Welcome to P.I.T.F. (Last Name).  The Private Investigation Task Force is a private company that needs your skill and professionalism.  You may notice your six digit pay wage that is complete with total coverage health care, dental care, and three months worth of vacation time.  All paid for by Uncle Sam of course.  You have to love those government contracts.  Still unlike other private companies we at P.I.T.F. value our employees.  Just look at our maternity leave which is full year.

Now I know what you are thinking.  This sounds all too good to be true.  Well P.I.T.F. is a dangerous job that demands only the most capable people the company can find.  Your job is to help out in investigations that frankly I don't even know about.  Top secret projects that the government and other companies don't want the public to find out.  My guess is perhaps the FBI and CIA have their hands full so they need private companies to help them out.

Oh yes.  Your first mission is investigate a small outpost in Antarctica.  The scientists there had found something odd and hired us to look into it.  Unusual work even for P.I.T.F.  Still it is a pay check and hey maybe you can look at penguins.

This thread is mainly for recruiting players and explaining the basics of the rule set of my custom game system known as Struggle of the Moirai.  This is mainly to test out the system to see what works, what doesn't, and to apply possible fixes to the game.

The thread that spark this play by post game is this http://www.therpgsite.com/showthread.php?t=30391.

It would be helpful if I explain the system a bit.  If you had ever played Blood Bowl this might be familiar.  Do note this game uses nothing, but six sided dice.

When making a roll you compare your score (attribute modifier + equipment +/- mods) vs the challenge of the object, obstacle, or foe.  For the examples lets say your score is 4.

When you have half, or less than half of the challenge (4 vs 9) you roll three negative dice for active tests.  For passive tests you just get a botch.  I will explain negative dice later on.

When you have less than challenge, but more than half (4 vs 6) you roll two negative dice for active tests.  For passive tests you just get a failure.

If it is a tie (4 vs 4), then you roll one positive die for active tests.  For passive tests the GM rolls a single die to determine the out come.  A roll of one to three is failure while a roll of four to six is success.

When you have more than the challenge, but less than double (4 vs 3) you roll two positive dice for active tests.  For passive tests this means a success.

When you have at least double the challenge (4 vs 1) you can roll three positive dice for active tests.  For passive tests this means a boost.

So what is with the negative and positive dice.  It is all about who controls the outcome of the result of the action.  Negative dice works outside the control of the roller.  That means the GM, or in cases of player vs player the opposing player get to pick the result of the roll.  They will pick the worst die which is also the die of the lowest number.  Positive dice is in the control of the roller and they get to pick the best result.  Which is the highest number.  Either case whom ever gets to choose only picks one die out of that roll.

Dice results follow;

1 = botch
2 to 3 = failure
4 to 5 = success
6 = boost

A botch is not only a failure, but one that makes the roller suffer a negative consequence of his action.

A failure means the roller failed in the task he had set out to do.

A success means the roller succeed in the task he had set out to do.

A boost is not only a success, but one that grants a positive consequence of his action that he would normally not get.

The only thing that could alter these rolls are merits which are covered in the next post.

Okay with basic rolls being explained lets go with another biggy.  The merits themselves.  You may had notice that they are similar to aspects from FATE.  Well that is because aspects inspired the creation of merits.  So if you are familiar with FATE aspects you may know what merits can do.

You only have five merits for your character and they cover certain themes.  You can do five things with them.  Three of them are cost nothing, but only effect the dice rolling mechanic.  The fourth one allows you to do special abilities that you could not normally do without a talent.  Finally the fifth one allows you to recharge your heroics.

The first benefit is that if the roller wants to he can choose a merit to grant him a advantage in a dice roll.  What is a advantage?  It simply adds a positive die to the roll for active tests.  In passive tests it raises your score by one.  If you can use more than one merit you can for more positive dice, or score improvement.

The second benefit that you can do is when your the defender.  You can grant a disadvantage to your foes.  What that means is that you force your foe to take a negative die for his active test to harm you.  It is a quick defensive ability you can do.  This can work on passive tests as well by reducing the enemy score.  It too can stock merits for a bigger disadvantage.

