THE RULES THE CHARACTERS: Ability: Abilities help a hero resolve actions. There are 4 abilities: Strength, Agility, Intellect, and Willpower and each of these abilities has a score between 0-30 (0 being the lowest. Many heroes don't have scores over 10). A heroes score stays the same throughout the game unless something happens to permanently change the hero. Ability codes show how efficient the hero is with his ability. Codes include a, b, c, d, and x. A score of a would mean your hero is highly efficient while a skill of x means he isn't very good at all. Highly trained heroes may have a few a's while average heroes may have more c's. The ability codes tell you how many skills your hero has. Here's a run down of the four abilities. Strength represents someone's physical might, stamina, and muscular development. It shows how much damage they can do when they hit something and how much they can lift. Strength is used to resolve attacks with close combat weapons. It is also used to determine how resilliant a character is against poison, fatigue, and disease. Agility represents the speed of a character's reflexes and degree of flexibility, along with his speed and dexterity. Character's with high agility will be more successful at dodging things, climbing walls, or landing on his feet. Intellect represents the ability reason out of situations, solve problems, or analyze issues. Characters with higher intellects will have more of a chance of figuring out alien technology and languages, spotting clues, and anticipating his opponent's next move. Willpower represent's a character's emotional strength, force of personality, and mental resillence. It also helps to determine the character's defense against mind or soul attacks. Edge and Hand Size: Edge represents a hero's ability to find quick answers to strange situations. It shows how much of an edge he has in the game. Hand Size measures the hero's ability to take damage and tells you how many cards from the Fate Deck your allowed to hold during the game. The more experienced the hero is, the more cards he'll have and the more decisions he'll beable to make with them. Health is used by the GameMaster to keep track of his character's health points. Skills: Skills are areas of expertise or learned talents. When you come across an obstacle where a listed skill might be useful, you may beable to lower the action's difficulty by using the skill. Powers and Equipment: Powers and equipment have scores, just like abilities, ranging from 0-30. A 5 intensity energy blast power does as much damage as a 5 strength. Sometimes, a power may have a stunt or a limit. A stunt is a highly specialized task or a performed trick using the power. Usually they are difficult actions that the character has spent time practicing on. Sometimes a desperate hero will invent a new stunt to save himself. Limits are restrictions on the use of the power. Calling: Callings tell you your character's motivation and why he became a hero or villian in the first place. Sometimes, a situation will pop up that will tug on the character's calling and you must answer the call or face a penalty from the GamesMaster. It aides in roleplaying. Hinderances: A hinderance causes trouble or grief for the hero. It can includ addiction, monsterous appearance, unluckiness, or handicapped. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- THE ACTION: Getting Started: Each character rolls for his hand, making sure he gets as many cards as his hand size allows. The GM (from now on the GamesMaster will be the GM) draws no cards. The GM opens up with a scene and situation description and the players decide what they'd like to do. Normally, the GM will automatically allow simple actions to be performed. When your hero tries to do something risky, or something that has a major impact on the story, the GM will tell you to perform the action. An action is when you use the cards in your hand to determine the success or failure of your hero. The Fate Chart: Since this is IRC, we'll be using dice and a Fate Chart instead of a Fate Deck. I'll still refer to cards, hands and the deck later though. There are 7 important things on the Fate Deck chart. The roll number shows which card you get after rolling the dice. The Character gives the GM a cameo character to use if he wants one. The Value shows the intensity of the card and the Suit shows whether it's strength, agility ect or not. Aura's help the GM make simple decisions. Events help the GM turn the story into a different direction and Calling shows which type of character is moved by the event. When a player rolls on the chart, he is rolling for Value and Suit only. Those are the only things he should be concerned with for his hand. Play an Action: The main thing to remember for playing a SAGA game is: You play a card from your hand and add it's value to a number on your hero sheet. That's the main rule for the game. Action Checklist: 1) Declare an Action: Tell the GM your action and he'll decide what ability is involved. You will use that ability (or power) as your action ability. The way you describe your action can influence the GM's decision on what ability is appropriate. 