Frames

A frame is a ready-made kind of campaign. It tells you what the world’s like, how it should feel at the table, what the crew does from one session to the next, who’s on the faction board and how to start. The rules don’t change from one frame to the next. What changes is the world, and what you do in it.

You pick one together at Session Zero, and it’s step 1, the pitch. The GM reads out the pitch for the frame she’d like to run, or for two or three of them, and the table talks it over. A frame hands you most of the other steps as well: the tone, the first factions, the first Goal and the questions to go round the table with. That’ll make Session Zero a lot quicker.

The Steeplands is the book’s own frame, and it’s where every example in the earlier chapters happens. The five below are other worlds you can run with the same book. They’re all built from the same parts in the same order, so once you’ve read one you’ll know where to find things in the rest, and there’s a checklist at the end for building your own.

If the table’s split, have everyone name the frame they’d most like to play and the one they’d least like, then play the favourite nobody put last. You can mix them, too. Brinewake’s ship can sail into Lanternfall’s harbour, the Deep Company’s Depth works in any ruin in the Steeplands, and the Gilded Court’s favours work at any court. Change whatever you like. A frame gets you to the first session, and after a few more the world belongs to your table anyway.

Brinewake

The pitch

Tone and feel

Brinewake is sea stories where the ship’s one of the crew. You should feel the deck move. The weather matters, every port is loud and full of people who want something from you, and the crew argues about the course like it’s family. It’s adventurous and warm, with real danger every time you leave harbour, and most of that danger is the sea itself. Gallows jokes in a storm are part of it.

It isn’t a naval war game. The crew aren’t admirals and nobody’s moving fleets around a map, so when there’s a fight it’s a boarding, a brawl on the quay or a chase through the rocks. It’s no pirate comedy either, unless that’s what your table wants, and if it does, say so now.

What the crew does

A session usually starts in port. The crew takes a cargo or a charter from someone on the board (that’s Work for it or a Deal in Factions), and the planning scene is about the route, the weather and who’s watching the harbour. Then they sail. A voyage is a journey from Travelling: the way is a stake with a tag for every stage, like The Narrows, Open Water and The Reef Gate, and Supplies is the water and salt pork in the hold. The ship herself is a party resource with permissions of her own, and the frame rule below says how. Most voyages have one scene worth playing in rounds, like a cutter that wants to come aboard or a squall at the wrong moment, and when something’s after you it’s a chase, with the sea as the Ground. Then there’s whoever’s waiting at the other end, and the aftermath: who pays, who’s angry, and what the crew owes now.

Over an arc, the crew builds the ship and its name. They pay off the Kittiwake and refit her, pick a side between the Tithe Fleet, the trading houses and the smugglers, and find out what’s under the Glass Shelf. Downtime is time in port, with the ship up on the slip and everyone’s debts catching up with them, and it’s when the faction turn shows you what the board did while you were at sea.

The world

• Saltreach. The biggest free port, built on old stilts over a drowned town. Everything’s for sale, and the harbourmaster takes a tenth of it.
• The Combs. A maze of rock stacks and sea caves where the smugglers hide. The tide opens and shuts the channels twice a day, so you’ll need a pilot who knows them, or a lot of luck.
• Gallowsmouth. The Tithe Fleet’s fortress harbour, with iron cages hanging off the breakwater for anyone caught without papers.
• The Glass Shelf. Shallows so clear you can see the towers of a drowned city underneath. It’s where the ships have started going missing.
• Kell’s Rest. A whaling island at the edge of the charts. The last chandler before open ocean sells water at three times the price, and nobody there asks where you’re headed.

The board

Two of them want the Kittiwake. Tarrant & Daughters holds the note on her and would happily take her back over one missed payment, and the Brothers need one more fast ship for the blockade run. That’s your first faction pressure, right there.

Threats

The Bell Below is a boss, and its two tough tags add up to 40, for a starting crew of four. Barnacle Hide is chipped by harpoons, blades and fire. The Song is chipped by whatever drowns it out or breaks its hold, like a shanty roared from the deck or a ward. Deep Water goes when somebody lures it into the shallows, where it can’t dive.

