This section will attempt to instill the spirit of the rules so that you can naturally expand upon them as needed.

In all cases, the basic premise is that we take the player's intent and use the rules to fulfill it. The player's intent always supercedes the rule. You, as the Storyteller, are tasked with finding a way to resolve their intent within the rules. No player should ever say "I want to do X. How can I accomplish that?" and be met with "Here's this similar thing that's not that". If they can't do that thing, right now, tell them exactly what that would require.

Example : "I want to use [Fire] and a touch attack to set my sword on fire." expresses the player intent : "I want to set my sword on fire". Our task is to communicate how they could accomplish that : "Unfortunately, [Fire] alone is not enough to make that happen. You'll need [Enchant] or [Blade] or some other complementary word."

Never leave a player feeling like a rule is unclear or a question unresolved.

Character Creation

I do not provide a static list of races or items on purpose. The ones listed in the How to Play guide are just an example. I want you to create a setting and give thought to the creatures and items that might appear. I want you to run Mermen vs Kobold capture the flag war games using paintball guns. Spend the time to choose the right words for your races. Equally, give respect to your responsibility to translate a player's idea for a hyper-specific weapon into the sizing and word schema.

Example : The player has taken the time outside of game to draw out and design a shield that's also a knife. You allow them to bring it in as a 10 armor mainhand, that deals 1d6/1d4 and can [Block] if it hasn't attacked this turn.

Players playing exactly the character they want to is more important than how you think it might affect balance. If something seems wildly out of line, use negative tags to balance it out. You could (but shouldn't) tag the shieldknife with [Slow], [Clumsy], or [Unusual]. Players will accept most debuffs if it allows them to play the thing they imagined, in the end.

Words

Tags and Words of Power are designed to allow a player to flesh out their character over time. It's a sort of "build your own class". Tags are passive, so they'll be used constantly in determining how good or bad a character is at doing a thing. It's a constant reinforcement of the choices the player has made and works to fulfill the identity they've created in their mind. As such, you must be wary about over-prescribing tags they did not choose (curses, loot, story).

At the start of the game, you'll choose tags for a race, clan, or faction. These tags will be what reinforces your setting from moment to moment, so choose tags that really encompass the core of what it means to be physiologically that race.

The words a player chooses tells you what he wants to do. It's free information for the Storyteller! Really try to understand how the constellation of tags and words work to build an identity the player wants to play. Encourage players to choose tags and words that apply to things the character already is or does, rather than future goals. Similarly, encourage them to do things they don't have tags or words for but might later. Around level 4, it gets harder to keep describing the character you started with and you feel that urge to expand.

For really major and memorable story points, it can be a real strength to provide all the players with a tag. In a solo playtest, my character had an experience where he briefly died and chose to live. He now has the tag [Death Voyager]. I have no idea if it will ever come up again, but it's a good reminder of the path traveled thus far. If I ever had to spend it to recover from death or a maim, I would feel that loss. Don't overuse this technique, but be aware it exists.

Words as Magic

Words of Power allows for exceptionally strong magic with minimal investment. Players are able to combine words like [Permanent] and [Silence] to mute a person forever. [Dispel] can wipe away even such powerful magicks. Fate Weavers literally rewrite reality in real time. Your job as a Storyteller is to fulfill the intent and then weave it into a story that makes sense.

Example : [Summon] [Divine] [Ally] might summon an angel of the player's god. We let that angelic ally come in and wreck absolute shop on the fight. Afterwards, maybe the player has a debt to pay to their god or the angel itself. Maybe the angel is offended it was pulled through space and time without consent. Another Fate Weaver might have taken notice and the player is now a target. Whatever the case, you push the story forward using the intent and choices of the player.

Make weaving fates a part of the game and not just a list of abilities.

The goal of allowing such power with low investment is to force players to think of what they want to do rather than what they're allowed to do. It's to give them agency beyond struggling against the railroad.

Skill Difficulty

Skill checks are only ever made if failing has a real consequence for the person making the attempt. Stopping the story to roll dice for the sake of rolling dice is a failure. There have to at least be perceived stakes.

Example : Player wants to search a door for traps.

Whether or not this requires a roll will depend on which door and in what context. If it's the door of the weapons shop, you're fine to just say "you find no traps". If it's a door in a ninja den, make them roll.

Example : Player asks you what they remember about a thing.

People remember things. It's fine. Just answer the question and encourage them to RP that information. "You know that's the crest of the Dragoons. Glancing around the table, the others do not seem to know that." If the thing they wanted to remember was the third word of an ancient poem, they gotta roll.

Example : Player wants to identify a scroll in a language they do not know. This is a judgement call. If the scroll is important in some way, taking a roll could be reasonable. If it's literally just a scroll, don't waste time on this.