2) Action Difficulty: After you declare your action, the GM will figure out it's difficulty. See the GM reference page for the difficulty chart. If the character has a skill that will be helpful in performing this action, the GM lowers the difficulty by one level. If he has a skill that is underlined, it's a World Class Skill. He get's the normal difficulty reduction plus an auto trump bonus (we'll talk about this later). Also, using a power is normally considered an easy action while performing a stunt is concidered average or more. 3) Play a Card: Now you need to estimate the difficulty (the GM doesn't have to tell you) and play your cards. Choose one card and add it to your ability score. This will be the hero's action score. If the total is equal to or greater then the difficulty level, the hero succeeds. If it is lower, he fails. Afterwards, reroll to replace the card you played. 4) Afterwards: After this action is resolved, the GM will go to the next action. Trumps: Each ability is linked to a suit in the Fate Deck. If the card you play from your hand is the same suit as the ability chosen for the action by the GM, you get a trump bonus. Roll on the Fate Deck and add the resulting card to your action score. If the new card is of the same suit, you may roll again and ad the next card to your score. You may do this as many times as you want as long as you always get a card with the same suit as the action ability. You don't have to take the trump if you don't want to. Edge: If the card you played is equal to or lower then your character's edge, you can play another card from your hand. You can continue doing this until you play a card that has a higher value then the hero's edge or you run out of cards. You can still go for trump as long as the last card you played was of the same suit as the action ability. Pushing to the Limit: In dire situations, you can raise one ability score by playing a card from your hand and adding the value to the score for that action. You won't beable to redraw that card though. This represents a limits push that causes exhaustion or wounds. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- THE OPPOSED ACTION: Getting Started: When you declare an action that will be opposed, the GM figures out the difficulty level. The difficulty level will be exactly the same if the action were not opposed. The GM then adds the opposition score to the difficulty score. If the Thing got into a wrestling match it would be easy difficulty (4). If he's fighting Annihilus it would be a lot more difficult. Wrestling is a strength action and Annihilus has 16 strength. The 16 + the 4 would make 20. Thing would have to resolve a 20 difficulty action. The GM Card: There's always something out there working against the hero. To represent this, before an opposed action, the GM rolls on the Fate Deck and calls the value of the card. The value will be added to the action's difficulty. If the GM got a 6 of strength and added it to the previous action, the Thing would have to overcome a 26 difficulty action. The Doom Bank: Everytime a player plays a Doom card it could come back to haunt them. All played Doom cards go into the GM's Doom Bank. The GM can use one, some, or all of these cards to cause a hero to fail an action. Lovely. Hero vs. Hero: If you fight a hero controlled by the GM, it is resolved normally. If you fight another player's character it's slightly different. The GM figures out a difficulty score and decides which character is the active character, the one who attacked first or has the highest agility. Now the GM can suit back and watch. The active player plays cards (trump and edge rules apply) to create an action score. The score is increased by the GM's difficulty score and it's up to the opposing character to play his card and use edge and trump to get a value equal or greater then the active player. If the contest continues, the active player becomes the opposing player for the next round of battle. Aura Readings: Sometimes, the GM can't judge whether or not a character will succeed. Will Spider-Man beable to swing across Manhattan in five minutes? Can Luke Cage keep the car from going over the bridge? If the GM is uncertain on the outcome of the action he can roll on the Fate Deck chart and take an aura reading. If the aura is positive, the action succeeds. If it is negative, it fails. If it is nuetral, there's a stalemate and the player must decide to attempt another action or hold out a little longer. