How To Play Ecryme

How To Play Ecryme

 

Hi everyone, this is a special how to play episode of Firebreathing Kittens podcast. I’m the game master for an upcoming session using the rules for Ecryme. This episode is a summary of what I learned after reading the rule book. Hopefully this will be a handy guide for how to play for my players, will help me organize myself, and will be useful for you listeners, too, who are looking to play your own Ecryme game at home.

 

I’ll organize this how to play guide into sections.

1. Game category

2. Traits, skills, and specializations

3. Rolling dice

4. Spleen and ideal

5. Difficulty and margins

6. Self transcendence

7. How to attack

8. Impacts and dying

9. Armor

10. Effects

11. Surprise

12. Healing

13. Helping allies

14. Building a character

 

Game category. The first edition of Ecryme was released in French in 1994. Twenty years later, a second edition was released, which is what I’ll be talking about today. The word ecryme is the name of a mercury like liquid that covers most of the surface of the planet. Only small dotted islands of land are left. This game’s world has 1800’s technology: mass production, steam power, and dirigibles. Air ships and steam trains link the industrial cities on the islands. Bridges lift the trains above the ecryme. The people of this world try to avoid falling in. Most people who come into contact with the dense, motionless ecryme, the flat silver ocean that lacks waves, are corroded by the contact, blistering like being splashed with acid. Those who survive sometimes get unpredictable cephalic powers, which is the game’s magic system. The general mechanic of Ecryme is that you roll six sided dice, add modifiers from your character build, and compare that to the difficulty of the situation or to an opponent’s roll. Outside of combat, you roll two six sided dice, add them together, and add the skill from your character sheet that most closely matches what you’re trying to do. If a trait applies, add it, too. When your character has a specialization that applies, you get plus two to your roll. The sum is compared to the difficulty of the task. Eight is the lowest and sixteen is the highest difficulty score. If your dice roll plus skill plus trait plus specialization is lower than the difficulty, then you failed. If your dice roll plus skill plus trait plus specialization is equal to the difficulty, there is some kind of complication. If your dice roll plus skill plus trait plus specialization is higher than the difficulty, you succeeded. Combat is similar, except you roll four d6 and add your skill. Pick two dice to put into success, which is their word for attack, and two dice to put into reserve, which is their word for defense. If your success attack is higher than your opponent’s reserve defense, you hit them. The amount your success attack went over their reserve defense becomes the damage impact of the attack. The Ecryme rule book comes with a ton of prebuilt character sheets for you to play as or use as pre statted non player characters. I’ll list some. There’s an aeronaut, an archivist, a sword duelist, a wandering mapmaker, a military officer who specializes in explosives, a courtesan, a stilt walker, a glider pilot, a wealthy merchant, an ecryme diver, a preacher, a fugitive, a scholar, an ecryme flower harvester, and more.

 

Traits. Characters in Ecryme have traits that describe their physical appearance, personality, and social connections. Trait numbers range between negative and positive three. A normal person who is a nonplayer character averages about zero. A plus one means that your character has a little bit more of that trait than the average person. A plus two means they have a lot more than a normal person. A plus three means your character is extremely whatever that trait is. A negative one means that your character has a little bit less of that trait than the average person, a negative two means they have a lot less, and a negative three means they’re extremely lacking in whatever that trait is compared to someone normal. For example in the trait of height, a tall person would have the number one, a very tall person positive two, and an abnormally tall person positive three.

 

Every character in Ecryme has two points overall in traits. This can be any combination that equals two. For example, your character could have a single plus two trait. Or they could have two plus one traits. Or you could have three plus one traits and one negative one trait. As long as the character has two points in traits overall, you’re good. There isn’t a set list of defined trait words in the Ecryme rule book that you’re limited to using. A trait can be anything you want. You the player name the trait that best defines your character, and you pick which combination of traits equals plus two overall.

 

Skills. Every character in Ecryme has fifteen skills. Unlike a trait which can be anything you want, every character has the same list of skills, just different personalized numbers in each of them. The fifteen skills are clustered into three categories: physical, mental, and social. The physical category’s five skills are athletics, driving, fencing, brawling, and shooting. The mental category’s five skills are anthropomechanology, ecrymology, traumatology, traversology, and urbanology. The social category’s five skills are quibbling, creativity, loquacity, guile, and performance. The skills are all used offensively and defensively, so for example the medicine skill traumatology can be used to heal or to make someone sick. The guile skill is used both to hide and to search.

