Timber, Steel, and Stone (v.01)
In those days, it was said that a hero was made of Timber, Steel, and Stone. The Stone was what stuff they might be made of — blood and bone but wits and beauty, too. The Steel was their deeds, whether it be monster-slaying, healing the sick, or tricking the unwary. The Timber was how they did it: through guile or force or grace or stupid luck. And a real hero, one that they’d be singing about for ages afterwards, had to have all three or else they’d be lost to memory.
Heroes live in a world that does not look kindly on change. The heroes’ ability and willingness to effect change is what separates them from the rest of the world. Where the common man avoids making waves, fearful of the consequences, heroes rock the boat and embrace the slings and arrows of fate, converting that fate into destiny. It is only by risking the ire of the status quo that real and lasting change can ever come to pass. Heroes know this, and their daring is the only thing that brings tyrants to their knees, slays monsters plaguing the countryside, and sets ancient wrongs right.
Without heroes, the world would never change — the tyrants would remain in power, the monsters would ravage the countryside, and ancient wrongs would fester in the forgotten corners of the world.
The world needs heroes. Will you stand up and claim that title?
If all of this looks familiar, it should. This is Capes with the serial numbers filed off and a thin coat of fantasy-colored paint slapped on.
Fate = Debt
Destiny = Story Tokens
Timber = Styles
Steel = Powers
Stone = Attitudes
Relationships = Drives & Exemplars
Making a Hero
Heroes have two parts: abilities and relationships. Put very simply, abilities are what heroes do, and relationships are why they do them.
Assembling Abilities
Abilities come in three varieties: Timber, Stone, and Steel. Abilities come from Click-n-Locks, and each Click-n-Lock has two kinds of abilities on it. Timber and Stone click-n-locks represent your character’s personality. Stone and Steel abilities represent your character’s background, where they came from and how they were raised. Timber and Steel abilities are derived from your class, your professional training, exotic experience — or lack thereof.
Pick one of each kind of click-n-lock. Of the fifteen abilities listed on your click-n-locks, cross out any three. Rewrite any of the others that you don’t especially like or want just slightly different. Then number the remaining abilities in each category, starting with one and going up each time.
Abilities are used to roll the dice assigned to Conflicts — to do things that will help the characters get what they want. The ability’s value is the highest die that the ability can affect.
Forging Relationships
A relationship is a link from your character to another character in the story. Relationships are made up of a target and a disposition, and are rated from one to five. “My Father” might be the target; “Prove I am a Man” is the disposition.
Each character begins with two relationships. One must share a target with another character in the game. Targets can be other player characters. Split five points between the two relationships however you like.
Relationships store Fate. Relationships can safely store a number of Fate tokens equal to their value; if a Relationship has more Fate than its value, the character is overdrawn.
Note: You can jump-start a game and start at a higher power level by starting with more relationships or more points spread between relationships.
Other Characters
Heroes need villains, oppressors, monsters, and tyrants to overcome. They also need townspeople to defend, princesses (and princes) to rescue, and knights to rally. They need mysteries to unravel, ruined ancient temples to explore, and chase scenes to run through, and all of those are characters, too. All the other characters in the story are represented by two kinds of characters. The simplest characters such as victims and regular folks are “stone characters”, made up of twelve Stone abilities and a Free Conflict. They never generate Fate; they avoid change and only ever do what they’ve always done before.
More complex characters are made up of Timber, Steel, and Stone abilities just like Heroes because they are Heroes. They’re just heroes for the other side. If one set of Heroes are a trio of do-gooders protecting law and order, the heroes they oppose might promote anarchy, chaos, and corruption. Both sides will attempt to change their world, and both sides will become Fated and earn their Destiny. The question is whose changes, and whose Destiny, will win out.
Through the course of a game, everybody will play Heroes and little people on all sides of the story. Some characters may switch sides, and some may switch sides more than once. Some Heroes will ally together only to fall apart and oppose each other later. That’s fine! The clash of Heroes is what fantasy is made of!
Resources
Players use three primary resources: Fate, Destiny, and Inspirations. Fate is gained by using abilities and losing Fated Conflicts; Destiny is gained by losing Fated Conflicts; Inspirations are gained by winning Conflicts.
Fate
Using any ability generates Fate, which are counted with whatever tokens are convenient for you.
Whenever you use a Steel ability, the Fate goes to a relationship. The player may choose which relationship it goes to. The choice need not reflect anything in the fiction whatsoever.
Whenever you use a Stone ability, it absorbs the Fate (put it next to the ability name). That ability cannot be used for the rest of the scene. At the end of the scene, the Fate is discarded.
Whenever you use a Timber ability, it may absorb Fate (as a Stone ability) or the Fate may be put towards a relationship (as a Steel ability).
When the number of Fate tokens is greater than the value of the relationship the Fate is on, the relationship is overdrawn. At the beginning of each page where a character has overdrawn relationships, they must roll the highest die that they are allied with and accept any lower result. The character must do this for every relationship that is overdrawn.
Fated Conflicts
You can stake Fate onto Conflicts, making them Fated Conflicts. The Conflict in question must relate to the target or the disposition of the relationship the Fate comes from. Staking Fate on Conflicts allows you to Split or Schism as in Capes. If you lose the Conflict, you get your Fate back doubled. If you win the Conflict, your Fate tokens turn into Destiny tokens which you hand out to the players on the losing side.
Destiny
Destiny can be spent to:
- create an extra Conflict at the beginning of a Page
- claim an extra Conflict at the beginning of a Page
- play one more Character at the beginning of a Page
- take another Action at the end of a Page
Inspirations
The winner of a Conflict gains Inspirations by matching dice just like Capes.
Character Development
Resolving Relationships
Whenever the action in the fiction has a character achieving a disposition in regards to its associated target, that relationship can be resolved. The player may do one of four things:
- up the ante - change the disposition of the relationship and increase its value by one.
- redouble - change the target of the relationship and increase its value by one.
- move on - create an entirely new relationship at the same value and remove the old relationship from the sheet.
- complicate - keep the original relationship exactly as-is and create another new relationship at a value of one.
In addition to whichever option he selects, the player can rewrite a number of Abilities equal to the prior level of the Relationship. Abilities cannot switch categories (Stone abilities cannot become Steel abilities), but if two or more abilities in a category are being rewritten, they may swap their values.