Part III · The GM

Playing Alone

You can play Zi’Dara solo. It’s not as good as playing with a table, but it works.

You can play one character with a GM, which changes a couple of numbers, or with nobody but the Oracle, which is what most of this chapter’s about.

Solo With a GM

If it’s just you and a GM, you get one extra Hurt bar, so your Hurt track’s four bars instead of three. The round budget doesn’t change: it’s about 5 steps a round for each player, so that’s 5 for you. Build scenes with fewer stakes, because one character can’t be in three places at once.

The bestiary writes every Tough number for a starting crew of four, a threat budget of 40, so scale it to yours. One character with two Titles is a threat budget of 10, so Tough 40 is Tough 10 and Tough 20 is Tough 5.

Solo Alone

All you need is one character, one set of dice and the Oracle, and the Oracle’s your GM. You’ll be making the GM’s calls as well, so read Being Fair to Yourself before you start.

The solo loop

Roll the Prompt below: something happens, and maybe there’s a complication.
Build the scene the way the GM would: one or two stakes, whatever pushes back and a clock. Ask the Oracle anything you don’t know, and say how likely it is first. Play fair with yourself: if the guards are always awake at this hour, it’s likely they’re awake.
Set Challenges by rolling a d6 when you can’t decide: 1–2 is Challenge 2, 3–4 is 3, 5 is 4 and 6 is 5. A boss is always 6.
Telegraph for the world before you act. For one character, the round budget’s about 5 steps. Running the Threats Yourself shows you how.
Play it out, and write one sentence in the log.
Downtime, as normal, with one extra Hurt bar to your name. Downtime and Factions covers the slots.

Outside a round, when you’d look at the GM and wait, make a move for the world instead (When They Look at You), and if nothing comes to you, roll on the Twist table in The Oracle.

The Prompt

Roll the d20 for what happens. When you want the session to bite harder, roll the d12 as well.

d20: Something happens

A stranger asks you a favour.
Someone you owed money to turns up.
A door opens that shouldn’t have.
A friend is in trouble.
A rumour reaches you that changes something.
A message arrives, unsigned.
A job offer, better than it should be.
A rival gets there first.
A debt is called in.
A lock opens, or doesn’t.
A storm breaks.
A faction moves.
Someone dies.
Someone arrives who was supposed to be dead.
An opportunity appears, with a cost.
A secret slips out.
A witness vanishes.
Something breaks.
Something gets fixed by someone you don’t trust.
The world changes.

d12: A complication

Someone’s watching.
The clock is faster than you thought.
What you thought was a friend isn’t.
The information was wrong.
You’re being followed.
It’s a trap.
You’ve been here before.
Someone’s protecting the thing.
Something’s missing.
A price has been paid that you don’t know about.
The rules are different here.
Nothing is as it seems.

Being Fair to Yourself

When you’re the GM and the player at once, it’s easy to go soft on yourself without meaning to. These keep it honest.

Set the odds before you roll the Oracle, and set them where the world would, even when you’re hoping for a yes. Don’t roll again because you didn’t like the answer.
Decide clocks and Challenges before you look at your sheet. Set each one by what the thing is, and pick threats that belong where you are, whatever your dice look like.
When you’re unsure, let the Oracle decide. If you catch yourself weighing up what would suit your character best, stop and roll it.
Keep secrets from yourself. Cover a threat’s Hidden line with your thumb, and don’t read it till you’ve found it, with Study, the Oracle, or because it gave itself away. If you know the bestiary by heart, roll it a new hidden tag from the tables in The Threat Builder.
Read your sheet the way the GM would. Anything that isn’t on your set action costs 1 Aura to bring in, however well it fits. And if you’re making a case for why a permission would normally do something, it’s going beyond, and that’s 1 Resolve.
Name the cost before you pick one. When something lands, name the consequence that fits the blow, the one the GM would name. Then you can offer another that fits and costs about as much, as usual. Fear, lies and pressure are different, because there’s no cost to name: when one gets through, you choose to let it shake you, bury it or hold your ground, the same as at a table (see Confidence).
Say when your Aspiration’s within reach while you’re building the scene, once or twice a session, the way the GM would. Don’t decide it halfway through a round because you need the step.
Let your Catches bite, and make it real trouble, the kind the GM would make of it. It’s 1 Aura, or 1 Resolve for a big bite, and only call it big when it changes the scene or costs you something you wanted (see Catches and Resolve at the Table). There’s no GM to give you Resolve for great roleplay, so on your own it comes from big bites, your threads, the end of every scene and downtime.
Strain your threads honestly. When you lean on someone for Resolve, say how the strain shows and what would make it right before you take it, and don’t mend it for anything less (Playing the strain).

