Telling The Story

Gameplay in Aspirant is generally split into a few different types of gameplay: Combat, Narrative Time, Travelling, Resting.

Combat

Combat is the most rigorously kept time in Aspirant; as it is when you are most likely to be injured and die. Combat is covered in more detail here, but in general, characters take turns acting in 5 second increments.

Narrative Time

Narrative time in aspirant involves characters in a place of interest doing activities, exploring, and progressing the story directly. The passage of narrative time can be a bit more ambiguous compared with combat. There aren’t rules for narrative time, this is when characters will be directing the focus and the story themselves.

Downtime

This tends to happen when you are in a safe area. When in a friendly settlement with no impending danger your characters can choose to take 5 days and rest focusing on yourselves, your work, and resting up. While doing downtime each character:

  • Remove any Long Term Injury.
  • Reset Power to your max.
  • Reset your Reaction to your max.
  • Reset uses of all Once Per Downtime abilities.
  • Performs 1 Downtime Activity.
  • Each settlement will have a cost for 5 days of lodgings, usually it will be 2 silver which will cover your food and housing for the duration.
  • While performing downtime, players should be encouraged to still take part in scenes in Narrative Time, maybe they meet local artisans, haggle with a shopkeeper, or find the start of an adventure. Time shouldn’t exclusively be occupied with a Downtime Activity, but it will help explain what you are doing when not otherwise occupied.

Travelling

Travelling in Aspirant can take long amounts of time. Travelling involves knowing the direction or location of something and then travelling towards it. Travel will usually take a number of days. To travel you require at minimum Camping Gear.

Travel Segment

For simplicity, travel is split into:

  • Simply, the time to get from one location to another
  • If you are travelling a large distance, travel is split further into 5 day segments
  • A full day of travel is considered 8 hours of continual travel, this gives the horses and characters ample time to rest

At the end of each segment:

  • characters will need to pay for the food they used (rations tend to cost 2 silver per travel segment)

  • horses will in most situations be able to feed themselves but otherwise also need 1 silver worth of food per segment

  • Characters at the start of each travel segment declare a Travelling Activity they will focus on during the travel.

Travel Encounter

During travel, characters may encounter other travellers, enemies or a point of interest. These will be handled by the GM and should lend to the danger and intrigue of the surrounding world. Generally, the world is sparse and most characters should only have 1 travel encounter per Travel Segment, though in very dense or dangerous areas the GM can roll for more. If your players were attacked by wolves a number of times travelling through a forest instead, that should be handled as one extended narrative / combat Scene where they realize they’ve entered dangerous territory and need to navigate out of it.

Ambush Encounter

Similarly, during travel, the party may be ambushed while camping. These should be high stakes encounters that put the players in danger. Generally, danger isn’t lurking around every corner and the characters should only have 1 ambush encounter per Travel Segment.

Influencing the Story

Aspirant should be a shared experience. So, when you play, the GM may ask you for suggestions or to volunteer ideas such as: “what is this town known for?”, “someone give me a cool female name.”. When these are accepted by the GM, you receive 1 influence which you can spend to influence the game world in any way the GM allows. When you want to influence the world:

  • You will ask the GM, “Can this thing be the case?”
  • The GM will deliberate and assign an influence cost required “For it to be so you will need to spend X influence.”
  • Then you and any players who would like to contribute can spend the required influence to make this happen.
  • If you don’t have the influence, feel free to try to negotiate for something similarly useful to your character or of interest.

So as an example, if you wanted to train a specific duellist training you could have this conversation:

Player 1: “What if there is a travelling master swordsman moving through this town?”

GM: “hmm that isn’t too far-fetched I’ll allow a master duellist to be travelling through for 4 influence, or how about it’s a journeyman, but they know the training you want for 2 influence?”

Player 2: “I’ll pitch in the extra 2 influences for the master! Maybe we can hire them to help with our next job!”

Player 1: “Sure sounds good.”

GM: “Great, spend 2 influence each, now tell me more about this swordsman. What is their name? What are they doing here?”

Remember, as a GM, this system is designed to get your players involved in building the world. Costs aren’t provided here since different GMs will ask their players more or less for help building the world, but some opportunity to shape it should be provided.

Creating New Content

If a player has an idea for something their character wants to do that should require training but isn’t covered in the book, then if reasonable, you should let them perform it! Usually, since it is without training, there will be a large associated negative, but at that point work on making a training of an appropriate tier and let them immediately put, if available, 1XP towards it. They don’t need an expert or manual to start the training, their character invented it!

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