 

Each skill has a number between zero and ten. Starting characters have thirty points distributed amongst those fifteen skills. This is the same pool of points that can be spent on specializations. You can perform a physical or social task that your character has zero skill points in, you’re just less likely to be successful than a character with five or ten points in that skill. Mental skills represent your knowledge in that area, so if your number is zero you know nothing about it and can’t attempt a roll. For starter level characters, no skill will be above five points.

 

Traumatology? Traversology? I didn’t find some of the skill words self explanatory, so here is what the fifteen skills are used for. Athletics is used when your character runs, climbs, jumps, etc. Driving is used when your character drives a car, pilots an airship, rides a horse, etc. Fencing is when your character is dueling or fighting with any sword, dagger, or bladed weapon. Brawling is used for weaponless combat and fighting with improvised weapons like wrestling, boxing, arm locking, or tripping an opponent. Shooting is the skill used to fire long range weapons. Anthropomechanology is used for understanding, using, and repairing machines such as clocks, locks, vehicles, etc. Ecrymology is the skill used to understand the natural world like flora, fauna, geology, meteorology, etc. Traumatology is medical knowledge and the character’s ability to do surgery, know pharmacology, take the right dose of medicine, etc. Traversology is your character’s skill at knowing about the traverses, the bridges that span the world, and also includes geography, map making, and the construction of bridges. Urbanotechnology is how much the character knows about the city, such as the local slang and dress codes, the richness of their social and professional contacts, knowledge of local history and religion and culture, etc. Quibbling is the skill you use when arguing with or persuading another person, giving commands, interrogating, intimidating, bartering, etc. Creativity is how much your character values creating and crafting, and includes activities like painting, throwing clay on a wheel, forging, sculpting, writing stage plays, etc. Loquacity is the suave counterpart of quibbling, when your character tries to be charming, tries to make a good impression, collects gossip, investigates, lies, spreads false information and is believed, etc. Guile is how well your character can camouflage themself, hide, search without being detected, sneak down an alley, pick a lock, perform sleight of hand, etc. Guile is used both to hide and to search. Lastly, performance is the skill your character uses when singing, acting, playing instruments, etc actions in front of an audience.

 

There is also another category of skills, but sort of like how in other games not every character is a spell casting wizard, not every character will have this category of skills called cephaly. Cephaly is a mind power that people in Ecryme can get by coming into contact with the liquid mercury ecryme the game is named after. The five cephaly skills are elegy that creates illusions, entelechy which is your power level and the combat skill you use for facing off against other cephalic beings, mekany that remote controls machines, psyche that remote controls living beings and people, and scoria which is divination. If you want to be a cephal in Ecryme, the different difficulties and ways you can use your cephalic skills are listed on page 267 with some examples of what you can do at different difficulty levels. For example shrinking something is a difficulty of ten, and controlling your target is a difficulty of eleven. Not every character has magic, so you might not use that list at all.

 

Specializations. When a skill has at least five points, you can choose to spend one point during character creation to get a specialization in that skill. Specializations are specific activities your character excels at. Some examples for the athletics skill could be running or climbing or carrying. The driving skill could have a specification in a type of vehicle, like an airship or a train. For the creativity skill, you could get specific about the type of art your character is creative in, like painting, pottery, or sculpture. A specialization adds plus two to the roll if you are doing that very narrow specialized activity.

 

Do you dream of shouting kamehameha in battle and ending things with your super awesome special combat move? Pages 245, 246, and 247 list some. They’re called maneuvers. You can spend one skill point to add one maneuver to your character sheet just like if you were buying a specialization. Each can only be used once per combat. Some of the maneuvers have requirements for when they can be used, like the Coup de Jarnac needs you to have a success attack margin of at least four. The same combat mechanics can be used for arguing, so pages 248 and 249 list maneuvers you can use when debating someone.

 

Rolling dice. In Ecryme, you determine how good a character is at something, and how likely you the player are to succeed at that action, by rolling dice, adding your character’s traits, skills, and specializations, and comparing the sum versus the difficulty number. All rolls are done using six sided dice, also called d6. One dice represents reason, logic, and planning. The other dice represents emotion, feelings, and acting impulsively with your gut. You can use two different colored dice or can roll on different areas of your table to keep track of which d6 is reason and which is emotion. When you roleplay your character’s success or failure from that roll, you can lean into the higher of the two dice. If emotion was higher, you can roleplay an intense emotion. If reason was higher, you can roleplay being logical to succeed, or roleplay how over thinking and hesitating caused your failure.