Base skill difficulty of 1d6 is going to feel low at first. Trust the system. Understand that losing on a 1d6 vs 1d6 feels awful. 1d6 vs 2d6 is understandable, odds were against us. 1d6 is a task a competent human can probably figure out. It makes the player feel like their rad character is getting chumped.

Don't go looking for factors to add dice. Instead, congratulate the players when they have a word that applies and they get a bonus. We all win when the player gets to play the thing they want to play, pass or fail. The reasonable attempt is what matters.

Partial Success

Partial success on skill checks is a narrative tool. If a player only has 1d6 to roll against a 2d6, whatever increased the difficulty is an easy explanation and description for failure. If a player fails 2d6 vs 1d6, the 1d6 was probably a high number and can be explained away with quality.

Example : Player plays [Climb] and attempts to climb the wall of the tavern. The Storyteller rolls 1d6 (because no steps were taken to prevent climbing) and comes up 6. Their 2d6 comes up 1, 1. You can explain this failure by saying something like "Every handhold you find in the old plaster crumbles into dust. There's just no way you're going to get up this wall."

However you explain it, partial success is meant to contextualize the factors that feed into a contested roll. It should result in fewer situations where the Storyteller asks for spot checks and has to say "you don't see it". Do not assign each challenge die to a specific condition. It just slows things down far too much.

Combat

Combat is the most well-defined portion of the rules. It's also the place you're most likely to need to ad hoc some rules because players are creative.

Attack rolls start at 1d6 to provide a certain frequency of hits, misses, and critical hits. Lowering the attack die to 1d4 means that you can't miss and have 25% crit. Raising it to 1d8 means you can miss on three numbers instead of one. Raising the damage die makes it much more likely to one-shot a limb. Think carefully when deviating from 1d6/1d6.

Critical hits do not do damage because we want the narrative to matter more than the numbers. The ability to choose a hitzone should be important. Stabbing a guy in the eye, landing the grab attack on his pouch, or breaking a leg at a crucial moment are all great feelings. Build enemies and encounters that allow for and respond to these big moments.

Locational damage is also a narrative tool. By building in locations, armor, and maiming, it's really easy for the Storyteller (and everyone else) to follow exactly the same mental image of a combat. It's no longer just flavor to have "your blade bounces off his armor", it's meaningful game information. Use it to keep combats in the context of the story. Remember : we want to leave the battle board as soon as we don't need it.

Items

It's good practice to just assign durability to any item a player might reasonably wield at some point. If you create torches, give them a specific amount of armor before they break. Make it a part of your standard item description or generate a table for materials.

If you give a player a magic lantern that they hold in their offhand, be prepared for the eventuality that their offhand gets hit. Requiring items to be held to use their Words and giving them durability makes them precious and protected. It also limits the number of magic items (and thus words) a player has access to at one time.

Magic items can be designed with tags, words, or detailed effects.

Tags are things that a character is. They should be reserved for things like armors, curses, and potions. Remember that tags are almost always able to be used in both positive and negative contexts. [Intimidating] is a good tag if you want to spook folks. It's a really bad tag if you're trying to befriend a race of shy woodland creatures. If an item imparts a tag, the player is still expected to play their character as though it were inherent. A potion of boldness that grants [Bold] for a day should not just be a bonus to [Bold] actions. The player should be required not to act inconfident. [Clumsy] [Mute] [Nimble] [Fire Resistant] [Holy] [Charismatic] [Intimidating] [Bold] [Strong] [Small]

Words are things that the item does. The player will have consistent and repeatable access to this word, so make sure it reflects the usage of the item. The intent is something like "the right tool for the job makes the work easy". If you give a player a rope of [Climb], expect them to be rolling 3d6 (base + word + favorable item) on anything climbing related. If you give them a rope of [Bind], expect them to combine it with other words to cast spells. The described effect should involve the rope. [Bind] [Person] shouldn't just magically bind the person, it should wrap the rope around them and magically bind them. In this way, the word cannot be used again until the existing usage is terminated. The same spell cast from only words and no object would just magically bind. This is not detailed in the How to Play guide and you'll likely need to explain it more than once. Magic items should feel like they do what they say on the tin, with no balance nerfs.

Enemies

Combat is designed to handle small waves of enemies, over a short period of time, with a specific objective that wins, loses, or ends the encounter. Most random grunts, even if dressed in armor, should use unarmored hitzones. If a player gets lucky! and rolls 3 headshots in a row! but 3 1's on damage -_-, that Orc is still kicking. If that Orc was wearing a helmet, we've accomplished absolutely no narrative progression in 3 rounds. Chop down the grunts and give captains some armor. Armor is a pacing tool.

Magic items will get looted, so reserve them for champions and prepare for them to be stolen mid-combat. Use the fight as an opportunity to showcase possible uses for the item and why it's awesome. If players destroy it in the fight, that's just too bad for them.

