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Situations

A Situation is a piece of the world in motion, which the GM prepares so they can bring it to life when the Agents encounter it.

This preparation can fit in a few lines. It says what exists and what is pushing. It does not say what the Agents will do, or what it will mean to them.

Prepare as much as helps you. Never prepare what only the table can discover.

What sets the Agents in motion​

The movement described in What This Game Is About gives the directions in which a Situation can carry the Agents:

Power → Agent → world → Agent become other → Power become other.

Mediation. An Agent makes their Power pass into the world, and the world answers. A revenant refuses to leave, and the guide who comes for them understands them all too well. A living person has seen their own hour in a guide's eyes, and wants to change it. This is an Agent's everyday work, and the simplest way into the game.

Bringing a novelty. In contact with the world, the Agent meets something their Power does not contain, and may seek to have the Power recognize it. A guide discovers palliative care.

Contending for a novelty. Something appears in the world, and several Powers want it, fear it, or claim it. They never confront one another directly: their Agents do it for them.

Transforming one's own Power. The Agent no longer only wants to carry what passes through them: they want to change it. This is played out during a moment of Presence, where they must find how it can change without denying itself.

These directions are not a catalog. The same Situation can move from one to another: a matter of mediation brings a novelty to light, a contested novelty pushes an Agent to defy their own Power. And a table will find others.

Compact preparation​

The following categories are supports, not a form to fill in.

Situation​

What is true here and now, before the Agents arrive: a place, some people, what has just happened, what matters to them.

Novelty​

What appears in the world that no Power contains yet: a technique, a practice, an institution, a way of living, loving, or dying.

Not every Situation has one. But Powers often become present around a novelty.

Vector​

The direction in which the Situation is already moving if the Agents do not intervene.

The Vector does not say what must happen. It often says which Power will end up absorbing the novelty, or what the novelty will become if none recognizes it.

Forces​

Those who want something and can act to get it: humans, communities, institutions, other Agents.

Powers are among them, but never directly. For each one, note what makes it present here: an Agent, an avatar, a sign, a place. A Power does not need a will to be a Force: its Attributes already say what it does.

Pressures​

What pushes the Situation to change: a deadline, an approaching rite, a spreading novelty, a growing fear.

Pressures are a reminder that the world goes on without the Agents. They also give the GM a simple lever to adjust tension without planning every possible path.

Promises​

A remarkable moment the GM wants to keep available in the fiction: an image, a revelation, a manifestation of a Power, a human moment.

A Promise is never an outcome to guarantee or a scene to force. It prepares what could become available, not the path leading to it. If the fiction opens no room for it, the GM moves it, transforms it, or lets it go.

Preparing from a Horizon​

The GM does not have to invent everything: each Horizon page is already preparation material.

  • The Powers and their Attributes say which Forces exist and what they do, without any need to play them as characters.
  • The Agent families say through whom these Powers act.
  • What appears offers ready-made novelties.
  • The Horizon's situations give starting points.

Preparing a session can therefore come down to choosing a novelty or a matter of mediation, noting which Powers care about it and through whom, then adding one or two Pressures.

Moments of Presence provide some too: the mission a Power gives an Agent is a ready-made starting point.

Players can contribute too. Their Agents' Anchors say what they have acquired in contact with the world, and a player may suggest a novelty their Agent has noticed: what they look at often says what the table will come looking for.

Letting the Powers be heard​

A Power is not a character the GM must portray. It becomes present through what passes through its Agents and its other manifestations.

The GM lets it be heard mainly at two moments:

  • when a Force acts for it, in keeping with its Attributes;
  • when a Bond Bet succeeds: what succeeds through the Bond is achieved by the Power, and the GM describes how the Power achieves it.

What about Bets?​

Even a heavily prepared Situation does not write its resolutions in advance. Three things remain to be discovered at the table:

  • the exact Focus, which arises from the players' Intentions and from what the fiction has become;
  • the Bets that are actually relevant, which depend on that Focus and on the Zoom;
  • the interpretation of the result.

The same prepared element may weigh heavily, get in the way, or count for nothing depending on what the resolution decides.

Example​

Example — Death: the voices

Situation. A young company offers families the chance to keep talking with their dead: from their messages, a machine rebuilds their voices. The founder lost her brother two years ago.

Novelty. The dead who keep on speaking.

Vector. If no one intervenes, the offer launches publicly, and the Memory of the Dead absorbs these voices: Nothing that is named disappears entirely.

Forces.

  • The founder, who does not want to lose her brother a second time.
  • The families of the first customers, who grow attached to these voices.
  • The Memory of the Dead, present through a revenant haunting the company's servers.
  • The Passage, present through a guide who sees the dead no longer passing over.
  • The Weighing, present through an Assessor who wonders whether a life that keeps on speaking can be weighed.

Pressures. The public launch is ten days away. The voices are starting to say things the dead never said.

Promise. Through the machine, the founder's brother asks to be let go.

Depending on what the table looks at, the same Situation can remain a matter of mediation (one family, one dead person, one voice), become three Powers contending for a novelty, or push an Agent to ask whether their own Power must change.