 

Spleen in Ecryme is a character’s driving fear. Here are some example spleens. A duelist is repelled by the idea of taking another person’s life. This spleen fear makes them only strike extremities when dueling, making them miss more. But they accept missing more because it means they won’t kill anyone while dueling. Another example is a wealthy cosmopolitan person who has heard word of a rebellion. Their spleen is their refusal to accept a rebellion’s potential for chaos and the loss of their own personal power. This spleen fear motivates them to donate to the police and to snitch when they find out where the rebellion’s meeting house is. Another example of a spleen is a young street tough, a hooligan running around with a gang of fellow hooligans at night, who becomes furious if a competitor steps foot on her turf. She will fight them viciously because her spleen, her motivating fear, is that her found family will lose its territory and disband. These are all examples of spleen, a core fear that drives the character’s actions. If spleen is relevant to a roll, roll an extra dice and discard the highest one. Discarding that extra highest dice will make your overall roll lower and worse. If you lose your spleen or ideal during a game session, all of your rolls are at negative two for the rest of the session. Then before the next game session, make a new one.

 

Ideal in Ecryme is a character’s motivating hope. It’s a principle they look up to that helps them overcome any challenge. Here are some example ideals. An artist aspires to create their perfect masterpiece. An archivist’s ideal is to collect a sample of all flora and fauna. A courtesan hopes to make enough money to stop working. An ambitious worker wants a promotion that comes with a large raise and more respect. An aeronaut captain loves her ship and crew above all else. These are all examples of ideal, an aspiration they feel positively towards that helps them face daily life. If ideal is relevant to a roll, roll an extra dice and discard the lowest one. Discarding that extra lowest dice will make your overall roll higher and better. If you lose your spleen or ideal during a game session, all of your rolls are at negative two for the rest of the session. Then before the next game session, make a new one.

 

Difficulty. Outside of combat, the difficulty of the task you’ll face will range between eight, easy, and sixteen, almost impossible. Eight difficulty tasks are the most common, while ten and twelve difficulty tasks happen uncommonly, and fourteen and sixteen difficulty tasks happen very rarely in the world in general. You’re on an adventure, so you’ll probably attempt to do actions more challenging than a normal person would succeed at.

 

Margins. Margin is the difference between the sum of your numbers and the difficulty rating of what you were trying to do. If your two d6 dice roll plus trait plus skill plus specialization is higher than the difficulty number, that is a positive margin. Success! You succeeded at what you were trying to do. If your two d6 dice roll plus trait plus skill plus specialization is equal to the difficulty number, that is a margin of zero. Margins of zero are up to the game master, called a conductor in Ecryme, to interpret. Both success and failure happen with a margin of zero. There could be a complication, or a compromised victory, or a defeat with some positive side to it. If your two d6 dice roll plus trait plus skill plus specialization is lower than the difficulty number, then you failed. The bigger the margin, the bigger the effect. If your negative margin was three, then the failure is more extreme than if the negative margin was one. The highest or lowest your margin can be is called your maximum margin. Your maximum margin is equal to your skill plus your specialization. For example if your number in the traumatology skill is five and your specialization in surgery is two, your maximum margin when removing your ally’s appendix to save their life is five plus two is seven. Because the highest margin a character can achieve is capped at their skill level plus specialization, that can matter for opposed rolls. For opposed rolls, each player or non player character makes a roll, and the person with the higher margin wins. For example let’s say you’re dueling an opponent whose maximum margin in fencing is seven and yours is two. If you both get a margin of three, they actually get it and win, while your maximum margin being capped at two makes you lose the duel. A minimum margin is when a conductor asks for multiple rolls that when added together will add up to a goal number. For example, the conductor can set the minimum margin at six to climb a wall, and the party will accomplish their goal as a group after a few rolls whose margins add up to six. One player throws a rope on a hook up at the top of the wall and scrambles up it, getting a margin of two. The second player climbs the rope and reaches down a helping hand, getting a margin of three. The third player grabs the offered hand and climbs to the top, getting a margin of two, reaching that six minimum margin and accomplishing the collective goal.

