Occultation

Thanks for the gentle reminder! These are the draft rules, which you are welcome to take or leave:

A condition is a temporary trait, reflecting a minor or transient narrative advantage or disadvantage of the PC. The GM can give a character a condition whenever it makes narrative sense, or when the dice say a character gains an advantage or suffers a complication or cost. 

There are two types of conditions, Advantages and Problems. A character can have no more than three of either type. If a character has three advantages and would gain another, the player can choose to remove one or decline the offered advantage. If a character has three problems and would gain another, the GM can consider imposing a more serious fictional consequence, or rewriting one of the existing disadvantages to reflect increased severity or broader consequences. 

When a player rolls the dice and an Advantage applies, they may treat it as a Trait when building their dice pool. Once they’ve done so, they should delete the Advantage; it may still form part of the fiction but will no longer have a mechanical effect. 

When a player rolls the dice and a Problem would make their action more difficult, they must remove one dice from their pool and delete the Problem. If this means a character would have no dice to roll, they may instead roll two dice and take the lower result. 

One of the main uses for Conditions is to keep the game moving when the dice call for an advantage or consequence. If the GM doesn’t have another idea, they can just hand out a Condition and continue. 

Conditions that have not been used are cleared when it makes fictional sense. The Problem ‘battered’ is cleared when you have time to receive first aid and comfort; the Advantage ‘librarian’s favourite’ is lost if the character sufficiently antagonises the librarian. Players and the GM should work together to decide if a condition has been cleared by the story. 

Conditions are not intended to reflect serious or lasting effects. If a PC breaks their leg, finds a tattoo of an occult sign on their body, or loses the person they care about most in the world, that’s probably not a Problem, its part of the fiction that will cause persistent difficulties for the PC until/unless they can obtain appropriate treatment or support and take the time to fully recover. It doesn’t take away one die one time, but probably means some actions are impossible and others which would normally be straightforward now require a roll to Take A Risk. Those kinds of ongoing harm should be treated as part of the fiction, and only resolved when it makes sense in the fiction.