The Flow of the Play

Games usually take place at a regularly scheduled time and place. Finding time to play games with other busy people can be challenging. Consistent play is crucial to keeping a game alive. Most sessions have a basic flow:

Before play

At the start of a game session, a few important pieces of bookkeeping are taken care of:

Recap

One player—with help from others at the table, and with corrections from the GM as needed—recaps what happened during the last session. This gets everybody back into the game and refreshes their memory about where they were and what they’re doing.

If this player does an exceptionally good job, the GM may give them a point of Resolve (p. 32). They may keep this Resolve or give it to another player who needs it.

Returning players

If anyone misses a session during the Crawl Phase, their adventurer is assumed to be about one room away, trailing behind the main guild. They have been slowed down performing a Camp Action (p. 137). When the player returns, they tell the table what activity they performed, receive the benefit from it, and rejoin the main group. Some actions (e.g., Fellowship, Train) logically require another adventurer to be “absent” with the returning player; only choose activities that make sense for the circumstances.

“Pataphysics means ‘beyond metaphysics’; It is the science of imaginary solutions that studies the exceptions rather than laws and aspires to provide imaginary solutions to practical problems.”

– Italo Calvino

During play

A typical game session flows between the different phases. Over the course of many game sessions, play will follow this sequence:

• Decide to pursue one adventurer’s quest.

• Adventure through the Underworld (Crawl Phase).

• Struggle against the strange denizens of the Underworld (Challenge Phase).

• Rest as well as possible in the lightless depths (Camp Phase).

• Return to the City, broken and bleeding (City Phase).

• Spend accumulated wealth to heal, stock up on equipment, and pursue long-term projects in the City.

• Pick up a contract to finance the next crawl (p. 46).

• Descend back into the Underworld in continued pursuit of the current quest while working on their contract (Crawl Phase).

• Repeat.

End of play

Play can end after any phase or simply at a specified time. It’s best for the GM to close play when there’s a good stopping point—when one scene has just ended, or just after introducing a new scene (so the players have something to look forward to next week).

The GM can take time at the end of play to get feedback about what the players want to do or where they want to go next. Reminders about when they’ll play next, who might be absent, etc., can be dealt with at this time.

Adjudicating the game: GM responses

An RPG is a conversation between the GM and the players. The GM describes a scene and the players describe their actions inside the scene. The GM and the players ask questions of each other to further define their shared textual reality.

The GM adjudicates how the adventurers’ actions impact the world. To this end, GMs are armed with the following four stock phrases:

• “Yes, you can do that.”

• “Say more about what you’re doing.”

• “Draw to see if you can do that.”

• “No, you can’t do that.”

These phrases (and their variants) are the four basic responses that a GM has for answering a player when they ask, “Can my character do…?”

“Yes, you can do that”

The player describes their adventurer’s actions and the GM simply describes what happens. If there’s nothing preventing the adventurer from succeeding, they simply succeed.

• “It doesn’t seem that the door is locked. You open the door slowly and carefully.”

• “Sure, you can climb the tree. There're plenty of handholds.”

• “You know that it will take a few minutes of hard work and it'll make a shit ton of noise, but of course you can use your felling axe to hack down the wooden door.”

Players portray members of the unfortunate caste called “adventurers.” As such, they have the skills and abilities that you’d assume adventurers would have by default.

In practice, this means you ignore all the uninteresting parts of adventuring. You never test fate to see if an adventurer knows how to kindle a bonfire—they’re competent travelers. Don’t worry about what weapons an adventurer is proficient in—they’re competent fighters. Even difficult tasks can be resolved without a test of fate as long as: 1. there’s no interesting risk; 2. the adventurer has plenty of time; 3. they have the appropriate tools.

If one of these factors is missing, it’s time to move to one of the other responses.

If an adventurer's actions would incur some sort of penalty, the GM should make that clear and give them a choice.

• If an adventurer’s actions would take a long time to complete, the GM should make this clear. If the player elects to spend the time, the GM draws on the Meatgrinder table (p. 91) to represent time passing; similar to the “Moving carefully” rules on page 91. Draw from the major arcana—torches gutter on a result of I-V.

• If an adventurer's actions would create a lot of noise, the GM should give that info. If the player elects to risk the noise, the GM draws on the Meatgrinder table to represent an interested predator investigating the disturbance; similar to the “Loud noises” rules on page 91. The GM draws from the major arcana—a random encounter occurs on a result of XV-XX.

“Say more about what you’re doing”

Sometimes it’s not exactly clear what actions the players are describing or what their intentions are. In these cases, the GM should ask for clarification.

• “How exactly are you searching for traps?”

• “OK, because of the Linguist talent, you definitely speak the myconid language, but you know that their language is expressed entirely in the medium of spore bursts. How do you intend to communicate with the fungoid?”

• “How can you read the text if you don't have any light?” Sometimes there is a miscommunication in what the GM has described—the GM might be picturing one thing but the players have understood something very differently. Sometimes there's ambiguity in what the player is trying to do. Asking for clarification keeps the shared hallucination of the game consistent by syncing information between the GM and the player.

The GM can also ask clarifying questions about the tactics that the character would be employing. A player’s statement that they want to “Perform a coup de grace on the vampire” might be more successful depending on the precise methods employed—the GM may want to know what weapons are used, what exactly is done, etc.

Once the GM has achieved clarity with “Say more,” they can then shift to one of the other three basic responses.

“Draw to see if you can do that”

When an action is fraught with danger or its outcome is uncertain, it’s time to test fate. For an overview of tests of fate, see page 8.

Tests of fate should be relatively rare and relatively tense. Don’t call for tests of fate for inconsequential actions— only when something of importance hangs in the balance.

• “The door is locked. If you have lockpicks, you can test Pentacles to try and pick the lock.”

• “OK, you grab the portcullis before it slams down. You’re straining against it as the mechanism’s gears grind. Go ahead and test Swords to see if you can hold it up as your companions crawl under it.”

“No, you can’t do that”

Sometimes, actions are not possible or will automatically fail based on the logic of the narrative world.

• “No, you can't really try and tame a dangerous wild beast with a single test of fate. Something like that would need to be done by breaking it over the course of several weeks. You can try and capture it, though, if you want...”

• “No, if you don't have any tools, you don't have any way to pick the lock. There's not any, like, bits of wire just lying around your jail cell.”

The Challenge Phase

It’s worth noting that the rules of the Challenge Phase are more bounded than the freeform nature of standard play. The Challenge Actions and the player’s hand of cards usually determine what an adventurer can and can’t do. The GM still adjudicates what the players try to do when there’s ambiguity:

“Oh, you’re trying to squeeze past the slime as they squelch down the hall? Well, there’s not really space to Avoid it—it takes up the entire corridor. Do you want to do something else instead?”