 

Here is an example of a roll outside of combat. You are currently arguing with a streetcar driver. The driver wasn’t paying attention when you paid, but you already did. They insist you pay again. How will you resolve this? It’s time to roll dice. You will roll two d6 and add your trait, skill, and any specializations that apply. The game master says the difficulty is twelve. Eight is lower and sixteen is higher, so twelve is in the middle, not the easiest or most difficult. You roll two d6 and get a two and a four for six on the dice. Now, which trait, skill, and specialization do you want to use to roleplay this? That depends on what your character is best at.

 

You could be playing as the example character Marcellin on page 206 of the rule book. Marcellin was born to parents who work in a circus and works as a strongman himself. But he dreams of running away from the circus because he believes he has a greater destiny elsewhere. His ambition is to become an important and respected person. However, he would feel guilty about abandoning his family and found family at the circus, who depend on him. Traits range between negative one and three. Marcellin has three traits. True force of nature, plus two, tall, plus one, and not very attractive, minus one. The trait that applies most to convincing a person is probably that he’s not very attractive, minus one. Skills range between zero and ten. Marcellin’s skill in quibbling is a two. Marcellin does have one specialization, brute force, which gives him a plus two when performing his strong man act in the circus, but doesn’t really help him plead his case to the streetcar driver. His overall number is six from the dice minus one from being not very attractive plus two for his skill in quibbling, which is seven overall. Seven is less than the difficulty of twelve, so with a negative margin, Marcellin fails to convince the streetcar driver that he had already paid. The streetcar driver will not let him on. Marcellin could now either pay a second time, or get off the streetcar, or try to beat up the driver and drive the streetcar himself, et cetera.

 

Let’s reexamine that scenario with a different example character. The difficulty is still set at twelve and you’ve rolled a two and a four for a six on the dice. You are now roleplaying as the rich merchant on page 229 of the rule book. After a convenient marriage to the Count de Mortsauf gave her seed money for investing, she began making lucrative business deals that have been an asset to her konzern, a konzern is like a company in Ecryme, and a bane to her competitors. She has two traits. One trait is that she has an image of purity of righteousness, plus one, and the other is that she has secretly made some contacts with the Black Lily group, plus one. Her skill in quibbling is five. She has two specializations: bartering and making threats. Each specialization gives plus two when doing those activities. Like the scenario with Marcellin, the streetcar driver wasn’t paying attention when the rich merchant paid, but she insists that she did. The driver wants her to pay again. The difficulty is twelve. With six on the dice and a five in the quibbling skill, the rich merchant is at eleven without adding a trait or specialization.

 

There are multiple different ways to role play this argument with the streetcar driver as the rich merchant and succeed. I’ll demonstrate two ways. The first, with zero margin, is to add one from the trait of her purity and righteousness, and to simply make a pure and righteous expression and insist that yes, she did pay. With a zero margin, the conductor could invent a complication or a compromised victory or a defeat with some positive aspect. The conductor could say, the driver believes you, but your insistence was noticed by a fellow rich person who had been sitting on the streetcar, who now believes are are poor. Like witnessing someone’s credit card get declined and them have to use another card, it doesn’t look good to be seen to not have enough money. The second way the player could role play this situation is to use the six from the dice plus five from the quibbling skill plus one from her contact with the Black Lily group plus two from her specialization in making threats. That scenario could look like this. The distracted streetcar driver staring out the window looks back as the streetcar dips when she steps onboard. The driver pauses her as she walks on, saying she didn’t pay. The fellow rich person on the streetcar watches as the merchant smiles insidiously, leans forward a little bit, and whispers something to the streetcar driver that their peer couldn’t hear. The streetcar driver blanches, all the blood draining from their face, eyes wide with horror, but just for a split second. The driver nervously tips their head in respect and waves the rich merchant onboard. Her mouth quirks into the slightest of smiles as she boards the streetcar, demurely greeting her peer as she walks past and takes a seat.

 

Two different characters, two different ways to role play the scenario. But the general idea is the same. You add the dice roll to your trait and skill and any specialization that applies. If the number is greater than the difficulty you succeed, and if the number is less than the difficulty you fail. A margin of zero is interpreted by the conductor however they want, mixing success and failure.

