Here's the baseline I have for Grand Adventure for the time being: Dice: Basics: Dice are D12s, and 'score hits' on results equal or above specified values. E.g. 6+ scores hits 7/12 of the time, not 6/12 of the time, because 6 is inclusive. Wildcard dice are dice sets that can be included in any pool as long as it's applicable. Wildcard dice normally score hits on 8+. E.g. having multiple kinds of situational advantages 'stack' with each other. Broad dice dice sets that can be included in any pool as long as it's applicable, but only one set of broad dice in any category can be applied in a pool. Broad dice normally score hits on 6+. E.g. you cannot add two different Motive! sets to a pool. Narrow dice are dice sets that can only be included in any pool that does not already have another narrow dice set. Narrow dice normally score hits on 4+. E.g. most weapon skills are narrow dice because you can only use the most effective one. All adventurers: Have a thirst for Adventure! Every character must have at least one Adventure! die associated to their character, or they wouldn't be much of an adventurer. Adventure! dice can be used in any pool, representing a broad experience in performing naturally heroic actions. While Adventure! is universally applicable, it's also not very specific, and is unreliable- Adventure! dice are wildcard dice. Have a Motive!, a reason for seeking adventure. This can be as specific as finding a specific cure for a brother's disease to as wide in scope as simply acquiring as much wealth as possible. If a Motive! is very general, it doesn't get any dice, being treated as a form of Adventure!, but if it has a limited scope, Motive! may be used for any roll that directly advances towards the goal in question. If a specific Motive is permanently resolved, all Motive dice of that type transform into Adventure! dice. Motive! dice are broad dice. Have at least one extraordinary Quality! A Quality! is a character-unique trait or other distinguishing feature, such as having incredible strength or being especially witty. For every die associated to a Quality!, a character can designate a Facet of that Quality! When a Quality! is rolled in a pool, each Facet that's specifically applicable to the test grants a bonus die. E.g. someone with the Quality! Brilliant with three dice might have the Facets Extraordinary Memory, Rapid Assessment, and Tactical Acumen. Quality! dice are wildcard dice. Some adventurers: Have a Skill!, or several, which are specific fields of knowledge or otherwise practiced tasks that they're skilled or experts in. With at least one die in a Skill!, another die can be spent on a Specialization!. A Specialization! includes the base Skill! dice, but not the other way around. In exchange, an applicable Specialization! rolls an additional die for every die in that Specialization!. E.g Medicine 1/Surgeon 2 rolls five dice for Surgeon and 1 otherwise for Medicine. Have a Culture!, a background that contains five virtues or skills that group or faction believes any member should have. Characters with no Culture! dice may be (but need not be) ambivalent to or hostile to their specific culture. In the same way, your character does not need to accept their Culture! to be part of it. Adventure! is inherently separate from 'society', and thus covers the self-defined 'Culture!' of an outcast. Culture! dice are broad dice. Have a Nature!, an extremely rare trait that refers to physiologically or mystically performing acts that are simply impossible for normal humans to do. While the effects of a Nature! might be mimicked or emulated with Quality! or Skill!, it is important that Nature! is not a skill, but an ability that cannot be acquired through training, such as ghostly phantasms or predatory scent. Nature! usually refers to species traits, and has Facets like a Quality! might. Being an inherent quality, Nature! dice are narrow dice, and can only be added to or subtracted from at DM discretion. This trait is for the sake of animalistic player characters, such as extraordinary dogs, who won't have access to Skill!. Players seeking to play demihumans that adopt a human way of life ought to employ Qualities instead. Average Hits: Average Hits Hits Dice More Accurately Wildcard 2 5 0.42 successes per die Broad 3 5 0.58 successes per die Narrow 4 5 0.75 successes per die Adjusting the scored hits value (whether across all dice or to one skill given circumstances): +4: Good Fellow, what is it you're intending to accomplish here? +3: Extraordinarily difficult stuff here, I would suggest some moderation. +2: Quite a heroic endeavor you have at hand! +1: It seems the odds are stacked against you for the time being: Keep your chin up! -1: Not exactly relaxation, but a little ease! -2 or less: Consider using the Average Successes rule, friend! Special rules on Adventure!: When the adventurers are able to obtain an extended rest, a player can exchange one or more Adventure! dice for some combination of dice of a different type, other than Nature!, indicating their personal development. If you sacrifice your last Adventure! die, that means you have no more interest in risking your neck for the time being. Describe your (hopefully happy) ever after. Adventure! dice also provide a marginal advantage. In a pinch, a player can perform an Act of Derring-Do, permanently transmuting any non-Nature! die into an Adventure! die, which provides the following one-time benefit: Any Adventure! die rolled, including the transmuted die, scores a hit on 3+. Any die that matches the transmuted die's result scores an additional hit, whether or not the die would normally score a hit or not. This rule is cumulative to the number of transmuted dice, providing explosive possibilities. Yes, this means you can trade Swordsmanship for Adventure! during a session back to Swordsmanship when you rest, but you need to practice the skill instead of just 'remember it', returning to fundamentals instead of 'winging it'. If every die you possess is an Adventure! die, that means you're no longer able to function in everyday society and probably get lost in some amazing adventure. Describe how your character meets their ambiguous end. The DM may award a permanent Adventure! die to the whole party after an incredible expedition, to show the addictive nature of exploration or merely as a reward for pressing against the limits of civilization.