Characters

Good Brinewake Titles say what you do on a ship, or what the sea’s done to you:

• The only pilot who’s taken a ship through the Combs at night
• The bosun who’s never lost a mast
• The smuggler the Tithe Fleet hanged and didn’t kill
• The diver who’s touched the drowned towers

Every crew needs a Captain and a Sailor, so they’re the first Title ideas to fill, and they both make good Leaders. Nearly all the rest have a place aboard too. The Warrior’s first over the rail when you board, the Rogue runs the hidden hold as a Shadow, the Face does the deals in port, and the Ranger’s a Hunter, up the mast with the harpoon. The Storm school fits better here than nearly anywhere, as a weather-caller or a sea witch (an Elementalist either way), and so does the Healer, because at sea there’s no doctor but the one you brought.

Permissions that earn their keep: find the way in a storm, know every coast, read the stars, steer a ship through the Combs, climb the rigging, swim in rough water, handle a small boat, patch a ship’s hull, plan a sea battle, know the shipping routes, hide smuggled goods and know who’s who on the docks. For magic, a Storm Title with fill a sail and a Medium with speak with the drowned could’ve been made for this sea.

Magic’s real but rare, and sailors are superstitious about it. A weather-caller’s worth her weight in silver, and nobody whistles on deck. Heavy armour’s a bad idea out here, because nobody swims in plate, and the GM’ll remember that when you’re standing at the rail. Horses hardly come up at all.

The frame rule: the ship

The ship’s a party resource, and in Brinewake she’s the most important thing on the party sheet. Give her a name and three tags, like Fast, Deep Hold and Sound Hull. Each tag’s a permission for whoever’s working the ship, where it fits: Fast when you’re racing a squall or a cutter, and Deep Hold when the Fleet comes aboard looking for brandy. She isn’t on anyone’s set action, so bringing one of her tags into a roll costs 1 Aura, the same as bringing in the ground. Anything can telegraph at the ship, like a storm or a cutter’s guns. There’s no defence roll for her, the same as a stake: somebody answers it, or it lands and the GM strips one of her tags. Like any consequence, the crew can offer another cost that fits, like Supplies down a size or a Hurt on whoever’s at the wheel. A ship with no tags left is a wreck. She floats, just, but she’s no use to anyone as a permission, and the GM telegraphs the next blow at her with one answer: if it lands, she sinks. In port, a downtime slot and a purse of gold puts one tag back, the same as mending an item. A full refit, every tag at once, is too big for a purse, so it costs a step of the crew’s Wealth.

The first Goal

Start with Own the Kittiwake outright, at d2. Tarrant & Daughters holds the note on her, and every voyage that brings real money home can chase it. Here’s what to run alongside it:

• A safe anchorage in the Combs. When it’s done, the crew has a cove nobody else knows about, as a holding.
• Letters of marque. When it’s done, the Kittiwake sails with Tithe Fleet papers, and the cages at Gallowsmouth are for other people.
• Chart the Glass Shelf. When it’s done, the crew knows where the missing ships went, and the Drowned Choir’s secret is theirs.

The first job

Session Zero questions

• What’s the one cargo this crew won’t carry, whatever it pays?
• Who on board has been down to the Glass Shelf, and what did they see there?
• Which port won’t let the Kittiwake dock any more, and what did we do there?
• Who’s the crew member nobody at the table plays, like the cook or the ship’s boy, and what do they want?
• Does the sea have gods in this world, and do sailors pray to them?
• How funny is it? Is a storm at sea a story you laugh about afterwards, or never?

The Deep Company

The pitch

Tone and feel

The Deep Company is the old delving stories, where a team goes down into the dark with lamps and a map, and the trip back up is half the story. Down below it’s tense and quiet. There’s lamplight on old stone and the whole mountain overhead, and every noise you make carries further than you’d like. Up top it’s loud and warm, with hot food, pay day and arguments over the Company’s cut. Give both halves time at the table, because coming back up only feels good if the dark was frightening.