 

Self transcendence in Ecryme roleplaying-wise is when your character pushes themself past their limits. Mechanically, it’s when you spend a point from a skill to increase a roll. That point doesn’t recover until the next session you play in. Here’s an example. Your character has a three in athletics. You are teetering on the edge, way up high. To make sure that you don’t fall off, before you roll, you declare that you’re spending spend two of your skill points from athletics. You then roll your two d6 and add your trait, skill, and specialization, plus a guaranteed two from the skill points you spent. That’s a two and a three on the dice, plus a trait of positive one, plus an athletics skill of three, plus the two skill points, for eleven overall. Your athletics skill is still at three for this roll. After this roll, your skill will be lowered from three to one. It will return to three at the start of the next session. A skill can’t go down to negative values. Zero is the lowest a skill can be. If you have a specialization in this skill that also applies to this particular roll, you can do self-transcendence after rolling the dice, otherwise self-transcendence must be declared before the dice get rolled.

 

When you use self transcendance in combat, you pick one, either success attack or reserve defense, and apply the self transcendance to one, not both. The skill doesn’t decrease until after the attack is resolved.

 

How to attack. So far I’ve talked about rolls that use two six sided dice, then add your trait, skill, and specialization. Combat is similar, but you roll four dice. After seeing the results of the dice, choose where they go. Put two of the d6 into a pool called success, which means attack. Put the other two d6 dice in a pool called reserve, which means defense. The book calls it success, which really confuses me, so I’m going to say success attack every time I talk about it. Here are some example actions the success attack dice are used for: throwing a punch in a boxing match, getting away from pursuers during a chase, and charming a guard. The two reserve, defending dice, are used for actions like: dodging that punch in the boxing match, for not being charmed by someone, and for anything that protects your own safety. Together, the success attack and reserve defense for your turn are called your attitude.

 

If your success attack roll is higher than your opponent’s reserve defense roll, then they failed to dodge and you landed that blow. If your success attack roll is lower than your opponent’s reserve defense, then they dodged well and your punch missed.

 

It works the other way, too. If your reserve defense roll is higher than your opponent’s success attack, then you dodged and their punch missed. If your reserve roll is lower than your opponent’s success attack, your dodge was too slow and their punch hit you in the face. These are called positive and negative margins. Your margin is capped by your skill and specialization, just like when you roll outside of combat.

 

Spleen in Ecryme is a character’s driving fear. Ideal is a character’s motivating hope. Spleen and ideal normally give you one more dice for rolls made outside of combat. In combat, they still give you one more dice. The four dice you roll goes up to five. Drop the highest dice if your spleen applies. Drop the lowest dice if your ideal applies.

 

Injuries in Ecryme are called impacts. A character in Ecryme can be impacted in three ways: physically, socially, and mentally. Physical impacts are wounds, such as a cut, bruise, or burn. For example, a duel can use the fencing skill and impact your physical body. Mental impacts include discouragement, traumatic stress, despair, and insanity. For example, a mental attack from someone with the special cephalic abilities could impact you. Or you could witness something distressing related to your spleen or ideal that hurts you deep in your heart. Social impacts could be a fall in popularity, a loss of reputation, being discredited and no longer believed, or losing a role title. For example a debate can use the quibbling skill and impact your social standing and reputation.

 

There are four ranks of impacts. From least to most serious, these ranks are: superficial, light, serious, and major. A combat margin is the difference between one character’s success attack and their target’s reserve defense. The combat margin translates into the impact. If the combat margin is zero, you and your opponent bounce off each other, neither landing a blow. A combat margin of one and two causes a superficial impact, like a scratch or a bruise. A combat margin of three and four cause a light impact, like being stunned or getting a nose bleed. A combat margin of five and six cause a serious impact, like breaking a bone or losing a tooth. Having a serious impact gives all of your rolls negative two. Your conductor might tell you that your character now has a negative trait as an after effect of a serious injury, for example a limp from your broken leg if it was a physical fight, or your face on a wanted poster if it was a social confrontation. A combat margin of seven and eight cause a major impact. Major impacts are life threatening and instantly incapacitating. You can’t fight any more. All rolls are at minus four. Major impacts always leave an after effect. Also, you gain a new spleen, a motivating fear. Depending on the situation, it’s possible for a major impact to make your character lose sight of their ideal, their driving purpose. Your character is out of the game if they either get two major impacts or one impact above eight.

 

Hit points. Ecryme doesn’t technically have hit points, but you can’t take an unlimited number of impacts. Sort of like hit points, or tally marks, you should keep track of how many of each level of impact you’ve taken. Superficial, light, serious, and major. The fifth superficial impact you take becomes a light impact. The fourth light impact you take is a serious impact. The third serious impact you take becomes a major impact. The second major impact you take removes your character from the game. For physical impacts that means death or a coma, for mental impacts that means insanity or a coma, and for social impacts that means banishment.