Big story bosses should generally be Fate Weavers. They should be leveled up as a player would be from level 1. 3 tags, 3 words, same hitzone HP. They are able to resist death and maims, just like a player. They can counterspell. They can have words for escaping. Allow players to expend resources to thwart and counterspell them.

Hitzone HP should reflect the size of the creature. Goblins can have 2/2/2/2. A giant scorpion can have 8/12/12/12/8. Most Human-sized Human things should use the standard 4/6/6/6 + 1 per level. Use other means (armor, abilities, numbers) to balance out the pacing.

Battle Board

The battle board lends itself well to modification. Marking a zone as impassible or filled with a particular terrain effect (slow movement, water, walls, fog, etc) is really easy and can help keep the context. However, it's also easy to go overboard until players start forgetting what purple meant. Unless there's a compelling reason, err on the side of unmodified battle boards.

It's also important to remember that the battle board does not denote absolute distances. It could represent a room or a whole city square. Its intent is to solve the two biggest problems with gridless tabletop : Am I close enough? and Will I hit if I do this in that direction? To that end, it only answers "Yes, you're close enough" and "Orcs in those directions".

If you decide to scale a combat up to such a point that you think you need to modify the existing combat rules, consider whether the battle board is the appropriate solution. It's likely you just need to advance a specific portion of the narrative.

Any changes you do intend to make (can't attack across ranges, terrain, etc) should be stated clearly and openly at the start of combat. Players need to know the rules to make satisfying decisions.

Spells

The purpose of the entire Storyteller's guide is to prepare you for arbitrating spell effects in real time. You need to understand all the other rules so that you can apply them to the translation of user-generated spells.

Combat spell effects are largely at the Storyteller's discretion. [Paralyze] [Person] is an easy enough concept but let's talk about what it would mean, mechanically.

Unless modified, most spells will hit a single target using a 1d6 touch attack (requiring an empty hand). [Mist] [Ray] [Ball] [Bolt] [Arrow] [Blade] [Tornado] [Rain] [Channeled] can all modify the delivery of the spell. Those modificiations require you to figure out how to resolve the attack portion. If the target is cooperative (bound, ally, self buffs), no attack is needed. If it's a ray, that's a ranged attack. How do you even aim a tornado?

Unless modified, most spells will have a duration of 1 turn or 1 iteration. Use context, intent, and RP to figure out what's appropriate. For direct status effect spells, 1 round is fine. [Lasting] [Permanent] [Long] [Instant] [Lingering] [Endless] could modify the specifics. Adding words like this means more words should increase the conceptual power of the magic.

We need to define the concept of Paralyze as a status effect. It means something can't move or doesn't function. We know that things that are not actively resisting do not require rolls to hit.

When the player says, "I'll use [Paralyze] [Person] to stop the Orc from attacking Maria.", we now know that it stops him from acting and makes him easy to hit for one round.

Don't get overwhelmed by deciding all of this upfront. Walk through spells one stage of intent at a time.

• Player wants to touch the Orc
  • What are the rules for touching an Orc
• to apply a status effect
  • Does he have word coverage?
• paralyze specifically
  • can't move
    • Immobile things can't defend
    • Immobile things can't act
  • unmodified spells last one round or iteration

However, context and roleplay matter here. [Bind] [Door] doesn't need to last only one round. "One iteration" in this context might mean "for this scene". It can last a reasonable amount of time unmodified. Make a decision and go with it. Try to remain consistent on what that spell does from then on but don't hesitate to tell players when something ended up whack. Encourage players to describe intent instead of just word combinations and each spell will be unique. They're weaving fates, manipulating concepts, not casting Fireball for the 8000th time. Encourage and leave room for the scaling effects of additional words like [Lasting], [Zone], [Summon], and [Swamp].

Utilize temporary tags, action limitations, and movement limitations before thinking of damage. [Poison] can mean a lot of things and HP damage is by far the least interesting to play out. Ask for clarification of intent, if you need more information.

Other Concepts

Much of the rules call for "transparency", "partial success", or "player intent".

We want to cut down on arguments and maintain story flow. We want that story flow backed by rules that are decisive and don't need to be carefully referenced.

Skill difficulty rolls are made in the open because we've already determined the stakes and conditions. There's no fudging to be done. We just need a decision on pass/fail - and the rules decide that.

We show when enemies will join combat so that players are never just instagibbed without an opportunity to play the game. Even if players don't always win, they need to feel like they at least got to try.

Straight combat in Words of Power is ridiculously punishing. Respect that things could always have gone way worse for players. Encourage narrative and creativity to spend as little time as possible smashing stats against each other.

Use the rules as tools to fulfill player intent and push the narrative forward.