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Cascade is a sci-fi thriller tabletop role-playing game about solving complicated problems using strange tools while under high time pressure and emotional duress.
The core rules are mostly solidified but it is still a work in progress. I intend to add some setting modules to help kickstart games, and to eventually lay the game out in a zine format.
Cascade is forged in the dark. For now I’m working under the assumption that you’ve already read Blades in the Dark or a similar RPG.
Actions from Blades in the Dark are called APPROACHES in Cascade. You might ask “how are you approaching this?” or “what’s your approach here?”
The actions are:
SPOOKY: You have these uncanny extrasensory hunches. Choose how they manifest: gut feelings, instinctual response, tingling skin, intrusive thoughts, foreign memories, ____. Push on this to SCAN for or IMAGINE things that you couldn't possibly know, or to act on intuition more than practice when you should be out of your element.
HARDENED: You don't remember how many people you've killed. You try not to think about how many times you've almost died. You're afraid something about you is broken beyond repair. Push on this to face down battles and other threats that nobody should be able to survive with calm bordering on disinterest, to intimidate or threaten people, or to WITHSTAND unreasonable injury or strain.
AFFABLE: You're altogether too charming. People want to trust you, want to like you, or just plain want you. Push on this when you're asking too much, when you're being reckless or annoying or nosy, or when you need forgiveness or mercy.
GENIUS: You have a terrifying knack for a particular skill (technology use/repair, piloting, marksmanship, dueling, politics, a field of study, ____) and a passion that is probably closer to obsession. Push on this to make it look easy, to make wild & intuitive guesses, and to attempt the impossible.
ALREADY DEAD: You have no real attachment to life, anymore. You've lost something that you're never getting back, so what does it matter to you? Push on this to act without fear, to luck your way out of disaster, or to take leaps of faith.
UNTHREATENING: Something about you comes off as innocent, or uninteresting, or harmless. Push on this to go unnoticed, blend in, or evade or brush off scrutiny.
FLEXIBLE: You just tend to be pretty good at everything you do. Push on this when trying new things, adapting to unusual circumstances, or rolling with the punches.
Making a roll follows these steps:
Attributes are used for resisting. Each attribute is equal to the number of actions under that stat you have. You also have one favored attribute that you get a +1 bonus to.
HARD is from Fight, Scramble, and Withstand. Use it to resist physical harm.
COOL is from Swagger, Imagine, and Lurk. Use it to resist NPCs reactions.
SHARP is from Focus, Scan, and Fix. Use it to resist system breakdowns, tool failure, or chain reactions.
Maxing out stress doesn’t cause trauma. Instead, you reset your stress, suffer minor harm and trigger a stress response of your choice. Stress responses are actions you must undertake that will cause problems for the group.
Examples:
Don’t be scared of stress responses! Take this as an opportunity to step back and have a little fun causing a mess before diving back into the problem solving.
I don’t like clocks for most situations. You can use the threat definition rules (below) for things that qualify as threats. For other tasks where a clock might make sense (like “I’m working on fixing up this truck a bit every evening”), instead make a to-do list with 1, 2, 3, or 4 items on it depending on difficulty.
Position is renamed to risk and effect is renamed to reward. The risk levels are reliable, risky, desperate. The reward levels are half-measure, plan, gambit. Communicated to the players like “That’s a reliable plan”, “That’s a desperate gambit”, “That’s a risky half-measure”. Default is risky plan.
Bonus reward levels for special circumstances: folly (no effect), decisive gambit (incredible effect)
Because there are no clocks, reward won’t ever be about how many segments get filled. Instead, plans can complete a task fully, half-measures only half-complete a task (another half-measure will finish it), and gambits get you halfway to accomplishing a second thing.
Players are expected to write down everything they have available to them (on their person, on their spaceship, etc), and any rules about how it works if it’s not intuitive. You can’t ad-hoc invent gear: if it’s not written down you don’t have it. Make sure you’re prepared.
Some tools will (ideally) be Strange, which is to say, unfamiliar to the players, maybe because it is very specific, or science-fictional, or supernatural, or whatever else. Everyone should be in agreement in how the tool works, maybe even writing down the things that are decided about it.
If you end up in the situation where there’s something you haven’t written down that nevertheless you should obviously have available to you (and everyone agrees), roll a die. On a 4-6, you do indeed have it. On a 1-3, it’s true that you should have it, but it’s missing, or broken, or otherwise has an unexpected issue.
Your expertise is the thing that you will always be assumed to be capable of. For specialized tasks, not having an appropriate expertise may make your approach desperate or a half-measure. For non-specialized tasks, a relevant expertise might make your approach reliable or a gambit.