The third benefit that you can do is to simply cancel out a merit.  About to get hit by a disadvantage?  If you can you could use a merit to deny it.  About to suffer the effects of a enemy who has too much advantage?  If you can use a merit to reduce that advantage.  This method can stack with other merits.

Abilities are the forth benefit that can perform special effects without altering dice.  For a example a "Champion Archer of London" can say she is so good with the bow she will make single shot using two arrows to hit two separate targets.  She spends a bit of her heroic points to pull it off.  Later on in the session that same woman want to make another stunt, but this time she wants to shoot two times as far to make a long shot.  She spends heroics again to make the shot.  You can also combine this with other merits to pull off even more powerful abilities, but that also cost more heroics.

Merits also have a fifth ability which allows you to regain heroics by practicing in the theme of that merit.  So that "Champion Archer of London" could spend four hours in the archery range to regain 4d6 heroic points.  This can stack with other merits to increase the heroic recharge by +1d6 per hour.

So merits can make you better, limit your foes, cancel out things that hinders you, allows for special abilities, and can "heal" you.  Pretty impressive for five small things.  So what is the down side?  Well merits are limited in scope because they are themes in which your character is good at.  Not to mention you have to be in, do something, or something must happen to allow some of those merits to be useful.  The "Champion Archer of London" merit is useless if the character is in a business meeting that bans all weapons from being brought in.

Next up I will cover talents.  Now if your familiar with FATE stunts you can guess what talents do.  Then again if your a fan of new World of Darkness Mage: The Awakening talents are similar to legacy attainments.  

In the Struggle of the Moirai talents are your merit abilities that are hard wired into your character.  What do I mean by that?  I mean they do only one thing, but cost no heroics to pull off.  The double range attack that the "Champion Archer of London" example I gave in the previous post could be talent.

Talents are often made up by the player and the GM.  No two talents are a like and thus the possibilities are endless.  It is up the GM to determine how far a single talent can go.

Talents are earned by two ways.  Character creation and every time you earn ten milestones you gain a talent.

Now I am going to focus on the other stats.


Attributes

Attributes are the base number when determining your score against challenges.  They also help determine the value of other stats.  To determine the attribute mod just look at the ten digit of each attribute.

Combat (A):  Main attribute that is only used for combat.  It is used to determine the score of your offensive and defensive prowess.

Physical (P):  Attribute that determine your physical capabilities.

Mental (P):  Attribute that determine your mental capabilities.

Social (P):  Attribute that determine your social capabilities.

Potency (A):  Attribute that determines your supernatural prowess.  You start out with zero and can never increase it at character creation.  This attribute when increase can grant you benefits, but unleash a horrible curse as well.  It is the only attribute that can save you from supernatural attacks, but it is the reason why you are doomed anyway.  Potency brings in new rules that deserve its own separate post to explain.


Hit Points

Wound:  Your physical health.  If this reaches zero your character had physically died.  It restores points equal to physical attribute mod per day of rest.  For active days you restore only one point.

Heroic:  Your buffer health and energy pool.  You start out with zero at character creation and slowly build yourself up.  Once it reaches zero further damage goes to either wound, or spirit.  You can restore heroic via two methods.  Resting restores six points per hour of rest.  Practicing that fits in the theme of one of your merits allows a 1d6 roll per hour.  Your total heroics equals your milestones till you reach a hundred milestones.  Beyond that follow the advance rules.

Spirit:  Your mental/spiritual health.  If this reaches zero your character no longer lives in a figurative way of saying it.  They are empty shells and thus their game had ended.  It restores points equal to mental attribute mod per day of rest.  For active days you restore only one point.


Equipment

Note:  Equipment is currently in testing phase as this system was originally designed to not have equipment at all.  Expect a lot of guess work in this.  However, if you really want something I can just give you the equipment stats.

Equipment are items you can use to help yourself in the game.  It has various stats of its own.

Quality:  Determines the quality of the weapon/armor/item which improves the score.

Range:  Some items do have range and this stat determines how far it can go.

Clip:  Made for firearms and other weapons that consume ammo.  This stat is how much ammo you have before you run out.

