkative, but not assign trait dice to them being talkative: that just means that your character being talkative doesn't have any bearing on how their conflicts turn out.

   Assign each Trait at least one die. You can assign more than one die to a trait, but each trait must have a consistent die size: you can assign 2d6 to a trait, but you can't assign 1d4 1d6 to a trait.

4. Decide on a few of your Relationships. Your Background specified a number of relationship dice: use a few of these to give your character Relationships. A Relationship represents your character's relationship and history with another person or group of people. This can be a personal relationship (e.g. a family member, a spouse, a friend), a professional relationship (e.g. a ranking or fellow Guenaški, a planetary official you regularly interact with, a scientist you send samples to), or just indicental (e.g. the salesdroid down at the noodle shop that your character frequents), although the relationship should probably be one you find interesting. You can also choose groups, whether it be small ones (e.g. the two bounty hunters employed by Mx. Yenn), medium-sized ones (e.g. the Chaksku crime family), or even very large ones (e.g. the entire Outer Worlds Coalition). A good idea is to have a relationship with the Guenaški Order itself!

   Unlike with your trait dice, your relationship dice don't need to be—and shouldn't be!—all assigned at the beginning. Keep some unassigned and then choose to assign them as events progress.

   Additionally, if you have or come across members of your character's family, you can give your character a 1d6 relationship die with them for free, without having to assign it from your pool of relationship dice. If you want your character to have a relationship with that person other than 1d6, then you can still assign them dice out of your pool, but if you don't want to, you always have the option of letting that relationship be a 1d6, both at character creation and in play.

5. Decide on a few Objects you might own. The Guenašk order tends to give you the necessary equipment, and the exigencies of your situation don't allow you to amass much of a fortune or a large set of belongings, but you do have some Objects. All Guenaški operatives will have at least a high-quality data-pad 2d6 and a Lun 2d6, the signature Guenaški tool and weapon. If you can come up with another few objects that are important to you—and that you could easily keep in a small starship—you can also list them and assign them dice. Notice that, unlike with the other categories that are dictated by your background, you don't actually have a specific number of dice to assign to Objects: you can propose as many as you want, up to the GM's approval, but try not to exceed four or five items to start.

   When you assign dice for an Object, use the following criteria:

   • If it's an average item, 1d6.
   • If it's an excellent item, 2d6.
   • If it's big for what it is, then 1d8.
   • If it's both big and excellent, then 2d8.
   • If it's bad, no matter how big it is, then 1d4.

   A rule of thumb here is that you should consider something to be excellent or big only if someone, upon seeing the object, would notice or remark on it. If they'd see it and think, "That's a really high-quality repair kit," then it'd be excellent; similarly, if they'd see it and think, "That's a huge veq-knife," then it's big.

   Your Lun is a handle-shaped object which is held in one hand, and has a small fingerprint-keyed pressure switch which activates a arc of shining and dangerous plasma that emanates in a half-circle from the two sides of the handle. Be sure to specify any important details of your Lun, including the color of its plasma disc and the material and shape of its handle. Each Emissary builds their own Lun out of materials from their home planet, so each Lun is unique. Unless you have a good reason to argue otherwise, your Lun should be a 2d6 item, as it's a small but excellent item.

6. Decide on an Accomplishment you hope your character had while at the Guenaški Academy. You don't yet know if your character actually succeeded at their Accomplishment, as that will depend on a short section of play to be explored in a minute, but you have reasonably free reign, subject to the approval of both your GM and your fellow Operatives, to decide on an Accompliment that you think is interesting. It might be a specific event that happened during their time at the Academy: "I hope that my character bested their instructor in the Utebna Belt Starskiff-race," or, "I hope that my character rescued and healed a wounded Tanga-bird on Rakhmus Alpha." It might also be a broader statement about how you grew as a Guenaški: "I hope that I learned restraint," or, "I hope that I won honor in the eyes of the instructors."

   After you've done this, you and your GM can [...]

Backgrounds

There are five backgrounds to choose from. Each one will give you the raw materials to build your character: a collection of dice that you can move around and reassign as you see fit. These backgrounds differ both in how many dice you get in each category as well as the size of the dice they supply. A good intuition for understanding the tradeoffs contained in the different backgrounds is that stat dice can always come into play, but trait dice and relationship dice come into play based on specific situations: if you have specific ideas in mind for where you want your story to go (e.g. specific allies or nemeses you'd like to see, specific parts of your past you'd like to incorporate, specific skills or abilities that you want to see in play) then try to express those in dice.

