Growing

There is no XP

You don’t earn anything in Zi’Dara by counting kills. Everything that changes on your sheet changes because the story changed it, or because you chose it in downtime.

What changes every session

Every session ends in a downtime, and you choose what your two slots buy. Nobody chooses for you. The only thing pushing back is the world, which always wants some of your time. Once the downtime’s over, all your Resolve comes back too.

What changes over an arc

• An Aspiration resolves. You gain a new archetype, with a Title you name for it, and growth doesn’t get any bigger than that. See Archetypes and Titles.
• Your Titles fill up, a permission at a time, and your attuned things go up a stage.
• The crew grows, the way a character does. See The Crew, and The Crew, Session 1 to 20 below.
• Your bonds grow. When the Party Goal’s done, everyone writes a new thread, with someone the Goal brought into their life.

How power grows

There aren’t any tiers. You get stronger by putting more lines on your sheet, and every line on a set action makes it a step bigger, so your dice get bigger, and past 6 steps you get a second one. The lines come from:

• Permissions, one a Grow, up to six on a Title. Bram’s Hold the door, in Set actions, is what two Grows look like.
• Boons. Two permission slots on a Title buy a permanent upgrade, like an extra Hurt bar (see Boons and Burdens).
• Attuned things, a stage at a time: Awakened, Tempered, Perfected. Each stage needs its material, and each new permission takes a downtime slot (see Attunement).
• A new archetype every time your Aspiration climbs past d12, with a Title you name for it and one permission. Grow fills it from there, and your Resolve maximum goes up by one with it.

Which archetype you take matters too. One you haven’t got yet brings its mechanic, something only that archetype can do. On most archetypes, one you’ve already got makes its +2 bigger: twice is +3, and three times is +4 (see How archetypes work). Say Bram’s Aspiration climbs past d12. He could take Healer, and he’d be the only one in the crew who can make a heal roll. Or he could take Guardian again, and when he spends 1 Aura on an Armour die, it’d be +3 instead of +2.

Scars don’t upgrade. A Scar’s for the story, and it doesn’t turn into anything (see Hurt, Blaze and Scars).

The threat budget climbs with every Title, so the world keeps pace, and threats that used to be bosses become lieutenants.

The Long Game

A campaign changes shape as the crew gets better. The dice keep pace on their own, because the threat budget rises with every Title. What changes is who’s paying attention.

• Threats move up. Last arc’s boss is this arc’s lieutenant. Bring them back with new tags, or working for someone worse.
• The past comes back. Threads, debts, Scars and old enemies are the best things you’ve got to work with, so keep bringing them back.
• Titles get noticed. Every new Title is something people know about you. The woman who has never been seen is going to meet people who want to see her.

Between Arcs

An arc is four to six sessions around one Party Goal. When the Goal climbs past d12, play the moment out, let the crew grow and write everyone’s new threads, then take ten minutes before you write the next one.

• Go round the table: what did everyone enjoy, and what do they want more of?
• Check every Aspiration. If someone’s gone off theirs, rewrite it.
• Write the next Goal together, at d2, and let it come out of what just happened.

Ending a Campaign

When you can see the end coming, tell the table, and aim the last arc at what’s left: every Aspiration within reach, and every faction’s business coming to a head.

Then do the epilogues. Each player says where their character is a year later, in a few sentences, and the table can ask one question about it. The GM goes last, and says what happened to the world.

Retiring a character

When you decide your character’s done, write a final Title, leave the party sheet, and make a new character at the same progression: the same number of archetypes, each with its Title, and the same number of permissions and traits, spent however you like.

Leave something behind. Give one thing you carry or one attuned thing to someone in the crew, or introduce them to someone you’ve got a bond with, so they can write a thread with that person. Give your new character a thread with the old one if it fits. An attuned thing needs someone with a free attunement slot. A retired character can still turn up in the story, and the GM should bring them back now and then.

Death

From your very first Blaze, you can choose for your character to die. If you don’t, they leave the scene and take a Scar, and once every box on your Hurt track’s crossed out, your next Blaze is your last (see Hurt, Blaze and Scars). If a player chooses it, the GM slows right down and lets them tell their last moment in their own words.

After that it’s the same as retirement, with a farewell scene. Play it at the start of the next session, before anything else. Whoever wants to says something, at the graveside or over a drink, and the dead character’s player says what they leave behind, the same way a retiring character does.

New Characters

A new player joining, or a player whose character retired or died, builds at about the same progression as the rest of the crew. Answer two crew questions about how you know them, and write a thread with somebody already in the crew. It goes on both your sheets, so agree on it together. The GM puts the new character in the next scene with a reason to be there, ideally one that’s already in trouble.

Vesk, Session 1 to 20

Session 1: Creation. She’s the character built in A Complete Character.

Session 6: The first arc. Her Aspiration’s climbed from d2 to d12. Most downtimes, one slot went on it and the other on whatever the last job cost her. She hasn’t added a permission or grown her picks, so she’s the same person, just further along. That’s her call.

Session 7: A new Title. She robs the Vane Estate, and her Aspiration climbs past d12. That’s a new archetype, and she takes Shadow a third time. She names it The woman who has never been seen, and gives it one permission, leave no trace. The Title and the permission both fit her Sneak nearly every time, so it’s 6 steps now, a d12. Her Resolve maximum goes up to 3, and with Shadow three times, its +2 is a +4. She writes Find out who the fence really is at d2, and on her way out she takes a sliver of steel from the vault’s bolt, because she knows what it’s for.