It isn’t a maze of random rooms with treasure in every chest. Every level was somebody’s home once, and it should make sense: you can see where they kept the grain, and why that door’s barred from this side. It isn’t a war on monsters either. Most of what lives down there wants to be left alone, and a smart crew walks past it, buys it off or goes round.

What the crew does

A session goes like this. The crew picks a contract off the Company’s board in Lanternhead (that’s Work for it in Factions), and plans at the top of the lift. Then they go down. Each level of the Underhold is a site from Exploring, with its places, its alarm, its traps and its secret, and the frame rule below sets how awake each level is. When the dark wakes up and everyone’s running for the lift, that’s a chase, with the tunnels as the Ground. Then they come back up, if they come back up, with whatever they found.

Coming back up matters as much as going down. The Catches on your Hurt track only heal in downtime, so the town’s where the crew heals, sells what they found, gets better at things and pays its debts, and it’s where the faction turn moves the Company, the Guild and the rival teams. Over an arc, the crew pushes deeper, gets its name on the Company’s board, settles things with Holloway’s team, and finds out what’s at the bottom and why it was shut in.

The world

• Lanternhead. The Company town on the mountainside, all bunkhouses and pawnshops, built round the top of the great lift.
• The Upper Galleries. The first two levels: the old markets and houses, mapped and picked over. New teams learn the trade here, and squatters live in the dry rooms.
• The Drowned Mills. The third level, where the old city ground its grain. It’s flooded to the waist, and the water rises and falls with the snowmelt.
• The Hall of Kings. The fourth level, the old city’s throne halls, sealed behind a door that’s still awake. The Company’s map stops here.
• The Underneath. Everything below. Nobody’s mapped it, and the few who’ve been down there and come back don’t talk about it.

The board

Holloway’s team needs a way through the Drowned Mills, and once the crew’s got a map of it, Holloway wants that map and isn’t fussy about how he gets it. The Company wants a cut of everything the crew brings up, including the things they’d rather keep.

Threats

The Gatekeeper’s a boss, with Stone Hide 40 as its Tough, sized for a starting crew of four. Nothing under the hide can be stripped till it’s gone. Picks, hammers and anything that breaks stone chip it, and the GM says what’s left out loud every time.

Characters

Good Titles in the Deep Company say what you do on a team, or what the dark’s done to you:

• The best lamp-hand in Lanternhead
• The surveyor who drew the Drowned Mills
• The rope-boss who’s never dropped anyone
• The only delver who’s been to the Underneath and come back

A delving team wants someone in front, someone who finds the traps, someone who reads the old work and someone who keeps everyone alive. That’s the Guardian, the Rogue, the Scholar or the Artifice school, and the Healer, and they’re the Title ideas that fit best. As archetypes, that’s a Guardian, a Shadow, a Scholar or a Maker, and a Healer. The Ranger’s welcome as the Hunter who always finds the way back, and every team needs a Captain to argue with the Company about the cut. The Face does less below ground, but somebody has to talk to the things that’d rather be talked to.

Permissions that earn their keep: spot a trap, pick a mechanical lock, take an old machine apart, shore up a tunnel, climb a sheer wall, rig a rope, find the way through tunnels, survive in the deep caves, read an old map, know the history of anything old, hold a doorway and stitch a wound, with know what a find is worth for when you get back up. The old city’s wards and constructs make the Artifice and Warding schools worth having, and a Veil Title with see in the dark is a delver’s dream.

In Lanternhead magic’s a trade, like rope work, and nobody cares how you light the dark as long as you do. Big fire’s a risk below, though. A bolt of fire in a tunnel full of old lamp oil is a fine way to bring the ceiling down, and the GM’s allowed to point that out. Anything that needs a horse or a crowd stays up top.

The frame rule: Depth

Every level of the Underhold is its own site, and its alarm is called Depth. Instead of setting it by how awake the place is, set it by how deep the level is: a d10 on the first level, a d8 on the second, a d6 on the third, and a d4 on the fourth and everything below it. Otherwise it works like any alarm. It steps down for noise and wasted time, and every round once you’re in rounds, and you can work it to keep things quiet. When it runs out, the level wakes up, and you play the sentence you wrote for it. Going back to a level you’ve already been on starts it a size smaller than last time, as usual. Each level’s a new scene, so your Aura fills when you get there, your Confidence starts on d6 again, and your Hurt drops back to 3 boxes for each Catch on your track. You take 1 Resolve for every level you leave behind, too. Those Catches only heal in downtime, though, and downtime’s at the top of the lift. How deep you go comes down to how many of them you’re willing to carry back up.