Additionally, lower Trait dice don't imply that your character's trait is bad, and lower Relationship dice don't imply that your character's relationship is sour or spiteful. Low dice instead mean that those things complicate your character's life. If I give my character a Trait that says I'm a spectacular pilot 1d4, then my character is still a spectacular pilot, but things will likely get messy when they get into a cockpit. If I give my character a Relationship with my husband 2d4, that doesn't mean that my character's relationship with their husband is bad, or that there's any kind of ill will in that relationship: rather, when my character's husband is involved in conflicts, things will likely be messier.

The backgrounds are the following:

Well-Rounded

Choose this background if you'd like a balanced character, without wanting to focus too much on any specific part of your character's past. If you want a well-rounded character, then use the following to build your character:

• 17d6 to divide among your stats.
• 1d4 4d8 2d8 to divide among your Traits.
• 4d6 2d8 to divide among your Relationships.

Strong History

Choose this background if you'd like a character with a lot of education, specialized training, or experiences. This background gives you lots of trait dice, but fewer stat dice. If you want a character with a strong history, then use the following to build your character:

• 13d6 to divide among your stats.
• 3d6 4d8 3d10 to divide among your Traits.
• 1d4 3d6 2d8 to divide among your Relationships.

Complicated History

Choose this background if you'd like a character who has overcome a troubled, dangerous, or challenging past to get to where they are now. This background gives you a wide range of trait dice to reflect varying past experience. If you want a character with a complicated history, then use the following to build your character:

• 15d6 to divide among your stats.
• 4d4 2d6 2d10 to divide among your Traits.
• 5d6 2d8 to divide among your Relationships.

Strong Community

Choose this background if you'd like a character who came from a supportive or tight-knit family or community that has affected your character's life. This background gives you fewer stat dice, but lots of relationship dice that can help bring important people to you into the game. If you want a character with a strong community, then use the following to build your character:

• 13d6 to divide among your stats.
• 1d4 3d6 2d8 to divide among your Traits.
• 4d6 4d8 3d10 to divide among your Relationships.

Complicated Community

Choose this background if you'd like a character who came from a broken, in-crisis, or destructive family or community that has affected your character's life. This background gives you a wide range of relationship dice to reflect the complicated and messy relationships your character has with people. If you want a character with a complicated community, then use the following to build your character:

• 15d6 to divide among your stats.
• 6d6 2d8 to divide among your Traits.
• 4d4 2d6 2d8 2d10 to divide among your Relationships.

Traits

As a player, you have a lot of leeway in how to frame your traits. For example, you might want to phrase them:

• as a statment about your character's history: "I flew at the battle of Altera Prime."
• as a straightforward fact about your character: "I am a talented pilot."
• as a skill your character has: "Flying."
• as an attitude your character has: "I'm comfortable in a cockpit."

Objects

blah

Relationships

blah

Conflicts

The game is all about conflict. Despite the name, a conflict need not be (and often shouldn't be) violent: taking part in a conflict just means that what you want is at odds with something in the world around you, and you're going to work to make it different. The "other side" of a conflict needn't be a person or group of people: it might be the impassive world or even luck and happenstance.

For example, a conflict might be a fight against a formidable foe, but it might also be a journey through difficult wilderness, or a struggle against a disease, or a negotiation between political entities, or a slow game of cat-and-mouse conducted through a crowded asteroid field. All that you need is stakes: something that you'll get if you win, and something that'll happen if you lose.

Make sure you and the GM figure out what the stakes are first. The GM should be sure to clarify the stakes: "What's at stake is, do you make it through the Aliquarn nebula before the Atchbek Raiders arrive?" Once you do, then the structure of the conflict itself is determined by dice.

You'll then select an approach. If you're working with other characters, then you don't need to use the same approach as those characters. Only keep track of your individual approach. There are four approaches, and each one corresponds to a pair of stats:

• An unopposed neutral approach corresponds to Mind and Soft. Use this if you're talking things through, gathering information, or similar: you don't have an opponent, although maybe some friendly disagreements.
• An opposed neutral approach corresponds to Mind and Hard. Use this if you're arguing or lying or doing something underhanded, if you're hacking a system or rigging a vote, or otherwise acting against someone or something without using physical force to do so.
• An unopposed physical approach corresponds to Body and Soft. Use this if you need to do significant physical work but aren't bringing it to bear against an opponent: if you're lugging heavy objects or running long distances, you're using an unopposed physical approach.
• An opposed physical approach corresponds to Body and Hard. Use this if you're acting physically against someone. Fighting will always be an opposed physical approach.