 

Armor. If you’re wearing armor, the injury you receive is one level less severe. For example, a major impact would become a serious impact from your armor. Armor can’t reduce the impact to zero, so you’ll still take at least a superficial injury. The disadvantage to wearing armor is that it’s heavy, so you take a negative four penalty on every physical dice roll.

 

Effect in Ecryme is like a damage bonus in other games. Effect is a modifier to the impact of your success attack or reserve defense because of situational circumstances. Some examples are having the high ground during a sword duel, having a sword during a sword duel, knocking a chair down into your opponent’s path, and having the sun at your back. If your character has a weapon, that weapon might have an effect number. Weapons don’t affect the success attack or reserve defense rolls themselves, just the impact of the rolls.

 

Page 244 has a table of the different weapons and their effects. Bare hand fighting and improvised weapons have an effect of plus zero. A staff, cestus, sling, cudgel, truncheon, and razor blade have the effect of plus one. A bow and arrow, chain, dagger, knife, and dirk have the effect of plus two. A crossbow, sword, spear, pike, axe, mace, and pistol have an effect of plus three. A flail, battleaxe, halberd, and musket have an effect of plus four. Since I’m talking about weapons, I’ll mention that ranged weapons can’t be reloaded during hand to hand combat. Also, if you’re firing at something far away or a moving target or your visibility is reduced, page 248 lists how much the difficulty increases by. The extra difficulty is usually around plus two.

 

Here is an example of the effect number increasing the impact during combat. Eugene has a fencing skill of four and a fencing sword that has a plus three effect. His fencing skill being four means Eugene’s maximum success attack margin is four. Eugene rolls a four, five, three, and two. He puts the four dice and five dice and his fencing skill of four into his success attack. Four plus five plus four is thirteen success attack. He puts the three and two dice and fencing skill of four into reserve defense. Three plus two plus four is nine reserve defense. The opponent has a nine success attack, so with a margin of zero, the opponent misses Eugene. The opponent only has a reserve defense of five. Eugene’s success attack was thirteen. Thirteen from Eugene’s success attack minus five from the opponent’s reserve defense equals a margin of eight. But Eugene’s fencing skill is only four, so the margin is capped at four. A margin of four would be a light impact. But this is when the fencing sword with its effect of three comes in. The margin goes up by three, from four a light impact to seven a major physical impact.

 

What if you’re unable to hit one another? Ecryme’s combat system doesn’t let things stagnate. The difference in reserve defense carries over from one round of combat to the next, applying to the next round’s success attack. If you successfully reserve defended by two last round, that two gets added to your next round’s success attack.

 

Here’s an example. Eugene rolls four d6 for a round of combat and get six, five, three, and one. Eugene puts the three dice and one dice and his fencing skill of four into his success attack. Three plus one plus four equals eight success attack. Eugene puts the six dice and the five dice and his fencing skill of four into his reserve defense. Six plus five plus four equals fifteen. The opponent has a ten for success attack and also a ten in reserve defense. Eugene’s success attack of eight doesn’t get a positive margin on his opponent’s reserve defense of ten, so Eugene’s attack doesn’t hit. The opponent’s success attack of ten doesn’t get a positive margin on Eugene’s reserve defense of fifteen, so the opponent also doesn’t hit Eugene. But things don’t just stagnate. Next round, the opponent will get a bonus of plus two to their success attack because they had a two reserve defense margin on the eight success attack coming at them. Eugene would have gotten a bonus of five because his reserve defense of fifteen was five higher than the opponent’s success attack of ten, but his fencing skill is four so it’s capped at four.

 

Ecryme applies the combat rules to arguments, too. There’s an example on page 252 with success attack and reserve defense, where the quibbling skill is used just like how the fencing skill was used in that previous combat example.

 

Surprise. If you’re taken by surprise in Ecryme, you can only roll reserve defense. Roll just two d6, and apply them both to reserve defense.