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- IT'S CLOBBERIN' TIME: The Exchange: Fighting is like any other action. A fight is broken down into a number of exchanges. Each exchange, one of the character's attempts an action. An exchange is broken down into five steps: 1) Opening Moves: First, the GM draws his card to add to the action's difficulty rating. The GM will use the same card for all the actions that require a card for the entire exchange. On the next exchange, the GM draws a new card. Recovery: Also, when the GM draws his card, he uses the aura to decide if there's any recovery going on. If the aura is positive, all characters who were injured this fight draw a card (hero characters controlled by the GM will add the value of the GM card to their health). If it's negative aura, the GM is allowed to add the GM card's value to all vilians injured this battle. No one gains health on a nuetral reading. Suprise: Any hero who is unaware of an attack must make an average intellect action. The GM uses the ability of the foe with the lowest agility as the difficulty score. Heroes who see the attack may attack normally this exchange. Heroes that are suprised may not attack until next exchange. If the hero is trying to catch the villian by suprise, the hero who has the lowest agility makes the action. The GM uses the villian with the highest intellect score as the difficulty score. 2) Actions: In this step, any character who isn't unconscious or suprised may perform one action. Players can discuss strategy but cannot spend to long or they may lose their action. Then, the GM goes around the tabgl;e asking for actions, deciding whether or not they count as one action. Players should keep their action description brief. Then, the player and GM resolve the actions like descussed earlier. Aiming: If your character uses guns or other weapons that require aiming, you can choose to aim. It takes a full turn to aim and you cannot be disturbed or change targets while doing so. The bonus for aiming is that hitting your target is one level of diffuculty less. Distances: Sometimes distances will come into play. There are three distances in this game. Striking distance which is toe to toe, fist fight type distance (firing weapons get one difficulty harder at this distance). Firing distance which is where you cannot reach your opponent for a brawl but you can throw or shoot at him effectively. Visual distance is pretty much self explanitory. Mental powers and some weapons work at visual distances. You can close the gap between distances in one exchange by using an easy agility action. Pile-Ons: If heroes decide to attack the same target, add +1 to their score for the action. The bonus counts towards damage too. The target can attack all the pile-on characters in one attack but he is -1 to his attack for each hero participating in the pile-on. Duration: Sometimes the GM needs to keep time. If an action will not take effect for a time, the GM's next positive aura draw will trigger the action (time bomb, time released poison). If the hero is using something that has a limited duration, the effect lasts until the GM's next negative draw. 3) Counter Actions: Now is the time for the villian's to attack. Resolve the villian's actions as normal by declaring the hero's counter action and playing cards to see if it succeeds or fails. Hero vs. Hero: This is the same as above except there are no counter actions. The heroes just take turns slugging it out. The more intelligent hero gets to hear the other heroe's action before commiting to his own action. Always declare actions in order of intellect. The lowest intellect declares first, then the second lowest. GM is responsible for breaking ties. After hearing another person declare, a player can decide to make his action contingent (see step 5). Then resolve actions normally. 4) Results: By this step, everyone in the fight has had the chance to attempt one action. When a painful attack hits, you need to deal with wounds. Inflicting Wounds: Take your total action score and subtract your opponent's defense score (strength rating for for physical or energy attacks, willpower for mental or magical attacks) from it. This tells you how many wounds you inflicted. When the character's health drops to 0, he is knocked unconscious. He may wake up when the GM plays the GM card for recovery at the beginning of the next exchange. Taking Wounds: Take the opponent's relevant ability score or power intensity, add any modifiers from pile-ons ect, then add the GM card value and any Doom cards played by the DM. From that total, subtract your hero's strength intensity (for physical or energy attacks) or his willpower (for mental and magic attacks). That's the number of wounds inflicted on your hero. You must give up from your hand cards of a total value equal or greater then the number of wounds your hero took. Do not draw to refill your hand. Your diminished hand represents how hurt your hero is. When you no longer have cards in your hand, your hero is knocked out. If the hero is hit again wile unconscious, he goes comatose. The GM decides when he will recover. Weapons and Armor: A character's weapon bonus adds to the damage only. Armor bonuses protect from a number of wounds inflicted equal to the bonus. Collateral Damage: The GM can decide whether a character takes damage from being knocked through buildings, slammed into concrete, or bounced off of trees. If you want to try and knock somebody through a while, include it in your declaration. 