Then decide if any of your traits or belongings are in play. You can be relatively lax about deciding which traits are in play: if you're piloting a ship, then a trait like "I'm a great pilot" or "I flew sorties at Altera Prime" can be relevant. If you are going into the conflict with your data tablet at the ready or your Lun drawn, then consider them in play. You can always bring these in later, so if you're on the fence, you can always err to wait until you're sure the trait or object is relevant.

Additionally, you have a relationship with an opponent in this conflict, or if you have a relationship with someone who is involved in the stakes of the conflict, then that relationship is relevant. The relationship isn't relevant if the person is involved in the conflict in some other way. For example, if you're fighting alongside your sibling, then don't bring their relationship into play, but if you're fighting to save your sibling from peril, or if your sibling is your opponent, then consider their relationship in play.

Once you've decided on the approach and what's in play, you're going to roll a massive handful of dice. You should be rolling the dice for two of your stats as determined by your approach as well as the dice corresponding to the traits, objects, and relationships that are in play. Keep these dice around exactly as rolled, as these form the core of your dice pool. In the conflict to come, you'll choose your actions by using these already-rolled dice as resources.

Now that you've got your dice, you're ready to actually engage in a conflict: this involves taking turns between antagonizing parties. Each turn consists of two parts: first one party will raise, and then the other party will see.

To raise, choose any two dice from your pool and put them forward. As you do so, explain what action you're taking: make sure it fits the fiction you've established, including your approach, your traits, and your tools. This raise acts as a challenge to your opponent, and both the dice and the narration are important: you can't put forward dice without narrating your response, and you can't narrate your response without putting forward dice!

To see, look at the raise and put forward one or more dice such that the dice you put forward match or exceed the total value of the raise. As you do so, explain how you're responding to the raise. As with raising, seeing is both the dice and the narration. Unlike with raising, you have more specific guidelines on your response.

If you see with just one die, then you're reversing the blow: what this means is that not only did your opponent's action not succeed, you have also managed to use their action to your own advantage, handily turning it to your favor. Don't discard the die that you used to see: keep it around until it's time for your next raise, and use it in the raise. Narrate what you did that turned the tide in your favor so handily.

If you see with two dice, then you're blocking or dodging: what this means is that your opponent's action didn't succeed due to your counter. Narrate how you managed to defend or evade your opponent's attack.

If you see with three dice, then you're taking the blow: what this means it that your opponent's action succeeded, at least to some degree. Narrate how the blow landed and how you react.

Whenever you take the blow, you also suffer fallout. The amount of fallout you take is related to which stats you've brought into play: you will always take at least 1 fallout, but add +1 if you've brought Body into play, and +1 if you've brought Hard into play, and +1 for each dangerous object you bring in to play. This means if you're in an unopposed neutral conflict, and you take fallout, you'll take 1 fallout for each blow, but if you get into an opposed physical conflict, you'll be taking 3 fallout for each blow, and possibly more if weapons have been drawn. The section below explains fallout in more detail.

You can also always give, which means that you simply give up. It's the same as losing, but you don't take any fallout.

Example Conflict

First, set the stage for the conflict. Be sure the participants are described, the location is fleshed out, and importantly, the stakes are set:

Based on your scans, you know that the Barada-Kai smugglers have the nasker egg on board—worth a fortune, but it's the last of its kind, and the Ayihuatar have asked you to return it to their homeland so they can resuscitate the species. You beam to their ship and find yourself face-to-face with the smugglers' leader: your brother, whom you haven't seen since your misspent youth on Xashat Prime, Captain Thoss. He's not the happiest with your turn to legitimacy, and he's grimacing as you walk on board in your Guenaški robes. The two of you sit down at the metal table in the middle of the cluttered cargo bay, filled with plasteel crates and, in a statis field in one corner, the glittering nasker egg.

Figure out the approach you're taking.