Sessions 10 and 11: Locks. A Grow puts work a lock in the dark on her first Title, and it fits her Locks nearly every time: 6 steps, a d12. Then the vault steel takes her picks to Tempered, and their second permission takes another slot: open a lock that’s held shut by magic. That won’t fit every lock, so it stays off her Locks, and on a warded door she brings it in for 1 Aura.

Session 14: A Blaze. In a burning warehouse she fills all three Hurt bars, with a Catch in each, then takes one more Hurt and Blazes: she walks out through the fire with both crewmates over her shoulders. Her player could choose for her to die there, and doesn’t, so she leaves the scene and takes a Scar across her back. It crosses out one of her boxes for good, and it doesn’t do anything else. The three Catches take a downtime slot each to heal.

Session 17: Perfected. A pin from the Quiet Order’s vault lock takes her picks to Perfected, and their third permission takes a slot: find the trap on a lock before it springs. Nearly every lock worth picking has one, so it goes on her Locks: 7 steps, a d12 and a d2.

Session 18: A fourth Title. Her second Aspiration climbs past d12, and she takes Shadow again: The ghost of the harbour quarter, with know every way in or out of the harbour quarter. Her Resolve maximum’s 4 now, and Shadow four times makes its +2 a +5.

Session 19: Two for a Boon. She swaps fight dirty with a knife and find a buyer for anything for a Boon on Raised by the Guild, Up the Walls: she climbs at full stride. She hasn’t pulled a knife in a year, and after the fence she’s done selling. Her Fight’s down to a d2, and she’s fine with that.

Session 20: Retirement.

When she retires, she writes her final Title, and it’s Shadow again: The one who walked away.

What changed across twenty sessions: she went from two Titles to four, from six permissions to seven and a Boon, and from Awakened picks to Perfected ones. Taking Shadow every time has made its +2 a +5. On a lock she used to roll a d10. Now it’s 7 steps, a d12 and a d2, and when she brings in the picks’ magic on a warded vault it’s 8: a d6 for the lock, a d6 for the trap and a d4 for the alarm, all off one action.

The Crew, Session 1 to 20

Session 1: A crew with no name.

Session 3: The horse and cart. They steal a horse and cart from a Vane warehouse, and it goes on the party sheet as a party resource. Taking it doesn’t grow the crew, because a cart isn’t a street.

Session 5: The first Goal’s done. Dorrie stands up in court, and Clear Dorrie’s name climbs past d12. The crew earns its first Reputation, The ones who beat the forger’s court, and picks two: Power goes up to d6, and it takes Informants, because half the clerks in the court now owe Dorrie a drink. People start calling them the Lamplighters, after the loft they meet in, and the name sticks. The next Goal is Free the Bound, at d2.

Session 6: Too big to hit. The Estate’s Power is a d12, and the crew’s is a d6, so going straight at it would take both party slots every downtime. Instead they start a project: Turn the salt carters against the Estate, at d2. When it’s done, the Estate’s Wealth steps down one.

Session 8: Paying someone else. The crew steps its Wealth down to d2 and pays the Harbour Guild to attack the Estate, with the Guild’s own dice. The Guild’s d10 beats the Estate’s d12 on the night, and the Estate loses Old: the old families stop answering its letters.

Session 9: The carters walk. The project climbs past d12, and the Estate’s Wealth drops from d10 to d8.

Session 10: The Estate comes for them. It moves on the crew, rolls a 3, and seizes the horse and cart. The crew crosses it off.

Session 11: Rebuild. A party slot takes the crew’s Wealth back up to d4.

Session 12: The second Goal’s done. The Bound walk out of Vane’s gallery, and the crew earns The ones who emptied the gallery. It picks Power up to d8, and a party resource: the old chandlery on Candle Street, which is theirs now, cellar and all.

Session 14: One slot is enough now. The Quiet Order’s Power is a d8, the same as the crew’s, so a single party slot can go at its Power. The crew interferes with its agenda. Informants fits (they know where the Order keeps its books), so it’s the crew’s d8 plus a step, a d10, against the Order’s Power d8 and its agenda’s d6 at once. The crew rolls 9, the Power rolls 4 and the agenda rolls 5. They beat both: the Order’s move fails, its agenda steps down to d4, and the crew takes a step of its Wealth. The Order’s Wealth drops to d6, the crew’s climbs to d6, and the Order’s Standing drops to Wary.

Session 15: A job that pays. The Harbour Guild offers a big job: get its ledgers back from a sunk barge. The GM says up front it’s worth a step of Wealth. The crew does it, its Wealth climbs to d8, and the Guild goes up to Friendly.

Session 18: The third Goal’s done. Own the Low Market climbs past d12. The crew earns Nobody sells in the Low Market without the Lamplighters’ say-so, and picks two crew tags: Rooted and Muscle.

Session 20.

What changed across twenty sessions: the crew went from no name to three Reputations, from d4 and d4 to d8 and d8, and from nothing to three tags and a building. Its people are Challenge 4 now, and a single party slot can go at the Power of anything up to a d8. On a strike at a Low Market gang, it rolls its Power, a step for Muscle, a step for Rooted and a step for the Reputation that says nobody sells there without them: seven steps, a d12 and a d2, from one slot. The Estate’s still bigger than they are, so that one still takes both slots, or a project, or someone else’s dice.