Reload:  Made for equipment that can consume items, ammo, and energy in order to function.  This stat determines how many actions it takes to reload the equipment.

Special:  Some items have special traits and this is where the special traits go.


Other Stats

This covers any stats that are left over.

Equipment Slots:  Determines how many items you can have on you.  Going over the limit means you suffer a -1 to all your physical/combat scores and suffer tough terrain movement.  Going over double the limits means you suffer -2 to all your physical/combat scores and suffer severe terrain movement.

Initiative:  Determines who starts first in combat.

Request:  Determines how many points you can spend on equipment before your investigations.  Money is useless in this game so this is your only economy.

Now for combat.  This actually follows many steps depending on how high your initiative is.

1.)  Roll initiative.  That is 1d6 + Mental Mod + Modifiers.  Those with the highest goes first.

2.)  Make a active combat, or potency roll to see if you hit the target.
   2A.)  PC defenders must use combat attribute when being attack by combat.  They must also use potency attribute when being attack by potency.
   2B.)  Defenders can apply disadvantage if they have the merits and talents to do so.
      2B1.)  Attackers can cancel them those merits out if they are able to do so.

3.)  If the attacker succeeds he does 1d6 + Attribute Mod of damage.  Weapons that require the physical attributes such as melee weapons, throwing weapons, bows, darts, and so on use Physical Mod.  Weapons that require technology and aiming at the right spots use Mental Mod.  If it is some supernatural curse attack that uses the voice of the attacker it uses Social Mod.

4.)  Once everyone had their turn you subtract six from everyone's initiative.  Those with initiative left can do step 2 to 4 again.  If no one has any initiative left go back to normal initiative values before you started to subtract to begin the next turn.

Note:  A good way to measure initiative is to write down everyone's initiative on a note paper.  Then put a line underneath it.  Underneath that line you put new initiatives that have six less points.  Repeat the process till everyone is at zero, or less.  Then you know how many combat phases each pc and npc can do.

Okay now this just covers character creation and then sheet template.

1.)  Pick concept and name for your character.  Once that is done you can then fill out your five merits.  Each merit has theme guide line to aid you.

• Background:  The merit that involves with your history and how you grew up.
  
• Employment:  The merit that involves the reason why P.I.T.F. hired you.
  
• Primary Role:  The merit that tells what you can do for your investigation team.
  
• Secondary Role:  The merit that tells what other field of expertise you can perform for the investigation team.
  
• Nature:  The merit that deals with characteristics that can aid you.
  

2.)  Roll 5d6 four times.  These will determine the values of your attributes.  Assign them to combat, physical, mental, and social.  Potency has to remain at zero.

3.)  Determine your starting stats.

• Wound = (Physical Mod x2) + 10.
• Heroic = zero.
• Spirit = (Mental Mod x2) + 10.
• Equipment Slots = 5 + Physical Mod.
• Initiative Modifier = Mental Mod.
• Request = Social Mod + Rank 1

4.)  You have ten talents to spend.
   4A.)  You can spend talents to increase your attributes by ten points.
      4A1.)  You are max at 59 till you manage to get a potency mod of 1.  Then it can go up to 69.
      4A2.)  You can't increase potency this way.
   4B.)  You can spend it to get signature equipment.  Signature equipment allow you to cheat the request system a bit by giving you equipment that can stay with you throughout your entire career.  Each talent spent equals four request points.
   4C.)  You can spend it on natural mundane abilities.
   4D.)  You can spend it on supernatural abilities.
      4D1.)  WARNING:  Each use increase potency attribute by one and can eventual lose your character.

Spoiler

CHARACTER SHEET TEMPLATE

CHARACTER INFO

Character Name:
Milestones:
Request Base:

MERITS

Background:
Employment:
Primary Role:
Secondary Role:
Nature:

ATTRIBUTES

Combat:  ??
Physical:  ??
Mental:  ??
Social:  ??
Potency:  00

HIT POINTS

Wound:  ??/??
Heroic:  ??/??
Spirit:  ??/??

TALENTS

Example Talent Name:  Effect of the talent.

EQUIPMENT

Name of Equipment:  Bonus ?, Range ?/?/?, Clip ?, Reload ?, Special Traits Here

Equipment Slots:

Okay now you guys that want to play can create characters.