The harm system works similar to blades. Minor harm has no effect. Major harm causes reduced effect when relevant. With severe harm, you can’t take relevant actions unless you have help or push yourself.
You can help one another to give the other player an extra die. No stress cost, but it does mean you can’t be doing something else at the same time. If your problems come one at a time, it should be fine!
There aren’t any. You are entirely unprepared for what comes next. Good luck!
Principles of problems:
Strategies:
Characters:
Scan through this for every action until you get the hang of it. Name each risk that applies.
Ranged weapons will have either have the close, far, or close/far tags. If you try to use your weapon outside of its appropriate range, you'll have reduced (or potentially negligible) effect.
Melee weapons will have a reach tag: most commonly reach-0 (hand-to-hand) through reach-3 (a long spear), though vehicles may use larger numbers. You only risk injury from a melee weapon if your action begins, ends, or passes through its reach. Otherwise, you risk them putting you inside their reach.
Similarly, you can only injure someone with a melee weapon if your action puts you within its reach.
An action can't force an NPC or a player to make a specific decision. Instead, you can do any of the following:
Generally speaking, the thing a machine does is transfer states. It takes power (fuel, manual, electric, ammunition, __), converts it into an output (force, motion, transferal, information, computation, __) while also generating waste (heat, emissions).
Just borrow from AW basically.
Speed, handling, armor, weight
Harm isn't a resource or anything like that. Instead, when you suffer harm, it becomes an immediate problem that may require an action to contend with.
1-harm: dazed, dizzy, nausious, winded. Will get better in a few seconds or minutes, ignoring it might mean reduced effect.
2-harm: bleeding out, blacked out, fractured or broken bone, vomiting. May get worse without help. First aid might get you back on your feet but healing will take days or weeks.
3-harm: spilled guts, braindead, multiple broken bones, failed breathing, heart attack. Without immediate medical attention you'll die; with it you're at best going to be conscious and able to limp along.
4-harm: immediately & irrevocably dead.
If you find yourself stuck, uncertain, or hestitating, you can always call upon your senses. Once per dot in a stat, you can ask "What does my ___ tell me?" It may tell you something new about the sitaution, offer its advice, or both. You get +effect if you follow its advice.
- TODO bike stats & info
- Twenty-One, a cloned diplomat, sent to negotiate and prevent the breakout of war
- it didn't work
- She is charmed by people who speak frankly and crudely with her, and resents being made to reflect on her bleak and utilitiarian existence.
- She defaults to following orders and to trying to get on people's good side. Under duress she will grow stiff and try to actively manipulate people and push their buttons.
- You were tasked with extracting her out of a battlefield
- might be able to stretch the fuel with careful use, or by going in and tinkering a bit
- It only recently took root and is still spreading
- Talking to Twenty-One could result in being infected
- TODO how does it work??
- TODO what is it, who built it, what's interesting about it
- TODO who are they, what is their vehicle
Character packs:
Soldier
Spy
Medic
Average character: 4 approaches, 1 perk, 1 attribute, 8 stress (???)
30 points
Approaches: 3 then 2
Perks: 5
Stress: 1 (start with 5, max... 15?)
HOW ARE THEY FEELING? [TODO]? [TODO]?
WHAT AM I MISSING? WHAT DO I FEEL ABOUT THIS? [TODO]?
‌AM I STRONG/FAST/NIMBLE/GRACEFUL ENOUGH TO ___? WHAT'S MY BEST ESCAPE ROUTE/WAY IN/WAY THROUGH? [TODO]?
‌
HOW DOES THIS WORK AND HOW CAN I FIX OR TINKER/INTERFERE WITH THAT? WHAT'S THE MOST LIKELY OUTCOME OF ___? [TODO]?
WHO'S IN CONTROL HERE? [TODO]? [TODO]?
WHAT ARE THEY PLANNING? WHAT'S MY BEST
WHAT DOES THIS REMIND ME OF? WHAT DOES THIS MEAN?
Possible: Trivia? Knowledge? Recall? Access? It'd be cool to have a sense to check in with that tells you Facts, but I don't know how to map that to actions.... (memory is a diorama, tug on strings, pattern matching improves it... is this connected to wonder? feels like the part that says "here's a potentially useless fact about ___" is different than the part that extrapolates and imagines new things, and similarly feels distinct from Reason which should be more focused on extrapolation and interactions than information... obviously you can use it to Memorize Something... maybe I could take close observation from Poise, that feels appropriate... also, distilling things down to the gist/key points... navigating databases, libraries... maybe there's something there?? pathfinding?
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Written April 22, 2021