You're going to try to talk with Thoss, and he's not a happy participant, which means you'll need to argue this out: an opposed neutral conflict. You roll your Mind and Hard: let's say 6d6 in total. Captain Thoss rolls his Mind and Hard: say 7d6.

Figure out if you're rolling any other dice.

Captain Thoss is a relation of yours, and he's your opponent, so you'll roll relationship dice for him. If you didn't have a relationship with him, you'd take 1d6 by default because he's family. Let's say you have 1d8 listed, and he doesn't, so he rolls 1d6. Neither of you have pulled any traits or objects into play, so you have your totals: you're rolling 1d8 6d6, and Captain Thoss is rolling 8d6.

Now, roll them all and keep them together as they rolled.

You roll 1 2 2 3 4 4 7. Captain Thoss rolls 1 1 1 3 4 5 6 6.

The person who initiates the conflict goes first. If there's ambiguity, or no clear initiator, then take the sum of your two highest dice and compare.

I'm the one who is initiating this, as Captain Thoss would otherwise be on his merry way to riches with the nasker egg. "I know things are bad right now," you say with your fist on the table, "but this isn't a breadroll on the streets of Xashat Prime. This is the last nasker egg there is, and the Ayihuatar are its stewards. It's priceless." I put forward a 4 and a 3, for a raise of 7.

Anyone who is affected by a raise has to see.

Captain Thoss puts forward a 4 and a 3 to see: he's blocked your raise. "Of course it's got a price: a damn good one, too. It's not my fault the Ayihuatar lost it, but we found it fair and square, and it's gonna feed our entire hometown for a generation."

Whoever is next gets to raise.

Captain Thoss shakes his head. "If you were paying attention to the people on the ground, you'd be with me, too. What, some rich cultists want an egg? When the family that raised us is starving? Whose side are you really on?" He puts forward a 5 and 6, for 11.

And then anyone affected by that raise will see.

You have to see an 11, so you put forward your 7 and your other 4. "It's not a choice between stealing from the Ayihuatar and feeding our hometown. There are other ways of making money, even if they're not quite so easy and lucrative." You put forward your remaining dice: two 1's. "Look, just bring the egg back now, and I'll make sure the Ayihuatar accept it back and don't send worse people than me after you."

Captain Thoss sees with his 6, which reverses the blow. "That's a threat, and a toothless one at that. How soft you've gone since you joined these wackos." Because he reversed the blow, he can use it for his next raise; he adds 1 to it. "Go back to your temples, for whatever good it does anyone."

So now you have only 1 left. You can't see, so Captain Thoss wins the stakes: they beam you back to the Guenaški ship, dejected, and they continue on, sell the egg, and make trillions of credits.

But that's not a great way to end the conflict. Let's see what happens if it escalated instead.

"Go back to your temples, for whatever good it does anyone."

You shake your head. "I had hoped you'd listen to reason." You dash away from the table and grab the egg.

Now that the approach has changed, you need to roll new dice. You've moved from arguing to chasing: because it's physical but not harmful, it's an unopposed physical conflict, which means you need your Body plus Soft.

Let's say your Body plus Soft is 7d6. You roll: 1 3 4 5 5 5 6. Let's also say you have the trait cybernetic leg enhancements 1d8, so you roll that d8 as soon as you dash forward, as well. You roll a 4 on that, and you still have a 1 left over from before.

So you see the 7 from before with a 4 and a 3, and put forward 5 and 5 to raise.

Others can decide if they want to escalate independently.

Captain Thoss leaps to his feet. He's not just gonna give up: he's going to chase you. He rolls his Body plus Soft: 1 1 2 2 2 5. He's got no relevant traits, and two 1's leftover from before.

He has to see your 10: he uses a 5, two 2's, and a 1, which means he's taking the blow. He tries to leap after you as you grab the egg, but one of the crates is in the way and he stumbles against it. Because both Body and Hard are in play, he takes 3 fallout.

All he has left now is a 2 and some 1's, and you have much better dice remaining. He grabs his comm and tells his ship AI to let you go as he staggers up from the pile of plasteel chests.

You don't need to wait until the last moment to escalate: you can escalate as soon as you'd like. However, you can only roll any given stat once per conflict. If you wanted to fight the Captain directly, you could switch to an opposed physical conflict, which would normally have you roll Body plus Hard, but you've already rolled Hard when you were just talking, and Body when you were running, so if a fight broke out, then neither character in the example would get more dice.

