Active Phase Encounters
An encounter begins with an (v:20 Awareness) check, this check determines the Active Phase Cycle order.
In cases where multiple players have the same Awareness result, they gain their Action Slots simultaneously.
Non-Player Characters do not go in the Active Phase Cycle. The Story Guide uses special rules for NPC actions.
Stay Action: A player with a higher Awareness roll may choose to start their Active Phase later in the Full Round, but once their place is assigned in the Active Phase Cycle it can't be changed.
Initialization Actions: Some Effects may only be used during initialization. These are applied or resolved before the beginning of the first Active Phase Cycle.
A Full Round is Five seconds.
The Full Round begins when the character with the highest Awareness Result gains their Action Slots and starts their Active Phase.
They may use or convert their Action Slots to Reserved Slots.
Once they have used or converted their Action Slots into Reserved Slots, the next person in the Active Phase Cycle gains their Action Slots.
When the character who is last in the cycle either uses or discards their Action Slots the Full Round ends.
All Reserved Action Slots at this point are lost to Hesitation, and the Story Guide begins Upkeep.
Active Phase Cycle: Once Awareness is determined and an order is made of who goes when from highest to lowest, we list everyone in the Active Phase Cycle. Those who rolled the same (v:20 Awareness) gain their Action Slots simultaneously.
The last character’s Active Phase before Upkeep is called the Final Phase.
All Actions taken at this point, before the last character uses or discards their Action Slots, cost Four times as many Action Slots to activate, aka, Final Phase Actions.
Slots not used are discarded due to Hesitation.
Slot availability: Characters gain their Action Slots at the beginning of the Active Phase.
Until a player gains their Action Slots in the current Full Round and has Reserved Slots, they cannot move or react to other's actions.
Action Slots: All players have a base of (5 +/- Agility) Action Slots per Full Round.
Abilities, Equipment, and some special effects may modify the total number of Action Slots a character has at their disposal in a round.
Reserved Action Slots: If a character does not use all of their Action Slots and ends their Active Phase, all remaining Action Slots become Reserve Slots.
Only skills and abilities that clearly state they may be used with Reserved Slots may be executed with Reserved Action Slots.
Many abilities will have different costs depending on whether they are used in Active Phase, Reserved Phase, or Final Phase.
Interrupting Interjections or Active Phase Actions is possible only if the possibility is highlighted in the Effect used.
Executions and Knockouts of Vulnerable targets with Reserved or Final Phase Slots will interrupt their action.
Non-standard action lengths: Actions that are normally considered as part of another action consume one action slot if more than one character has to interact with the objective or object.
Combo actions: Some Effects require multiple characters to both have active Action Slots or Reserved Slots and be within a certain proximity to each other to be usable.
In these cases, the active character spends their Action Slots in order to initiate the action, and the other character(s) spend their Reserve Slots to finish the action.
Multi-Round Actions: There are many instances where we might take multiple rounds to perform an action.
They have to use their Action Slots to begin the action, and will use their gained action slots in the next Full Round in the Active Phase to complete the action.
If any Effect would cause them to not be able to finish the action between this round and the next, they lose the Action Slots spent.
What ever (v:X) rolls attributed to the action still take place at Activation.
Even with a successful check, Multi-Round Actions may still be interrupted.
In some cases, Multi-Round Actions are interruptible. Effects are resolved at the end of spending the Action Slots.
All rolls attributed to these actions are resolved once all the Action Slots to use the ability are spent on the Full Round of their conclusion.
At the end of a Full Round, the Game Master and Players go through the upkeep process.
During Upkeep all of the following mechanics are resolved, as well as any outsider mechanics that use Upkeep to resolve.
Round countdown - Any actions, buffs, or debuffs that have a duration tick down by one or resolve.
Damage and Healing over time effects activate during Upkeep.
Once all threats are played out, the Story Guide may choose to run outro in a few different ways.
One is All Resolve, the other is the Slow Burn.
All Resolve: Is the easy way out. We end all combat effects immediately, leave the Active Phase Cycle, and clean the board. This is a cut the show to move things into the next scene.
Slow Burn: On the other hand we will continue to go through rounds, allowing players to volunteer up to their available Action Slots each round to work together to resolve an issue, and the Upkeeps keep coming.
Slow Burn Notes: Stronger poisons and bleeding effects can still kill a character if left untreated. A heal over time effect can be added up to figure out how much is regenerated. Attempting to revive a downed or dead character is a good reason to go through a Slow Burn.
The Developer
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