Running the Threats Yourself

Every round starts with the telegraphs, and on your own you make them, out loud, before you look at your sheet. Scale any Tough to your threat budget first, as in Solo With a GM.

What it telegraphs

Every threat in the bestiary has three ready-made telegraphs on its Telegraphs line. Roll a d6 for each telegraph it makes this round: 1–2 is the first, 3–4 the second and 5–6 the third. If you roll one that can’t happen right now, like a lantern nobody’s carrying or a tag that’s been stripped, roll again.

For a threat without a Telegraphs line, or when none of its three fits what’s going on, roll for what it wants and let its tags say how it goes about it. It telegraphs with its Challenge die, unless a tag says otherwise.

d6	It wants to	Telegraph it as
1	Hurt you	Its die at you, against Armour, or against Confidence if it fights with words.
2	Stop you	Its die at you, to pin, grab, trip or disarm you. If it lands, that’s what happens, at its die.
3	Call for help	Its die at the scene clock. If it lands, the clock steps down one.
4	Get away	Its die at the way out. If it lands, it’s gone, with whatever it was carrying.
5	Protect something	Its die at the stake. If it lands, the stake gains a tag in the way, like Guarded.
6	Change the ground	Its die at the place. If it lands, the place gains a ground tag, like Pitch Dark or Fire.

How many it makes is down to the round budget and the story, the same as at a table.

Who it goes for

With one character it’s you, your stake or your clock, and the table sorts that out. When there’s more than one of you, like a crew of your own or an ally fighting beside you, go down this list and stop at the first one that fits:

Whoever it hates. A drive or a thread says so, like Holds a Grudge or a debt somebody wrote down.
Whoever’s hurting it most, like the one who stripped a tag off it last round.
Whoever’s nearest the stake.

If that doesn’t settle it, roll for it.

Say it, then stick to it

Spend the round budget the way the GM would. At Even that’s about one harm telegraph a round at each character, and the rest on control, stakes, clocks and the ground. A telegraph costs its die’s steps, once for each target.
Say it all out loud, or jot it on a card: what it does, at whom, and its die. Put the dice out, and only then pick up your sheet.
Stick to it. The threat doesn’t get to change its mind once you’ve seen what you’re doing. The only new telegraph is one your own action sets off, like a guard who sees you and shouts, and only while you’ve still got an action to answer it (an extra one from Resolve, say). If you haven’t, it goes in next round’s telegraphs.

Journeys, Sites and Mysteries

The three exploring chapters work on your own as written, apart from the secret, because you can’t go looking for something you wrote yourself. So when the book says to write a secret, write three possible ones, number them, and don’t decide which is true until the game makes you.

A journey

Set it up as Travelling says, with three possible secrets. Each leg, roll On the road for what the road throws at you, and pay for it out of your round budget: 2 or 3 steps on an easy road, so a d8 from the table comes in as a d6, and all 5 when the country’s trying to kill you. Roll for the secret the first time you Study the road, or as you start the last stage if you never do.

When you’re following something across country, roll the d12 below each leg as well.

d12	What the trail turns up
1	Tracks so fresh the edges are still crumbling. It’s close.
2	Tracks that double back on themselves. It knows it’s being followed.
3	Something it dropped, or something it took.
4	Where it slept. Study the place and you’ll learn something about it.
5	Blood, and it isn’t its own.
6	A second set of tracks, following the same trail.
7	What’s left of something it caught.
8	Someone who saw it go by, and wants something for telling.
9	The trail splits, and one way’s wrong.
10	A place it keeps coming back to: a den, a camp, a hide.
11	Nothing. The trail stops dead, so ask the Oracle where it went.
12	A mark it left on purpose, for whoever’s following.

A site

Build it as Exploring says, but don’t draw the places ahead. Roll a d6 for how many there are (1–2 is three, 3–4 five and 5–6 seven), and put the stake’s last tag in the last one. At every door, roll the d12 below for the place, then What’s in this place? for the one thing in it. Roll for the secret when that table hands you a clue to it, or when you Study a place for it.