 

Healing. How quickly you recover depends on how badly you were injured. From least to most serious, the impact ranks are: superficial, light, serious, and major. There’s a table on page 254 with the level of impact, the roll penalty, the recovery time without intervention, recovery time with intervention, and intervention difficulty. If a character has a superficial injury, there is no rolling penalty. They will recover within a day without intervention. If an intervention is done, it needs to be made within an hour and takes an hour to do, and has a difficulty level of ten. Light impact injuries have no rolling penalty. Characters recover from light impact injuries after a week on their own. If an intervention is made, it has to be done within a day of the injury and takes a day to do. The difficulty level is twelve. Serious impact injuries give you a negative two modifier to all your rolls. They sometimes cause an after effect, which never goes away. You recover from the serious impact injury enough to not have a negative two modifier after a month. If someone is going to intervene to help you, that intervention has a difficulty of fourteen, must be done within the first week, and takes a week to do. Major impact injuries make all your rolls negative four, have a difficulty of sixteen to treat, the treatment has to be done within a month and takes a month to do, and without intervention the major injury stops giving you a minus four to all rolls in one year. The intervention has the chance of removing the after effect, otherwise a major impact injury recovered on its own without intervention always leaves you with an after effect.

 

Helping allies. If you help an ally with a task, and how you help makes sense, then the difficulty decreases by two. Environmental conditions can also help decrease a task difficulty by two. For example, if when you’re trying to repair a vehicle you’re doing it in a workshop, the workshop environmental condition decreases the repair difficulty by two.

 

You can build an Ecryme character three ways: point buy, questionnaire, or archetype. Point buy means that you have positive two points in any free form word traits of your choosing, and thirty points distributed as you like in the fifteen skills. One skill point can buy you a specialization in any skill that has at least five points. Starter level characters don’t have any skills above five points. You’ll also write a spleen and an ideal on your character sheet, a character name, and some equipment. That concludes the point buy method of character creation.

 

The questionnaire method of character creation is like a personality quiz. You are asked a multiple choice question about your character, and the answer gives you a point in a skill. One example question is, what was your character’s favorite past time when they were a kid? If you answer going to the theater or opera with friends, you get a point in creativity. If you answer snatching candy from marketplace stalls, you get a point in guile. If it was building models, you get a point in anthropo-mechanology. If as a kid, your character chased rats for fun, they get a point in athletics. If your character’s childhood past time was listening to phonograph records telling adventure stories, they get a point in traversology. And lastly, if your character wandered around town for fun as a kid, they get a point in urbanotechnology. The questionnaire is pretty detailed. It’s sixteen pages long and goes from page 207 to 222 in the rule book. The rule book says to pick your six favorite of the twelve questions, and only answer those six questions, not all twelve.

 

The third way to get a character sheet in Ecryme is to use one of the premade ones. These are called archetypes. Here’s a list of them all. There’s an aeronaut who is great at the driving skill and specializes in airships. There’s a deaf archivist whose ideal is to archive all the flora and fauna of the ecryme, and has a five in ecrymology. There is a duelist whose spleen is that they despise a lack of action, who has a five in fencing and a specialization in the foil. One archetype is a stilt walker who is as comfortable on stilts as they are on foot, who has a five in athletics. There is an ambitious metropolite who has gained favor and power through schemes but also upset some high ranking officials, and they have a five in quibbling with a specialization in blackmail. Another archetype is the raconteur daughter of a nobleman stripped of his title, whose spleen is to get revenge for her father, and has a five in urbanotechnology with a specialization in intimate details about the rich and powerful. Another premade character is a degreaser, a former military officer who was court marshalled for mistreating war prisoners. They have a five in shooting and specializations in both the musket and cannon. Another archetype is the snoop, a person who tracks government officials who have gotten rich selling state property. They have a five in urbanotechnology with specializations in one city location and two ministries of government in that city. There is a map maker with a five in traversology. Philippe is a premade character who is an Icarian, like Icarus who flew too close to the sun, who flies a glider for a specialization in the driving skill. There are also more archetypes, premade characters, including the rich merchant, the acrobatic worker, the pontiff, the ecryme diver, the renegade scientist, the courtesan, the stitch lord, the line worker, the fugitive, the syndicalist scholar, and the ecryme flower harvester.

 

Hopefully this little rules chat helps my players build their characters and understand how to play. For everyone listening, if you’d like to hear an example adventure, the episode of Firebreathing Kittens podcast right after this is a demonstration of us playing Ecryme in a oneshot game session. We invite you to listen to it to hear an example of Ecryme in action. We encourage you to find the Ecryme rule book yourself, and play a game with friends.