The first Goal

Start with Be the first team into the Hall of Kings, at d2. Here’s what to run alongside it:

• Map the Drowned Mills. When it’s done, the crew’s map is the best in Lanternhead, and it’s a crew tag, Our Map: a step on any crew roll that’s about finding a way below.
• A share in the lift. When it’s done, the crew owns a share in the lift, as a holding, and the Company can’t keep them off it.
• Turn the Lampwrights against the Company. When it’s done, the Deep Company loses its The Lift tag, because the Guild won’t run it for them any more.

The first job

Session Zero questions

• What did your character do before they signed the Company’s book?
• Who was on your team last season, and why aren’t they now?
• What does the team take down that the Company doesn’t know about?
• What does Lanternhead call the things that live below?
• Which level won’t any of you go back into, and why?
• When a delver dies down there, do we play it out, or cut away?

Lanternfall

The pitch

Tone and feel

Lanternfall is gaslight mysteries where the truth’s worse than the rumour. It’s slow dread that turns into a fight once you understand what you’re fighting. Most scenes are quiet and close, like a wake, a locked attic or a constable who won’t meet your eye, until the fog comes in and the clock starts running. The horror works by keeping things hidden, so the GM hides the monster and its weak point. She doesn’t hide the dice, though, and every telegraph’s still face up.

It isn’t gore for its own sake, and it isn’t hopeless. The crew can win, and they win by understanding the thing before they fight it. Horror only works when everyone trusts each other, so do lines and veils properly at Session Zero, and keep the X-card where everyone can reach it.

What the crew does

Most sessions start with a question: someone’s gone missing, a body’s come out of the river, or a lamp’s been lit that nobody lit. That’s Investigating. The GM writes the truth down first, the question’s a stake with a tag for each thing hiding the answer, every tag has three trails, and the other side’s next move is an event that steps down while the crew’s busy. Study’s the most important action in Lanternfall, because the threats here have hidden tags that matter more than their Challenge, and you’ve got to find them before you can end them (see Hidden tags and weak points).

A session usually runs one or two trails, then a confrontation once the crew knows enough, often at night with the fog as the scene clock. Sometimes the thing comes for them first, and then it’s a chase through streets where the lamps are going out behind you. In downtime, the crew heals and sleeps with the lamp on, and the factions decide what to do about people who ask questions. Over an arc, every mystery turns out to be a piece of a bigger one. The arc’s Goal is usually the name of what feeds in the fog, and the Watch, the Lamplighters and the Carrow Society each want the crew to find it, or not, for reasons of their own.

The world

• The Gaslight Mile. The rich half of the city, lit all night, where nobody admits anything’s wrong.
• The Sumps. The old town down by the river, where the lamps fail first and the fog comes in thickest.
• Saint Ardwen’s. The asylum on an island in the river. Half the city’s secrets are locked up there, and some of them still talk.
• The Lamplighters’ Hall. Where the city’s oldest guild keeps a ledger of every lamp in Lanternfall, and every night one went out.
• The Undercroft. The catacombs under the cathedral, which go a lot further than the maps say.

The board

The Carrow Society wants what the crew’s got: their notes. Every clue the crew writes down is one the Society doesn’t have to find for itself, so Lord Carrow’s happy to pay for them, and when paying doesn’t work, he’ll stop asking nicely.

Threats

The Hollow Gentleman’s a boss, with 40 in tough tags for a starting crew of four. Feeds is chipped by anything that starves him, like fire or pulling his victim out of reach. Borrowed Faces is chipped by naming the people whose faces he wears, and finding those names is what the crew’s investigation is for.