However, switching to fighting would let characters bring weapons into play, which are objects that would give them more trait dice. Let's see how that would go, starting from when you left the table.

All he has left now is a 2 and some 1's, and you have much better dice remaining. He grabs his blaster and takes aim. "I didn't want it to come to this, sister," he says.

If he hadn't rolled Body or Hard already, he would now. He's rolled both, so those don't come into play. He does roll dice for the blaster: 1d4 plus 1d8. He rolls a 3 and a 7. He also has a trait: the best sharpshooter in this sector 2d6, so he adds those as well: a 3 and a 4.

He could raise with a 7 and 4, and since your highest are a 6 and a 4, that would force you to take the blow. He doesn't want you to get too hurt, and at this point, you'd be taking 4 fallout (1 for Body, 1 for Hard, and 1 for the blaster). He wants the egg back, sure, but you're still his sister. He puts forward a 3 and a 4.

You have another trait on your sheet: disarming enemies 2d8. You twist around and knock the barrel of the blaster, so Captain Thoss shoots the wall, which lets you roll those dice: a 3 and an 8. You see with 6 and 1, and then raise with 8 and 4 as you wrestle the weapon out of your brother's hands. The Captain sees with 7, 3, and 2, taking the blow (and 4 fallout in the process.) With those dice, he can't win, so he drops the blaster and slumps back into the heap of nutristicks that have spilled out of the plasteel crates.

Variations on Conflict

There are obvious ways that this conflict structure applies to combat, with raising and seeing treated as attacks and defenses, but there are other ways of applying it to non-combat situations, as well. Consider some of the following:

• A tense political stand-off as you negotiate peace between two warring planets: do you broker peace? Raises on both sides might include political concessions, rhetorical flourishes, or clandestine operations for informational or positional advantage.
• A valka-beast jumps towards you in midair: do you jump in time? All raises and sees must happens in the split-seconds between noticing and moving. Raises on your side might include tensing of your muscles, pinpointing the beast's exact path, fear of what happens if you fail to move, remembering having seen this animal in a zoo on your homeworld. Raises on the valka-beast's side might include the thick jungle around you, the light flickering in your eyes, the distracting pounding in your chest, and the confounding patterns on its skin.
• The thief has gone to ground in the Dan Kurbala arcology: do you track them down? The raises and sees might happen over the course of months: you raise with clues, informants, chases through the marketplace, happenstance meetings in line for noodles. The thief raises with payoffs, passageways, disguises, unsavory friends, and patience.
• Emissary Uru is suspended in a tank of biofluid as she fights for her life: do you save her from the bioweapon? Your raises might include advanced technology, critical research, under-the-wire experiments, or flashbacks to past experiences with the bioweapon. Your opponent here is the threat that Emissary Uru might die, which means its threats are more amorphous: its raises might include unexplained symptoms, mechanical failure, lack of good help on your ship, or the ticking of the clock.

Fallout

Whenever you take a blow, you open yourself up to fallout. Fallout is a measure of the problems that arise from the conflicts in which the player characters are embroiled.

Each player character has four fallout tracks, each of which has three rows. The four tracks correspond to Physical, Mental, Social, and Societal fallout. When you take Physical fallout, it means your physical body is affected: this might be damage in combat, but it might also be sickness from an alien planet or simply fatigue from overwork. When you take Mental fallout, it means that your mind or spirit is affected: maybe you've been awake for days, or you're being subject to the whims of a mind-controlling alien, or you've been outwitted by a master strategist. When you take Social fallout, it means that your relationships with other people suffer: maybe you've made a decision that has made you less popular with your crew or has made you notorious among the local planet's population. When you take Societal fallout, it means your ability to engage with society around you has suffered: in a capitalist context, this kind of fallout might mean that you're short on money and can't pay for things in a way that limits you, but it can also mean that you've been stigmatized for breaching some kind of cultural norm or that you've lost the favor of the ruling political group in a moneyless future.

