PLAYTEST PACK · v0.1
Everything a GM needs to run a single session: the rules on one page, four ready characters, and a scenario that doesn't care which door the players open.
Read it through once. Three hours of prep, three to four hours at the table. New here? See the game first →
PART I
Roll 2d6 + a Trait against a target the GM names before the dice leave the table. Most targets sit between 7 (everyday) and 11 (a feat).
When your Background word plausibly applies, roll 3d6 and keep the highest two. That is the whole skill system.
Traits range from 0 to 3 for a starting character. Add the trait to your 2d6 roll. That is it.
No hit points. Every character has three slots:
Armour does not absorb — it moves the wound. Mail turns a killing thrust into a Bleeding rib. A peasant in linen takes the same blow as Down.
Grace is the soft currency of faith. Mystics start with 3. Spend one to call on a power set by the GM's Faith Dial — a true dream, a blessing, a quiet word that turns a heart.
Coin is real. A loaf is a follis. A night's room is a miliaresion. A horse is 12 nomismata. Most player characters are functionally broke.
Time moves in scenes. Travel scenes resolve in a single roll; the GM names the cost of failure (an injury, a missed market, a witness).
GM REFERENCE
5 Something a child could do, if pressed.
7 The everyday — a trained hand, not a feat.
9 Difficult. People talk about it after.
11 A feat. The story remembers.
13 Heroes only, and rarely.
15+ Saints, and not always them.
PART II
Hand these out face-down. Let the players pick blind, or trade. Each sheet is one page; everything you need is on it.
THE SOLDIER
Background: Tagmata veteran
KIT
EDGE
When a fight is already happening, you act before anyone has to decide whether to.
BURDEN
Sergeant Bardas in Tarsus is owed 12 nomismata by tomorrow's market.
You woke in a stranger's stable. The dice were kind, then unkind. You are walking north because south is where the sergeant is.
THE MYSTIC
Background: Disgraced priest of the Theme
KIT
EDGE
You can spend Grace to bless the dying, read a true dream, or make the unquiet dead stand down for one scene.
BURDEN
You were sent to assist the abbot. Both of you know it means 'watch'.
The bishop will not say what is in the letter. You have not opened it. You have thought about opening it every night since Caesarea.
THE MERCHANT'S HAND
Background: Syrian factor's bodyguard
KIT
EDGE
You always know which official takes which bribe, and in which coin.
BURDEN
Your master is six days behind you with a caravan he cannot afford to lose.
Aleppo is a long way off. Your master sent you ahead with a name, an address, and an instruction: 'do not be remembered.'
THE HEALER
Background: Village wise-woman
KIT
EDGE
On a 7–9 roll to heal, the price is paid by the world, not by your patient.
BURDEN
You were simply in the wrong inn on the wrong night.
The soldiers told you to come with them. They did not say why. You brought your bag because you always bring your bag.
PART III
A FULL FRONTIER SCENARIO · ONE NIGHT · 3–5 PLAYERS
A reliquary — the finger-bone of Saint Theodore, set in silver — has been stolen from the monastery above the frontier town of Loulon. The abbot will pay to get it back, quietly. The thematic judge wants it back officially, before the strategos in Tarsus hears. The merchant who bought it has already promised it east, to a buyer in Baghdad who paid in advance. Three roads lead out of this room. None of them are the one the party will take.
Abbot Gennadios
WANTSThe relic back, and the lie kept.
LIESThat he has never seen the relic up close in ten years.
WOULD DIE FORHis nephew, now a grown man with a family in Cilicia.
Judge Demetrios
WANTSPromotion to Tarsus before the next census.
LIESThat he hasn't already written to the strategos.
WOULD DIE FORHis own name. Nothing else.
Sergeant Bardas
WANTSThe 12 nomismata Niketas owes him, plus interest.
LIESThat he didn't take the bribe to look the other way at the monastery gate.
WOULD DIE FORNothing. He is tired and he is owed.
Yusuf the Merchant (no relation)
WANTSThe caravan east, on schedule, with the relic on it.
LIESThat the buyer is a private collector.
WOULD DIE FORHis son, who travels with the caravan.
Anna the Brothel-Keeper
WANTSHer house left out of it.
LIESAnything you ask her, by reflex.
WOULD DIE FORThe girls who work for her.
The Child Petros
WANTSHis father (the smuggler) not to be hanged.
LIESThat he doesn't know where the tunnel comes out.
WOULD DIE FORHis father. He is nine.
I.The Souk after dark. WITS-led. Listening at curtains, trading a name for a name, finding the cloth merchant who saw a soldier carry a small silver box at the third hour past sunset. Leads to Bardas, then to Yusuf.
II.Anna's House. HEART or BODY. Bardas drinks here when he is owed money he cannot collect. The party can buy his story, blackmail him, beat him, or — hardest — pity him into it.
III.The Smuggler's Tunnel. BODY. Under the town hall, where the caravan-master stashes goods before the eastern departure. The relic is in a cedar box wrapped in red linen. So is a Bulgar war-axe nobody has explained.
AND THE FOURTH ROAD
They will invent it. They always do. Marry the judge's daughter. Burn the brothel. Convince Yusuf they are the Baghdad buyer's other agents. Whatever they invent, the same six NPCs, the same sealed truth, and the same two clocks still apply — just rotated. No prep is wasted.
Strategos's Tax Inspection
Starts at 4 of 6.
Ticks +1 each time the party uses an official channel (judge, monastery, town watch). At 6, the inspector arrives and the abbot's books are opened — including the entry that doesn't match.
The Raid Season
Starts at 3 of 6.
Ticks +1 each night. At 6, an Arab raid hits a nearby village. Everyone the party cares about is suddenly somewhere else, doing something more important than the relic.
THE CLEAN ENDING. Relic returned, abbot pays 10 nomismata, judge writes a quiet letter of thanks. The party leaves Loulon at dawn. The abbot dies of a stroke within the year.
THE COMPROMISED ENDING. Relic returned, but the party knows it is false. The abbot is theirs now — for a year, for a favour, for as long as they want to spend the leverage. Yusuf has lost a sale and an heir's trust.
THE HARD ENDING. Someone dies who did not have to. A soldier the party could have talked down. The child Petros, in the wrong doorway. Theodora, if the dice were unkind. The party walks away with the relic and nothing else.
THE FOURTH ENDING. Whatever they invented. Trust it. Pay it off honestly with the clocks and the Honest Sheets. The game knows how to land.
By dawn the party will have been lied to by every faction, walked away with coin they didn't earn, and made an enemy they didn't know they had crossed. The table will have learned the tone. That is the whole job of the first night.
AFTER THE FIRST NIGHT
The next pack adds the six factions and their clocks, the two-page town generator, and three more scenarios that share the same NPCs and the same compromised ground.
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