Principles for Players

Agency

• The numbers on your character sheet act as tools to mechanically engage with the game. They do not define your character.
• Use how your character has grown to inform your play.
• Embrace the weird and unknown.

Teamwork

• Work to support others at the table.
• Elicit interaction from other players.
• Characters don’t always have to be aligned, but players should be aiming toward the same goal of memorable stories of horror and fun interactions with friends.

Talking

• NPCs have drives and flaws. Interact with them as you would a real person.
• Build relationships, engage with rivals, and invest in the NPCs.
• Information and positive outcomes can often be achieved through dialogue. That being said, sometimes a cultist’s communion requires an offering of blood and bone.

Caution

• Fighting is risky and the consequences of violence are long lasting.
• A shattered mind is just as debilitating as a broken body.
• Gain any advantage you can. Preparation can stave off certain doom.
• Magic is chaotic and wielding the unknowable can have dire consequences.
• Victory comes in many forms, and often it is a successful retreat.

Planning

• Ask questions.
• There is no perception or intelligence attribute. How you engage with the world hinges on how you use the information provided.
• Reconnaissance, subtlety, and fact-finding are necessary for survival.

Ambition

• Discover the drives and goals for you as a player, your character, and the team. Use those to inform play.
• Try and fail forward. An engaging story is infinitely more interesting and memorable than simple successes.
• It is the complications and resulting actions that we remember afterward.
• Characters die, but the story will continue.
• Play to find out what happens.