The stats you've brought into play will tell you how much fallout you take each time you take a blow. Whenever you take a blow, regardless of who struck the blow and how, you can decide which track it goes into and explain why your taking the blow led to that. For example, if you're in a conflict with the ambassador of the Etrinax system and they raise with a particularly clever treaty that puts your side at a disadvantage, you might choose to take the blow by:

• overworking yourself and spending all night to address concerns with the proposal, which would cause you to experience Physical fallout
• stammering and becoming intimidated by the ambassador, which would cause you to experience Mental fallout
• responding with a lackluster and showy speech that your crew sees right through, which would cause you to experience Social fallout
• conceeding the point and failing to protect an important interest of your organization, which would cause you to experience Societal fallout

You can only put fallout points into a single track: you can't, for example, take 2 fallout points and put 1 into Physical and 1 into Mental.

You can also resist fallout by choosing to spend more dice from your pool. You can only do so by spending a single die, and the value on that die must exceed the fallout taken by at least 1: that is, if you take a blow and would take 2 fallout, then you must spend a die that reads 3 or more in order to resist the consequences of the fallout.

Each row of a fallout track has four squares and then a fifth longer area. When you take fallout, you start by filling in individual squares, one for each point of fallout your experience, but once you've filled up four squares, then the next point of fallout becomes a condition: this is a larger consequence, and could be any kind of descriptor or phrase, but whatever condition you take is up to the GM. If you're marking fallout and you fill in a condition, then don't mark any more for the fallout at hand: for example, if you have 3 boxes ticked, and you would take another 3 fallout, then you tick the fourth box, and write a condition in the fifth one, and then stop: the last point doesn't count. However, the next time you take fallout, you start on the next row.

In addition to the condition described, each full row will reduce your dice pool for a relevant stat in some way. A single full row will reduce that stat by -1d; two full rows will reduce it by -2d, and three full rows will remove that stat entirely: you can still bring it into play, but you can no longer roll dice associated with it. You also can no longer put fallout into a track if that track is completely full: you have to choose a different way to take the blow.

If you have two different tracks that have three full rows of fallout, then your character dies, although not until the end of the conflict that created the condition: you can arrange with the GM to figure out the most dramatic possible way for your character to die.

NPC and Organization Fallout

NPCs and organizations can take fallout just like PCs. Unlike PCs, they only have a single fallout track, and the number of stages it has is up to the GM. For unimportant or passing NPCs, they might have just one stage, but important NPCs might have as many as five stages.

Because they only have one track, any kind of condition can go into that track. A bounty hunter who is following the PCs might have a single-stage fallout track, in which case the final condition might be killed, but it could just as easily be disgraced or bamboozled or fired, all of which are conditions that take that bounty hunter out of play as far as the players are concerned.

Unlike PCs, NPCs cannot stay in a conflict if they completely fill their fallout track, and must immediately give in a conflict, even if they have the dice to keep going.

Getting Rid of Fallout

There are three major ways of getting rid of fallout. The first is for getting rid of individual ticks on a fallout track: after any conflict, you can choose a single fallout track and get rid of up to three ticks from the lowest filled-in row by describing a scene in which your character somehow alleviates any fallout related to that track. For example, if you're removing ticks from your Physical track, then maybe you can frame a scene of your character at the ship's doctor, or banding themselves up, or simply taking a bath. You can't remove conditions in this way: having a condition 'locks' that row of the fallout track, so it can't be simply removed.

To get rid of a condition, you need to have a separate conflict. Tell the GM that you want to remove a condition, and the GM will set up a 4d6 4d8 conflict standing in as the condition. If you win the conflict, then you can clear the entire row. This doesn't clear any ticks above or below the row, and it's of course possible to get new fallout during this process!

The last way of getting rid of a condition is to convert it to a permanent trait, which you can also only do once after a conflict. This trait will always be a trait at 1d4 and should reflect your character accepting that whatever condition they arrived at is now a permanent, non-fixable part of who they are. You can rephrase the condition in question so it makes more sense as a trait, if you'd like. For example, if your character took the physical condition severed hand, and you choose to turn this into a trait, then you can clear that row of the fallout track, but now your character has a 1d4 trait has a severed hand, because for whatever reason they can't right now get it replaced or regrown or otherwise mitigated. (But as usual, you can advance your traits, and as usual, you can rephrase or refocus traits when you advance them, so that 1d4 has a severed hand might after several advancements become a 2d8 has a robotic replacement hand.)

Assets

Certain things—large or important objects or organizations—are considered assets, and work a little differently than simple belongings. A belonging is on its own rated in dice, and bringing that belonging into play simply adds the dice. Something like a starship, on the other hand, is a big and complicated object, and therefore has stats of its own, as well as the ability to take fallout on its own.