Where do you get your merits? Can you make them up?

You have to make them up.  I will give you a example.

Say you got a former navy seal by that goes by as JJ Trucks.

Background:  Served in the Navy Seals
Employment:  Gained High Honors Through Team Leadership
Primary Role:  Provider of Tactical Intelligence
Secondary Role:  Keeper of the Team Morale
Nature:  Calm When Under Fire

Basicly you want to get into things that fits well with your merits so you can use them a lot.

Talents you can also make up as well.  Though with those you need to discuss with me about what you want to do with those talents.  What I would say is that I won't allow supernatural talents at character creation, but you can earn them in game.  I wouldn't be focus on signature equipment either, but I am not banning them on the start.  That leaves improving attributes and making mundane abilities.

Okay I clean up the rules a bit as you can see in the first page.

Now you will see rules for how Potency will work.  Potency is a powerful and secretive attribute that only a few people will ever get.  In the world of seven billion people there might be at the most seven thousand people with potency.  That is a very rare group of people and that is a good thing because that means the vast majority of people don't have to suffer the effects of drowning.


Drowning

What is drowning?  It is a term use to describe how a mortal gets drag into the supernatural worlds that is hidden from the mundane world.  Think of it like dimension traveling, but with no portals.  It is more like effortless diving into a pool of water.  The deeper you go the harder it is to swim back to the surface.  Potency acts like object of great density.  The more potency you have the deeper you go and the harder it is to get to the surface.

In fact once you get to 60 points in Potency your character becomes a npc.  Not because they are monsters, but because there is no way of bringing you back to the mundane world.  For all the wealth, talented people, and government support that P.I.T.F. can bring they do not have the power to bring you back.  The pull of the supernatural is just too powerful.

The warning signs starts to appear when you get up to potency ten and thus have a mod of one.  People can still freely interact with you in the mundane world.  You may notice you can improve yourself beyond normal human means.  It looks all positive till you get to potency twenty.  That is when things start to change for the worst.

At potency twenty people have a hard time finding you.  You tend to stand not in direct vision in order to be seen more clearly.  Mundane weapons have a hard time hitting you as if your not really there unless they are being use by some one with potency.  You don't know how that is possible, but it is not making your life easier.  You think there are other things out there.

At potency thirty the shit just go real.  Your a ghost at this point.  If you had not figured out surfacing your in for some trouble.  Those that figured out surfacing are figuring out that they keep disappearing all the time.  Mundane weapons that are used by people with no potency have no affect on you.  As for those things.  You are no longer thinking at this point.  You just know.

Potency forty brings out whole new fears.  It takes extreme effort to surface up to the point that people with no potency can easily notice you.  You know deep down you can't keep this up forever.  Worst those things you know for the fact that are real can easily see you now.

Potency fifty is even worst.  Even as you surface with all your power people with no potency have a difficult time seeing you.  Worst those creatures are capable of touching you without even making a reach.

Potency sixty is game over.  Even if you surface with all your power people with no potency cannot even see you.  You are a ghost to them.  Even if you can survive in your new world the fact is your in a whole new game.  Hand over the character sheet to the GM.

There are benefits to drowning though.  For starters it increases your passive attribute cap.  A person with potency twenty-one can increase his passive attributes up to seventy-nine and could achieve the full benefits of having a mod of seven.  This is for physical, mental, and social attributes as combat does not benefit from this.

Another benefit is that it allows you to have access to supernatural talents.  Even if you have potency of one you still have the ability to do powers.  Of course each time you use any of those powers you increase your potency by one.  Wise investigators rarely use their powers and save them for when they have to do so.  The wisest investigators don't use supernatural powers at all.


Surfacing, Sinking, and Reaching

So how does one swim up?  That is called surfacing and it is costly.  You can only surface up to three levels.  Not only does it reduce potency, but it also reduce your three passive attributes as well.  Combat is a active attribute and thus does not suffer the effects of surfacing.  This is not a long term solution as there is a duration for how long you can do this.  It also drains a lot of heroics to do a surfacing.

