The Core Moves + Stats

Core Moves

So those are the Core Moves of the game, really the first and foremost way you're gonna interact with the game!

Playtest showed that Ponder is doing some heavy lifting, but building on its answers also creates a lot of cool stuff to interact with, so I decided to keep it that way. In particular, it somehow doesn't infringe on Keeping Your Cool and both have a very different feel and narrative niche to fill.

Also - our 6 main stats!

Stats

So as I won't go into too many details about them anywhere (at least I think I won't?), the 6 main Stats are:

• Muscle - How your character physically interacts with the world. High Muscle usually means grit, pragmatism, a "tough guy" attitude and a willingness to throw hands as a first resort.
• Tinker - Your character's knowledge of how to make things, and how to make things work. High Tinker usually means scrappiness, tech-savviness, and always having the right tools for the situation.
• Savvy - General social ability and overall "cool" factor. High Savvy usually means being socially aware, suave, seductive, and having a certain je-ne-sais-quoi.
• Focus - The ability to stay calm under pressure. High Focus usually means being attuned to one's environment, attentive, deliberate, and being a big picture person - one that usually feels some kind of connection to the vast concept of the Above.
• Book - Raw academic knowledge, trivia, and high-skilled work. High Book usually means self-importance, curiosity, studiousness, meticulousness, and being a huuuge nerd.
• Occult - Mastery over eldritch magicks. High Occult usually means eccentricity, versatility, a bit of unhingedness, and being in touch with the physics-breaking force known as the Beyond.

The Above and the Beyond

As I will make frequent references to those two concepts, I wanna explain them real quick even if I define them better later on.

• The Above is the concept of "things that are bigger than a single person". This includes, but is not limited to: the night sky, ideological causes, the will of the gods, the laws physics, prophecies, and anything that feels big, important, distant and powerful. Some characters are directly attuned to the Above, but adventurers of all horizons usually feel some kind of calling to the stars one way or another.
• The Beyond is way less important, and in fact can be completely ignored if you don't play high Occult characters. The Beyond is a mystical force that exists within the universe, and is more easily described as pushing against the Above from under - the magical embodiment of the concept of transgression, in a way. Blood magic, dark pacts, alien gods and other bizarre and scary eldritch stuff usually links back to the Beyond one way or another.