Characters

Good Lanternfall Titles say what you know that other people don’t, or what it cost you to find out:

• The surgeon who’s opened every body the Watch pulled out of the river
• The medium the Carrow Society won’t let through the door
• The inspector they threw off the Watch for asking about the fog
• The lamplighter who’s never let her lamp go out

The Investigator’s the Title idea this frame’s built around, whether you play it as a Scholar or a Hunter, and the Healer and the Face aren’t far behind. One’s a surgeon who can read a body, and the other can get into the drawing rooms on the Gaslight Mile. The Scholar and the Medium fit as occultists who know more than they should, and the Guardian’s the one who walks everybody home. The Warrior’s welcome too, because sooner or later the crew has to fight whatever it’s found.

Permissions that earn their keep: read a crime scene, follow a paper trail, question a witness, tell a haunting from a draught, speak with the recently dead, read forbidden texts, know the history of anything old, spot a lie, calm the grieving, do surgery by lamplight, get word from an informant, know the old families, move unseen in the fog, know the signs of dark worship and hold holy ground.

Magic’s real, but most people in Lanternfall would call it a fraud or a sickness, and anyone who does it in public ends up in Saint Ardwen’s. Quiet schools like Medium, Divination and Warding fit well, and they all make good Oracles. Loud magic, like a bolt of fire in the street, brings the Watch and then the asylum, in that order. People carry pistols and swordsticks here, and a pistol’s Ranged, Piercing and Reload, the same as in Weapons and their properties. It’s loud, too, so the whole street knows where you are.

The frame rule: Dread

Dread is a condition against you, and in Lanternfall it’s what the horrors put on you instead of a wound. It’s dread of one thing, named when it’s placed. Its passive is one step less on anything that means facing that thing: going at it, Studying it, or going first into the dark it’s hiding in. Spend it, and you lose your next action, spent looking anywhere but at it. Any horror with Fear can telegraph Dread at your Confidence, and if it lands you’re in Dread at the telegraph’s die. You can trade it for a cost instead, like any intent, and with fear the cost is one of your three choices: let it shake you and drop a size, bury it and take a Hurt, or hold your ground for 1 Resolve (see Confidence). Everything else works like any condition. It fades a size every round, the GM spends it at the end of the round and says so when she telegraphs, and anyone who can reach you can break it with an action that beats its die. A lit lamp’ll fit breaking it, and so will a friend’s hand on your shoulder.

The first Goal

Start with Name the thing in the fog, at d2. Here’s what to run alongside it:

• A safe house in the Sumps. When it’s done, the crew has a lit house with a good lock where they can keep a witness alive, as a holding.
• Read the Lamplighters’ ledgers. When it’s done, the crew gets a crew tag, The Ledgers: once a downtime, ask the GM where the fog fed last, and get a straight answer.
• Get the Watch off our backs. When it’s done, the Night Watch’s Standing goes up one, and Inspector Graves starts telling you what he left out of his reports.

The first job

Session Zero questions

• What did your character see in the fog that made them stop pretending?
• Who’d have your character locked up in Saint Ardwen’s if they knew what you know?
• Where does your character feel safe at night, and is it lit?
• Who’ve you already lost to the fog?
• How much do we see when the horror shows up, and what stays behind a veil?
• Is the crew trying to end it, or just to keep the people it loves alive?

The Gilded Court

The pitch

Tone and feel

The Gilded Court is palace intrigue, the kind of story where a whisper does more than a sword and every ball’s a battlefield with better food. It’s tense and it’s witty. There’s a lot of talk, a lot of scheming in corridors, and a duel at dawn when the talking runs out. Most of the danger is to your name and your Confidence rather than your Hurt track, but when the blades do come out it’s quick, and people die of a poisoned cup as easily as a sword.

It isn’t a game of bowing and etiquette lessons, and nobody has to know which fork to pick up. The court’s rules are there for the crew to use against people who follow them. It isn’t polite either. Everyone smiles, and everyone’s got a knife, even if it’s only a letter.

What the crew does

A session usually starts with an errand from a patron, and that’s Work for it in Factions. Then the crew works a room, like a ball, a council or a hunt in the Thornwood. Most scenes there are social conflict, where threats come at your Confidence and it’s their pride and duty that keep them going, and Study on a person, finding out what drives them or what they’re hiding, does more than any blade. When the talking runs out there’s a duel, and when somebody runs, there’s a chase across the palace roofs.