One Level = Month Duration = 10 Heroic points
Two Level = Week Duration = 20 Heroic points
Three Level = Day Duration = 30 Heroic points

You can also sink.  Sinking means you choose to go down levels.  It makes you more powerful and unlike surfacing it easy to do.  In fact it cost no heroics and has no duration.  You can only go down three levels which improves potency and passive attributes by those levels.

The down side of sinking is that your going into deep waters and the danger is even more real.  Your going into dangerous territory that could get you killed by alien beings man was never suppose to see.  It also increases the chance of you drowning.  Each level you sink is how many more points you gain in potency if you use supernatural talents.

Level 0 = Natural Potency = 1 point per use
Level 1 = Natural Potency +1 = 2 points per use
Level 2 = Natural Potency +2 = 3 points per use
Level 3 = Natural Potency +3 = 4 points per use

Anyone with potency and knows what they are doing can perform a reach.  Reaching is similar to surfacing and sinking in that you can phase through levels of supernatural depth.  What makes it different is that you can only do one thing in a single action.  It cost heroics to pull off, but not as much as surfacing.  Though you do have to pay heroics if you try to reach into lower levels, but that is because your resisting the dragging pull that the low reach can create.

Level 1 = +1 Heroic point
Level 2 = +2 Heroic points
Level 3 = +3 Heroic points


Reducing Potency

That is the million dollar question isn't it?  Potency is dangerous as it is useful.  A smart investigator would want to reduce potency, or get rid of it completely.  Completely is impossible once earn a potency mod.  Once you sink down a level for good you can never get back up.  You can, however, reduce the chances of sinking further down to a even lower level.

There is one proven method.  You can spend milestones to decrease potency down to the mod.  Milestones only come once per session and doing so would cut in your ability to improve your other attributes.

There are other methods, but they are not proven.  Not to mention they could be dangerous and could just be rumors.  The worst tend to be traps that are design to harm the character, or increase potency even more.

Ok, I make a character soon. Does it have to be special ops? Or can it be a computer programmer, a con man or a history teacher?

It has to be useful for investigations.  The special ops guy I gave out was just a example.  Your main job is to do investigation and if combat happens your tough guy is meant to hold the enemy off long enough for help to arrive.  Everyone else should take cover, or get the hell out of there.  This is not a combat setting and there shouldn't be much combat in it.

Though take in the fact that P.I.T.F. (Private Investigation Task Force) does in fact hire the best people that they can find.  They don't hire slackers and out of high school people.  So you have to be very good at your two roles and be at the top of your game.

Take note that unlike World of Darkness hunter conspiracies, P.I.T.F., is a normal company.  The vast majority of cases are mundane and frankly the company has no idea how to handle supernatural cases at all.  They are completely in the dark like the rest of the world.  They don't run the world in the shadows and frankly don't hide the "secrets" from anyone one.  They also don't treat you like a cog of a machine that can be discarded like nothing.  The company does in fact value its employees and the employers do care.

I should cover the mission briefing of the area.  The outpost only have four buildings, a drilling station, and helipad.  The helipad is at the center of the outpost.  To the west is the building that serves as the living quarters to the research team.  South of the helipad is the lab.  Southeast is the generator building which is perhaps the most important building for survival.  Southeast of that is the drill which is used to pull out chunks of ice to determine melting points.  Northeast of the helipad is the garage which should contain some vehicles.

Living Quarters:  A large and long building that contains all the personal of the research team.  This place contains all the living conditions of a normal home that can with stand the freezing cold of Antarctica.

Lab:  The lab that the team use to store ice for further examination.  The team even research animals of the area as well.

Generator:  The most important building provides power throughout the whole outpost.  Without it the mission would end before it begins.  You need to turn it back on in order to stay warm.  This is Antarctica after all.

Drill:  A drill that is design to pull out rods of ice for measurement.  It is useful to study global warming.  Other than that you won't find nothing informative about the missing team.

Garage:  It serves as a place to keep the huskies and some dog sleds.  The garage also has some more modern methods of travel.  Some are missing as the company took the dogs back.

Helipad:  The helicopter is dropping you off over there.  It will take two weeks for the helicopter to come back.  Good luck.