Every asset has three stats (which get assigned in much the same way that player stats are assigned) and a single three-stage fallout track. The fallout track represents the degree to which the asset is usable by the player characters, which may or may not be simple damage. For example, fallout to a starship asset might be damage sustained in battle, but fallout to an organization might have to do with the player characters' standing in the organization (which might prevent the organization from providing aid when the player characters need it) or about the player characters' ability to contact or interact with that organization (which might prevent them from being able to even request aid).

Common types of asset include:

• Starships, which have the stats Engines, Hull, and Systems
• Cyberdecks, which have the stats Network, Storage, and Software
• Organizations, which have the stats People, Assets (?), and Clout

When an asset is brought into play, decide which of the stats is most relevant to the conflict at hand. For example, if your crew is trying to catch up to a smuggler in your ship, then you might want to bring Engines into play; if your crew is trying to store the cargo they've found on the moon's surface in your cargo bay, then you might want to bring Hull into play; and if your crew is trying to scan a seemingly-abandoned space station, then you might want to bring Systems into play.

(A good rule of thumb is: what would show up as important in the film adaptation of this story? If the camera would linger on the thrusters as they fired up, then maybe Engines is the right stat; if it would have a shot of the science officer peering at sensor readouts, then maybe Systems is the right stat instead.)

Every time you bring the stat associated with an asset into play, you open that asset up to fallout. Assets take fallout in the same way that player characters do, and like player characters, they have a three-row fallout track with fillable conditions. There are a few small ways in which asset fallout is different from player fallout:

• The amount of fallout taken by an asset is determined by how many of that asset's stats are in play, regardless of which player stats are in play. For example, if a player is using body + hard and has brought their ship's systems into play, and that player takes a blow, then can choose to take 3 fallout into a personal fallout track (because they're engaged in physical combat) or they can choose to take 1 fallout into the ship's fallout track (because only one of the ship's stats has come into play.) Similarly, if a player is using mind + soft but has brought their people + assets + clout into play from their organization, then they can take a blow by taking 1 fallout into a personal fallout track or by taking 3 into their organization's fallout track.
• Unlike player fallout tracks, each filled-in row of an asset fallout track reduces the number of dice you can roll for every stat associated with the asset: for example, if you have a ship that has engines 5d6, hull 3d6, systems 2d10, and you fill in the entire first row of its fallout track and give it the condition shot up, then you can only roll 4d6 for engines, 2d6 for hull, and 1d10 for systems. Once you've filled in all three rows of an asset track, then this asset is no longer usable.
• Clearing fallout from an asset works like clearing fallout from a player character: after a conflict, you can always remove up to three ticks from the lowest fallout row for each asset available to you in addition to clearing ticks from one of your personal tracks.
• There is no way of turning a condition into a permanent trait for an asset (as assets do not themselves have traits), so the only way to clear conditions is to win a 4d6 4d8 conflict against them.

Custom Asset Types

It's possible that in your campaign, you might want to have a different, special kind of asset: these will all work the same way, but you may propose three new stats for them. For example, maybe your story takes place on a world where it's common to flying dragon-like alien creatures as aerial mounts, so your GM might stipulate that their three stats are Ferocity, Size, and Cunning. Maybe your story takes place in a destitute shantytown on a wasteland planet, so you might have small gangs as assets that have Muscle, Gear, and Sharpness.

A good principle to follow when choosing three stats is that they should have intepretations for every instance of the asset, even if those interpretations might tend to be different from one asset to another. It's better for them to be overly-broad than overly-narrow: for example, all ships have Systems, but for one ship that might be sensor arrays, and for another it might be weapons subsystems. All organizations have Goods, but for some that might be money, while for others that might be actual physical resources on-hand. It's okay to leave them up to interpretation, and it's okay to allow for some wiggle room between which stat a player wants to bring into play.

Creating a Ship

Like characters, ships also have Stats and Traits. Unlike with a character, they're determined by the ship's class.

1. Decide the ship's class. If you're creating a shared ship, this will be a Frigate; if you're creating personal ships, then this will be a Fighter.

2. Select your ship's Stats. The ship's Class specified a number of stat dice: take these and divide them up among the ship's three Stats. Every ship must have at least 2d6 in each stat.

The three stats for a ship are Hull, Engines, Systems.