Factions matter more here than in any other frame. Every family’s on the board, the crew’s Standing with each of them moves nearly every session, and Deal is the party slot you’ll use most. Over an arc, the crew picks a side in the succession, or makes one of its own. It collects favours (the frame rule’s below), runs projects that chip at the great families, and tries to still be standing when the Queen dies. Downtime is when the families move, and at court every move’s aimed at somebody.

The world

• The Gilded Palace. Six hundred rooms, with the Queen’s sickroom at the centre, guarded by people who all work for somebody else.
• The Long Gallery. Where the court walks every afternoon, and where most of the real business gets done in the time it takes to pass a portrait.
• The Rosewater. The river quarter of townhouses and gambling dens, where the court goes to misbehave and the city’s best poisoners keep shop.
• The Abbey of Saint Coll. Where the old families bury their dead and keep their records. The abbess knows everyone’s secrets, and she sells a few of them.
• The Thornwood. The royal hunting forest, where accidents happen to people who were in the way.

The board

The Queen’s Eyes want what the crew’s got: its favours. Thale collects other people’s debts the way some men collect snuffboxes, and a crew that half the court owes is worth owning. House Marchetti starts Friendly because it wants to be your first patron, and it’ll want something back.

Threats

The Champion’s a boss, with 40 in tough tags for a starting crew of four. Only one of you might be holding a sword, but the whole crew can fight him. Perfect Guard is chipped by blades and footwork, and The Crowd’s Favourite is chipped by turning the court against him.

Characters

Good Titles at court say what the people who matter think of you, or what you know about them:

• The duellist who’s never had to ask twice for an apology
• The Queen’s dressmaker, who hears everything
• The forger who wrote the Duke’s love letters
• Confessor to half the court

The Face and the Courtier are built for this frame, and the Bard’s a close second, because the court runs on talk and they all live there. They’re the Title ideas that fit best, and they make Faces, Leaders and Bards, or a Shadow for a spy. The Rogue’s a Shadow who gets into the rooms nobody’s invited to, and the Investigator works out who poisoned whom. The Warrior fits as a duellist, the Captain as the head of a household guard, and a Hexer as someone with a patron of their own, and at this court that’s half the point.

Permissions that earn their keep: read court etiquette, hear the gossip first, work a ballroom, know every noble house, talk a noble round, forge a letter in any hand, live under a false name, spot a lie, read a room in a glance, pass as a servant, pass as a noble, know a poison by its smell, spot a forgery, get papers through the court’s offices, play any instrument, mix an antidote, fight with a rapier and fight a duel by the rules.

Brute force doesn’t get far in the palace. There’s a hundred guards, and a law against drawn steel in the Queen’s presence, so a fight’s a scandal before it’s a fight. Magic at court is a hanging matter if anyone can prove it, and enchanting a duke is treason, so if you’ve got it, be subtle. Live off the land and follow any trail only come out in the Thornwood.

The frame rule: favours

At court, a thread can be a favour. When someone owes you, write it on your bond with them as a thread that says so, like Lady Maud owes me for the letter. It works like any thread. Calling it in is straining it: you take 1 Resolve, and they do one thing for you that’s within their power, with no roll. The thread stays strained until you make it right with them, and if you call on it again before then, it snaps. Once you’ve made it right, the favour’s paid: rewrite the thread as whatever’s true between you now. If the GM says it’s too big for one favour, make it smaller, or call in two. A favour has to come from the story, from a service you did them in a scene or a downtime slot you spent on them. The ones you owe are debts, and when somebody calls one in, you don’t get to say no.

The first Goal

Start with Choose the next monarch, at d2. Here’s what to run alongside it:

• A friend in the sickroom. When it’s done, one of the Queen’s women is the crew’s, and they get a crew tag, An Ear in the Sickroom: once a downtime, ask the GM one question about the Queen, and get a straight answer.
• Break the Marchetti marriage. When it’s done, the wedding’s off, and House Marchetti’s agenda goes with it.
• The abbey’s registers. When it’s done, the crew has proof of the forged pedigree, and Duke Veraine’s secret is theirs to use.