5) Closing Moves: Unresolved Actions: This is the time to figure out contingent actions. Sometimes a spell will take effect (the casting was the hero's action). If the mage is a dabbler magician (noted on the character's sheet as a limit), he must draw a card. If the card value is greater then the mage's Magic intensity, the spell fizzles. If the higher intellect character decided to make a contingent action based on what he heard from the other players during a hero vs. hero fight, he may make that action now. Fight or Flight: The GM may decide now to have his villians surrender or flee. If they flee, the hero's can chace them using the Distance rules. If they surrender, the battle is won unless the hero's want to continue fighting. Afterwards, the players decide what they want to do. The rules are the same for fleeing and surrendering. If one side or both want to keep fighting, start again at step one. After the Fight: After the fights over, the heroes may fill their hand up again to the number that they had at the beginning of the fight (unless a wound was serious. Comatose characters need extra care. They may need to be taken out of the game or have a character with the medical skill perform an action to get them up and moving again). If the villians won, it's up to the GM what to do next. It's now time to describe the new situation. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- NARRATING: The job of the GM is to describe the situation, interpret the effects of card play, and judge what occurs. In the regular Marvel SAGA game there's limits toe the GM's powers. Here, there aren't many other then the results of actions by cardplay. Whatever the GM says goes. Narrating Tips: Keep up the pace. Not everything goes the hero's way. Not everything goes the villian's way. Reward the heroes for roleplaying. Actions should trigger good roleplaying. Your not here to destroy the heroes. Your here to have fun and help the other players have fun. Actions: When designing actions for your players think of these things. What ability makes sense? Will this challenge the heroes? Is it in their league? Will powers help? How hard would it be for a normal human to perform this action? Who, if anyone, opposes the attempt? What ability do they oppose with? Use the ability that makes the most sense in the situation. Stay consistent but don't be afraid to mix it up every so often. If you can't decide what ability the action will use, draw a card and use the suit as the ability for the action. Difficulty: Keep your difficulty ratings secret. Here's descriptions of different difficulty settings to help you decide which to choose for a certain action: Automatic (0) - Actions that don't usually need resolved. Sometimes, if there's opposition, the GM may decide the player must resolve an automatic action. (Dialing a phone number, changing costume) Easy (4) - If it's an almost sure bet the hero will succeed, it's an easy action. (Catching a football, lifting a crate) Average (8) - Average actions can be accomplished by most superheroes. Normal people may find them difficult. (landing after a 10 ft drop, finding a store in Manhattan with a street map) Challenging (12) - These actions give most heroes pause, but most heroes can do them easily. (Cracking a code, hitting a bullseye at 50 paces) Daunting (16) - Normal folks won't try daunting actions unless their lives depend on it and sometimes heroes won't suceed at them. (Grabbing a flagpole and swinging onto a rooftop, design a supergun) Desperate (20) - Desperate actions test even the strongest superheroes. The maximum peak of humanity can only accomplish these feats once in a blue moon. (Lifting a buick, resisting knock out gas) Superhuman (24) - Superhuman actions cannot be performed by normal humans. Heroes must be beyond human to succeed here. (Lifting a truck, dodging lightening) Unfathomable (28) - Superheroes can achieve these occasionally, and when they do, it's big news. (Holding a collapsed building, memorizing the OED) Cosmic (32) - Even Thor pauses at a cosmic task. These actions are usually left for beings like Galactus. (making an ultimate nuillifier, ignoring Galactus- level hunger) Godlike (36) - These are the actions of gods and sometimes they even think twice before attempting them. (Seeing through the illusions of the Shaper of Worlds, holding up a mountain) Impossible (40) - Nobody can do impossible actions but sometimes you just never know. (Breaking Captain America's Shield, hauling Manhattan back to it's rightful place)
Action Difficulty Chart: Difficulty Level Rating Difficulty Level Rating Automatic 0 Superhuman 24 Easy 4 Unfathomable 28 Average 8 Cosmic 32 Challenging 12 Godlike 36 Daunting 16 Impossible 40 Desperate 20 Material Strengths: Material strengths are up to you but here's a little chart to help you out. Strength Examples Weight equal to: 0 paper, flesh a roller skate 1 balsa wood, glass a skateboard 2 wood, cloth a bicycle 3-4 gold, leather, hard rubber a kyak 5-6 lead, silver, bone, hard plastic a moped 7-8 bronze, fiberglass, rock, kevlar a motorcycle 9-10 diamond, iron, concrete a car 11-12 reinforced concrete, steel a luxery car 13-14 advanced steel alloys a mini van 15-16 titanium alloys a truck 17-18 Wakandan vibranium a yacht 19-20 adamantium, magical metal a jet plane 21-25 adamantium-vibranium alloy an oil tanker 26-30 uru, Silver Surfer's board a freeway