Study a place from the doorway and you roll what’s in it first, so the Study can find it. Walk straight in, and if it’s a trap, it goes off.

d12	The next place	Its ground
1	A stair going down, steeper than it should be.	Narrow Stair · Echoes
2	A long hall with half the roof in.	Ruins · Moonlight
3	A room where the water’s coming in.	Rising Water · Slick Floor
4	A shrine where somebody still lights the candles.	Candlelight · Sacred Ground
5	A guardroom with a door at each end.	A Locked Door · Thin Walls
6	A cave the builders broke into and never finished.	Echoes · Pitch Dark
7	A store room, stacked to the roof.	Loose Cargo · Rotten Floor
8	A drop, with one way across.	A Long Drop · Scaffolding
9	A bedchamber, or what’s left of one.	Mirrors · Rotten Floor
10	A workshop with the forge still lit.	Fire · Smoke
11	A crypt, with niches all the way up the walls.	Old Wards · Pitch Dark
12	A room somebody’s been living in, lately.	Warm Ashes · Thin Walls

A mystery

Investigating starts with you writing down the truth. Write three answers instead, and let the clues pick one.

Write the question as a stake, as always, and write the other side’s event so it fits whoever did it, like Whoever did it leaves the city.
Write three answers and number them, each with a who, a how and a why. Roll them up from Trails in a hurry, the Prompt or the Oracle, and make all three believable.
Every clue rules one out. Each time you strip a tag off the question, roll a d6 for the answer it rules out (1–2 the first, 3–4 the second, 5–6 the third, and again if that one’s already out), and write the clue to fit. After two clues there’s one left. It’s the truth, but you can’t name it till the last tag’s gone too.
The Oracle can rule one out as well. If an answer it gives you rules out one of your three, cross it off. Once there’s only one left, it’s settled, so stop asking the Oracle who did it.

Roll trails from Trails in a hurry when you need them. Everything else works as written.

ExampleThree answers for Anselm

Say Dorrie’s on her own with Who killed Anselm? She writes three answers. One, the steward, with poison, paid by the nephew. Two, the widow, with a pillow, for the house. Three, the physician, with the wrong dose, to hide his own mistake. At the wake she strips Looks Like His Heart and rolls a 3, so the widow’s out, and the clue is Bitter Almond in the Wine. That night she strips Clean Hands and rolls a 6, so the physician’s out, and the clue is Paid by the Nephew. It was the steward, and A Houseful of Suspects is still in the way of saying so.

Downtime and Factions

Downtime runs as written, with you as the GM.

Name the four pressures before you spend a slot: one off your sheet, your Goal, the one the faction turn gives you, and for the world, the d20 Prompt.
The faction turn runs itself. Roll the d6 in The Faction Turn for every faction, never pick, and say every move out loud before you spend a slot. Two or three factions are plenty on your own.
Your slots. You get your two personal slots, and since you’re the whole crew, its two party slots as well. They work as written: the crew’s Power, or your own permissions when you’re plainly the right person for it (1 step for the slot plus what fits), and two slots on one move count everything twice.
Downtime rolls. Ties go to the defender, and a die you’re climbing counts as the defender. There’s no Aura in downtime. Spend 1 Resolve to roll again (your dice only), or step the crew’s Wealth down one to win a tie. The factions can’t do either.
Trouble waits. Whatever downtime stirs up lands next session, and if it’s one of your Catches, you can let it bite then, in a scene, where there’s Aura to take for it.
Next session might be waiting. A pressure you’ve ignored twice is a scene, and so is a job a faction gave you, so skip the d20 and start there.

A Crew of Your Own

You can play two or three characters at once, which gives each of them someone to work with and someone to argue with. Past three, it’s hard to keep them all in your head.

Telegraph for the whole crew first, then act with them in any order, the same as a table. Each one builds their action from their own sheet, and they can put their actions into one roll as a combo.
Both budgets count every character. The round budget’s about 5 steps for each of them, and the threat budget’s each character’s share, added up: two characters with two Titles each is 20, and Wren with two Titles and Vesk with four is 10 + 15 = 25.
Use the list in Who it goes for, so you don’t quietly aim everything at whoever’s got the best Armour.
No extra Hurt bar. That’s for one character on their own.
Keep their bonds honest. When two of them want different things, let them. If you can’t tell what one would do, ask the Oracle and let their threads set the odds: Wren’s thread with Bram says he’s the only one who can keep up with her, so if she heads up the fell, it’s likely he follows. When one of them strains a thread with another, play the other side straight, by how many threads are left between them (Playing the strain).
The rest is shared as usual. Spare Aura goes to whoever’s in the scene, a thread between two of them goes on both their sheets, and in downtime each of them gets two personal slots while the crew shares two party slots.

Keeping It Going

The log’s your journal. At a table it’s a sentence a session. On your own, write one for every scene, and read the last few back before you start.
End a session on a question. Stop on something you want to know, and make it the last line in the log. Next time, start there instead of rolling the Prompt.
Stop at the end of a scene, never halfway through a round. A scene or two and a downtime make a good session, and one scene’s fine if that’s all the time you’ve got.
Stop when it stops being fun, the same as any table (When It’s Not Working). An Aspiration resolving or a Goal done is a good place to put it down for a while.