The first job

Session Zero questions

• Which great family does your character owe their place at court to?
• What’s the one secret that’d get your character banished?
• Who at court does your character love, and who else knows?
• Will this crew kill for a patron, or is that where it draws the line?
• What does the court do to people it catches using magic?
• Who’s your character’s rival at court, and what are they better at than you?

Long Haul

The pitch

Tone and feel

Long Haul is science fiction about working people on a ship that’s home. The ship should feel small. The corridors are cramped, the air’s been through everyone twice, and she’s older than half her crew. The stations out here are rough frontier towns that run on ore, and the people with real power are lawyers who never raise their voices. It’s warm and grimy, with real danger in vacuum, and long quiet runs between stations where the crew gets to talk.

It isn’t a space opera full of empires and chosen ones, and nobody’s got a glowing sword. And don’t expect hard science. The ship goes where the story needs her to, and a jump between stations is one leg of a journey, however many light years it covers.

What the crew does

A session usually starts at a station with a contract (that’s Work for it or a Deal in Factions). Then there’s the run. A run between stations is a journey from Travelling: the route’s a stake with a tag for every stage, like The Shipping Lanes, The Graveyard and Tolliver’s Approach, and each jump’s a leg. Supplies is food, water and air, and Fuel is the frame rule below. Then there’s the trouble at the other end, like a customs standoff, a boarding or a dead ship to search. A dead ship’s a site from Exploring, with the airlock as the way in. Patrols and pirates mean a chase, with debris and station traffic as the Ground.

The ship’s a party resource, a line for whoever’s flying her or fixing her (1 Aura to bring her in, the same as Brinewake’s ship), and the Second Chance has trouble aboard, Hot Reactor, until somebody fixes it. It isn’t anyone’s Catch, so anyone aboard can bring it into a scene as real trouble and take 1 Aura. She’s also home, so downtime mostly happens aboard her, in dock, with repairs and shore leave while the faction turn moves the board. Over an arc, the crew pays off the ship and fixes her up, picks a side between the Combine and the Free Stations, and finds out who’s switching off the beacons.

The world

• Port Meridian. The last big station before the Fringe, full of customs offices, bars and berths you rent by the hour.
• Tolliver’s Rock. A mining asteroid with its own law, run by the miners’ council. Ore’s cheap out here, and water’s expensive.
• The Graveyard. A field of dead ships round a dead star, where salvagers pick the hulls and claim-jumpers pick the salvagers.
• Waystation Nine. A relay station whose beacon went dark three months ago. Nobody’s been sent to find out why.
• The Long Dark. The run past the last beacon, where the charts stop and the jump drive starts guessing.

The board

Halberd Credit wants what the crew’s got: the ship. When its agenda happens, there’s a repo crew waiting at the next dock, with a writ and a tow. The Rustbacks would take her too, if they caught her in the Graveyard.

Threats

NINE’s a boss, with Every System Aboard 40 as its Tough, sized for a starting crew of four. It comes first, so nothing else can be stripped till it’s gone, and it’s chipped by anything that shuts a system down, like cutting cables, pulling a core or getting into its code.

Characters

Good Long Haul Titles say what you do aboard, or what you walked away from:

• The pilot who flew the Graveyard blind
• The engineer who’s kept the Second Chance flying on spare parts and swearing
• The Combine marine who walked away
• The cargo master who can get anything through customs

The Captain and the Tinker are the two Title ideas a freighter can’t fly without, a Leader to run her and a Maker to hold her together. The Rogue’s the smuggler and the Warrior’s the ex-marine, the Face does the deals at every station, and the Healer’s the only medic for a hundred light years. If the crew wants to know what happened on Waystation Nine, they’ll want an Investigator too. The schools of magic don’t fit unless the table wants the strange out here.

Three new Title ideas fit this world. They work like the rest. Pick the one you want, take an archetype it suits, and build your Title from it like any other.