I've previously stated my thoughts on the nature of fear in a discussion about exploration in RPGs here, but because I roll out enough rambling diatribes to gift-wrap my equally massive ego and tie it off in a nice bow, I figured I would restate those thoughts and expand on them further as I study the way I look at player initiative and how to handle pressures. It is my personal belief that human beings are lazy when they can be and active when they feel they have to be. That's not some kind of cynical 'people are evil' jab, though I think that is the dominant factor in what people consider banal or selfish evil (I can address my perspective on selfishness and how it relates to player ethics another time). Four emotions, being happiness, sorrow, anger, and fear, are generally the most you can reduce human behavior before you start blending distinct things. And since I love neatly compartmentalizing complex systems into easily digestible, clean chunks, let's do that! Positive (+) Negative (-) Active Anger (Khorne)- I will take steps to impose my will on the world. Fear (Tzeentch)- I will take steps to ensure my will is not imposed upon. Passive Happiness (Nurgle)- I enjoy the current status quo. Sorrow (Slaanesh)- I suffer in the current status quo. Human beings instinctively want to be happy: That is, they want to move to a status quo where they aren't suffering (Sorrow), consistently threatened (Fear), or have to take additional action to get what they want (Anger). Based on this, the logical emotion to follow happiness is actually fear. When people enjoy something, they tend to become jealous of it- keeping it secure and exclusive. The reason 'fear leads to anger' is because that jealousy increasingly does not become enough- their fear turns to sorrow, as the status quo of the object of their jealousy being in peril produces sorrow. The logical progression of each emotion producing the other goes something like this: Happiness (This is fine) -> Fear (This may not be fine) -> Sorrow (This is bad) -> Anger (I will fix this) -> Happiness (This is fine). Mixing this up creates interesting progressions, but requires a little extra work, especially kicking someone out of their Happiness box. Happiness (This is fine) -> Sorrow (Something changed) -> Anger (I will fix this) -> Fear (I will prevent this from happening again) -> Happiness (Done!) Happiness (This is fine) -> Anger (I'll make it even better) -> Sorrow (I've made things worse) -> Fear (I can't let things get any worse) -> Anger (At any cost!) Often (not always) the goal of being a DM is to make the players happy, and this appears to mean making the characters happy. But the characters... shouldn't be constantly happy. The phrase 'fat and happy' appears for a reason. Old King Cole was a merry old soul because he spent his time fiddling rather than fighting. Adventurers spend a lot of time in a state of anger, fixing what they see is wrong with the world. Adventurers can't stay happy, or they stop being adventurers and start becoming sitcom stars. This is why just pouring on more and more rewards doesn't work- because once you get to a certain level of power, fear stops becoming as much of an issue and sorrow becomes whiny angst. Even in the real world, extremely powerful individuals can be put in life or limb danger and face deep-seated psychological issues. In adventuring power fantasy, those pressures kind of evaporate. The closest problem becomes Superman's 'for the man who has everything' where power comes tied to responsibilitiesThis is very difficult to actually impose, however, so most of the time it becomes squashing the latest annoyance and retiring to a gigamansion.. Just vacillating between anger and happiness or even just degrees of intense anger isn't long-term satisfying, the same way a bag of junk food may be filling, have sufficient calories, and even tasty, but not nutritious. While the two ideas don't seem to be related, the exact same trap christened the term 'grimdark'"Grimdark is a subgenre of speculative fiction with a tone, style, or setting that is particularly dystopian, amoral, and violent." I don't know why, but it seems like British writers are always first in line when it comes to this sort of scenario or setting, followed shortly by Americans and Japanese. Beats me.: Grim, relentless darkness focuses almost entirely on sorrow and anger. Unlimited power fantasy and unlimited crushing pressure are not satisfying because, being two points on a line, they're literally one-dimensional. Even scenarios that focus on three elements and exclude the fourth lack depth, the same way a plane of three points lacks depth. The logical conclusion here is that the best character arcs involve all four emotions. I'll caveat here by saying that sometimes junk food or one-dimensional fun is the right choice, and it's perfectly fine to be fat, happy, and kept in a state of bliss for a period of feel-good, or enjoy the comical/visceral extreme of grimdark bleakness. What a DM needs to do to maintain player agency is not to press the player characters to feel a specific emotion, but to subtly and logically change the world in such a way that the character they're trying to provoke proceeds to a specific emotional state. When a character feels secure, you need to threaten what they enjoy, but not in a forced way. When a character feels outraged and exhausted, sometimes you need to give them a clean win. When a character feels sorry for themselves or hopeless, you need to give them a reason to act. And when a character is afraid, sooner or later you need to drop the hammer and have their fears be realized in order to validate that fear. Since this tract was initially started on the basis of 'exploration games', I'm going to make the perhaps shocking assertion that explorers don't generally start at Anger, or even Fear. They start at Sorrow (most characters do, really) and being able to lure characters into a state of sorrow is important to making a game a game about exploration.