Tuning the Game
The game is a broad proposal, a very broad one. Its Horizons, Powers, and Agents are not a world to learn: they are material. Before playing, each table makes its own game out of them, made to measure.
As one tunes an instrument before playing, the table tunes itself: on what it keeps, what it changes, and what it decides together before the first scene.
Building your palette
The Horizon pages are guides, not rules or official lore. Every GM, every table can — and should — adapt them to make the game's purpose their own: remove a Power that does not speak to them, amend its Attributes, invent others, bring in the figures of their own culture. Only one requirement remains: each Power must still answer the three questions of "Why Agents?".
A simple way to build a campaign's palette:
- Choose a Horizon to suit the players: what exceeds them and what they want to approach.
- Keep its Powers: those that speak to the table, adapted if need be.
- Look for Powers on other Horizons, because they oppose these, or because they are neutral but could become allies or adversaries.
- Note where they converge and where they clash: what each wants from the world, and what they might contend for.
Powers from elsewhere need not take center stage. Behind the scenes, they give the world its depth and give Situations their Forces.
The table wants to play the Divine, in the manner of a swashbuckling novel. A young angel of Uriel comes down to Marseille on the eve of the arrival of the ship that brings the Great Plague. Mashit, the destroying angel, takes an interest in the ship.
Behind the scenes: Mammon, Prince of Avarice, who hunts on Money's grounds; Azazel, Prince of scapegoats; the Crown, which will send its troops to seal off Provence; the Passage and the Memory of the Dead; the End. The palette came together in a few minutes, and each of these Powers has a reason to take an interest in the city.
What to decide before playing
Some parts of the game vary from one table to another. It is best to decide them together before the first session: they change what everyone can expect from the game. None has a right answer, and a table can revisit its choices during a campaign.
This matters all the more when an AI acts as GM: no more than a human table does it guess what the players have in mind.
Horizons and Powers
Which Horizons, which Powers, and which do the players take on? See Building your palette.
Tone
Adventure, tragedy, satire, horror, saga… Each Horizon says which tones it lends itself to. Naming a few works often helps more than an adjective: "somewhere near The Count of Monte Cristo and The Three Musketeers" says at once what the table has come for.
Timescales
A single age, or a campaign across the ages? Whether Agents cross time through immortality, reincarnation, or succession, and whether History can change, and how far: see Timescales.
The Agents' starting point
Where does the Agents' story begin? Three starting points are possible, and they do not ask the same of the players.
Revelation. Humans who become Agents in the first session, and gradually discover what exceeds them. The player knows the world, not yet the Power: they enter it along with their character. Anchors are rich, the Bond nearly empty, and the tension arises from what must be let go to make room for the Power. This is the most accessible starting point for discovering the game.
Newly Arrived. Agents who arrive in the world: an angel coming down for the first time, a fairy leaving the hollow hill for the first time. Almost everything is Bond, and the Anchors are still to be made. From the start, the player must play from the point of view of an incarnate Power that has only ever seen the world from above. Up close, you see the details: a body, a name, someone who recognizes you. This starting point makes the difference of scale most concrete, but it is also the most demanding; a less immersed player may feel lost. Over time, the Agent must acquire Anchors, or they risk feeling remote-controlled.
Routine. Established Agents, who know their Power, the neighboring Powers, and those who know. The Bond and the Anchors are already filled in, and creation calls for more shared preparation. This starting point suits a table that already knows the game, or one that has come for intrigue between Powers.
Whatever the starting point, the GM can help a player enter the point of view of an incarnate Power: ask them what their Power would see here, rephrase an action to say whether it passes through the Bond or an Anchor, until everyone finds their bearings. A player who forgets their Power need not be called to order: it will do so itself, at the next moment of Presence.
The visibility of Agents
Who recognizes an Agent for what they are?
- only Agents of the same Power;
- Agents of the same Horizon;
- all Agents among themselves;
- everyone, humans included.
A Bond Bet gets noticed: a table can make it what reveals an Agent. Agents of the same Horizon recognize one another, for instance, but the others remain opaque as long as they commit no Bond Bet; then one senses something, without knowing what. For a Newly Arrived Agent, every Agent from elsewhere becomes a puzzle.
This choice changes what it costs to reveal oneself (see Against Another Agent) and how many are among those who know. It can also vary from one Horizon to another, or from one Power to another.
What brings the Agents together
Allies of circumstance, a shared novelty, a human to whom they all owe something… The reason they come together is decided before creation, not after (see Bringing Agents together).
How the game is run
The GM can prepare their Situations heavily, like a showrunner, or let the story emerge from what exists. They can describe alone the manner in which the Power achieves what succeeds through the Bond, or the table can contribute. Both approaches are legitimate; the players are better off knowing which one awaits them.
The rhythm of Presence
At the end of a session, during a lull, at the player's request, or when the Power demands it: each table finds the rhythm of its moments of Presence.
Rolling the 6
Each 6 adds a die, or first rerolls an odd die, then adds one: the Successes are the same, the experience is not (see Becoming).
What the table does not want to play
The Horizons touch on death, faith, desire, violence, and power. Before playing, the table says what it does not want to see, or only off-screen, and anyone can say so again during play.
Access and depth
The game plays as well as an adventure among friends as a reflection on what exceeds us. Elsewhere, difficulty of access is a cost one bears: a world, an age, a culture must be learned first. Here, depth is chosen before playing, without changing the rules.
Several settings make it vary, independently of one another:
- the Horizon: Nature in a fairy-tale register or the Collective today call for less culture than the Divine;
- the age: a historical campaign calls for knowing the period, its figures and its quarrels; the present, almost nothing;
- the Agents' starting point: Revelation is the most accessible, Newly Arrived the most demanding;
- the tone: adventure leaves the questions in the background, tragedy or saga brings them closer;
- what is at stake in Presence: missions and constraints, or contradictions and Attributes to transform.
| An introductory game | A demanding game | |
|---|---|---|
| Horizon | the Collective | the Divine |
| Age | today | Marseille, 1720 |
| Starting point | Revelation | Newly Arrived |
| Tone | adventure | historical and picaresque |
| Presence | missions and constraints | contradictions and transformations |
An introductory game is not a watered-down version: it is the same game, leaving its questions in the background instead of placing them at the center. In either one, nobody needs to be a philosopher: action is enough. Depth comes from consequences, and gathers in the moments of Presence.
For a historical campaign, a short sheet is better than a lecture: a dozen facts, a few figures, the quarrels of the day.