From the usual Title ideas, permissions like fix a jump drive, keep a reactor running, patch up life support, plot a jump, find the way through the Graveyard, shoot a pistol, shoot in zero gravity, fight with my bare hands, fight in tight corridors, stitch a wound, price salvage, know what ore’s worth, get a cargo through customs, find the catch in a contract and find my way round a station’s undercity all earn their place. On a planet’s surface, ride anything with wheels or legs does the job, and the Pilot covers everything that flies. Money works the same as anywhere, so a purse of gold is about a month’s wages, and out here it’s a credit chit.

Zi’Dara doesn’t care whether your weapon’s a sword or a gun. A weapon’s a plain item that counts as a line when it fits, and its properties say what it lets you do, so the rules work as they stand. Here’s how the usual ones map:

Armour’s an item like anywhere else. A vac suit’s plain armour, so it makes your Armour a size bigger, and it lets you work in vacuum for an hour. It’s heavy, too. There’s no magic in Long Haul unless your table wants it. If you do, decide at Session Zero what it looks like out here, like a handful of people born with a sense for the void, and build it from the Kinesis, Divination or Enchantment schools, with permissions to match.

The frame rule: Fuel

The ship’s tanks are a clock, the same as Supplies. Fuel starts at a d8 with full tanks, a d6 if you left in a hurry, and a d10 with a drop tank strapped on. It steps down at the end of every leg, unless somebody trimmed the burn: a roll that beats the way’s Challenge, the same as feeding the crew, with whatever fits flying or nursing an engine. Every tank you buy at a station, a purse of gold’s worth, steps it up one. When it steps down past a d2, you’re running on fumes, and from then on the GM telegraphs the dark every leg: a d6 at the way, and if it lands you drift and lose the leg. Anything that gets fuel into the tanks answers it, like siphoning a wreck or paying for a tow, and puts Fuel back at a d2. Supplies still counts food, water and air.

The first Goal

Start with Pay off the Second Chance, at d2. Here’s what to run alongside it:

• Fix the reactor shield. When it’s done, Hot Reactor is gone, and nobody aboard has to wear a radiation badge any more.
• Light Waystation Nine. When it’s done, the beacon’s back on, the Free Stations Compact’s agenda steps up one, and its Standing with the crew goes up one too.
• Find the forged note. When it’s done, Halberd Credit’s secret is the crew’s, and Mr Pell stops calling.

The first job

Session Zero questions

• What did your character leave behind to get aboard the Second Chance?
• Who on the crew would sell the ship, if the price was right?
• What’s the cargo you’ll never carry again, and what happened last time?
• Is there anything strange out past the last beacon, or is it just dark?
• Who’s waiting for your character on a station somewhere?
• Is the Combine the villain, or just the weather?

Building Your Own Frame

Every frame in this chapter is the same eleven parts in the same order. Write each one in a sentence or two and you’ve got a campaign ready for Session Zero, and you can steal from the five above as much as you like.

1. The pitch. Two or three sentences the GM can read out loud: who the crew is, what they do, and what’s about to go wrong for them.
2. Tone and feel. How it should feel at the table, in plain words, and what it isn’t. Say how funny it gets.
3. What the crew does. The loop of a session and the loop of an arc, and which chapters do the work: Travelling, Exploring, Investigating, Chases, Factions or Downtime.
4. The world. Four or five places, a sentence or two each. Building Your World has tables if you’re stuck.
5. The board. Three or four factions, each on a sheet, with at least one that wants something the crew’s got.
6. Threats. Two that only this world has, built with The Threat Builder, each with three telegraphs. If one’s a boss, give it about your threat budget in Tough.
7. Characters. Four Titles that fit, the Title ideas that fit best, the permissions that matter here, and anything that doesn’t belong, magic included. If the world needs a Title idea the book hasn’t got, write it in the same shape, the way Long Haul does, and say which archetypes it suits.
8. One frame rule. One small thing built from parts the book already has: a clock, a condition, a tag or a party resource. If it takes more than a paragraph to explain, it’s too big.
9. The first Goal, at d2, with two or three projects to run alongside it.
10. The first job, in the nine sentences from Building a Scene.
11. Session Zero questions. Five or six that only make sense in this world.

Then play a session, and change whatever didn’t work.