A Solo Session, Start to Finish

ExampleWren on the moor

Wren’s out on her own with her ready-made sheet: Aura 5, 2 Resolve, Armour d2, Confidence on d6 to start the scene, and four Hurt bars, the usual three and the solo one.

The Prompt. The d20 says 5, A rumour reaches you that changes something, and she wants it to bite, so she rolls the d12 too: 5, You’re being followed. A drover at the inn says a shepherd went up onto the moor after a lost ewe and never came down, and his fold gate’s scored with the claw marks Isolde told her about. She leaves who’s following her to the dice.

The scene. She builds it before she looks at her sheet. It’s nearly dark at the shepherd’s fold, with a small fire going in the lee of the wall and rain coming over the tops. The stake’s Keep the trail, Challenge 3 for hill country, a d6, with Trampled by Sheep and Doubles Back in the way, and the rain’s its clock, at a d8. The ground’s Deep Heather and Firelight, and the round budget’s 5.

Is anything else hunting up here? Something took the shepherd, so she calls it likely before she rolls: Fate 9, Bane 6, and two Boon dice, 4 and 13. She keeps the 13, which beats Fate while Bane doesn’t, so it’s a yes. Her d6 for its Challenge says 4, so it’s Challenge 3, and the Wilderness threat at 3 is the Moor Cat: Ambush, Sees in the Dark, Cowardly. Her thumb goes over its Hidden line. Its Telegraphs line has it drop out of the heather onto whoever’s at the back (a d8 at Armour), knock the lantern out of whoever’s hand (a d6 at the ground), or show its eyes in the firelight right behind whoever’s on watch (a d6 at Confidence, Frightened). She’s on her own, so she’s at the back and on watch.

Round 1. The d6 says 2, so it drops on her: a d8, 4 steps. That leaves 1, and it goes on the rain, a d2 at the clock. That’s 5, said out loud, and fixed.

Now the sheet. She’s got one action, so it’s the drop or the trail. Her d2 Armour won’t stop much, but a loose Hurt box clears at the end of the scene, and the rain’s coming for the trail, so she works the trail and takes her chances with the drop. Her Track is her first Title, follow any trail and know a beast’s habits (whatever she’s after leaves claw marks), plus the action: 4 steps, a d8. It’s 4 against the stake’s 4, a tie, so she pays 1 Aura to win it and strips Trampled by Sheep.

At the end of the round the drop comes down, and she rolls her Armour once against it: 1 on her d2, against 5 on the cat’s d8, so it lands. Her Armour can’t go below a d2, so the cost that fits is a Hurt. Losing her rations would cost about as much, but she’s a long way from anywhere, so she fills one box. The rain lands too, and the clock steps down to a d6. She worked the stake, so it doesn’t step again.

Round 2. The d6 says 3, the lantern, but she isn’t carrying one, so she rolls again and gets 6: the eyes, a d6, 3 steps. The last 2 go on the rain, a d4 at the clock, for 5.

This time she Studies it. Her Study is her second Title and read the land for an ambush, plus the action, 3 steps. Know a beast’s habits fits too, but it’s on her Track, not her Study, so bringing it in costs 1 Aura. That’s 4 steps, a d8. It’s 6 against the cat’s 2, and she asks why it’s on her trail instead of eating her. Off comes her thumb: Hunting Something Else, its weak point. It’s after whatever’s following her, and if she steps aside, it’ll pass.

Is there a rock she can get up onto, out of its road? She wants a yes, but it’s open moor, so she calls it unlikely: Fate 12, Bane 7, and two Boon dice, 15 and 9. She keeps the lower, and neither 9 nor 7 beats Fate, so it’s a no.

Then she reads her sheet again. She’s Sure-Footed, so heather that would bog anyone else down is just ground to her. She steps off the trail into it on her free stride, and the cat isn’t trying to stop her, so there’s nothing to roll. It goes past her and away down the trail she came up, and its telegraphs go with it. That’s a threat down, so her Confidence goes up a size, to d8.

That leaves Doubles Back, and her action’s gone, so she spends 1 Resolve on another. It’s her Track again, another d8, and she rolls 8 against the stake’s 5. That’s a top face, so 1 Aura comes back. The tracks go on up into the hills, and she’s read which way before the rain can wash them out, so the stake’s hers.

That’s the scene. Her loose Hurt box clears, her Confidence goes back to d6, and she gets 1 Resolve back, so she’s on 2 again.

The log. That’s enough for one night, so she writes: The moor cat at the fold wasn’t hunting me: it went back down the trail to meet whatever’s been following me since the inn. Next session starts there.