Nachtberg

Nachtberg

High in the Bavarian Alps the latest of the ancient Falkenstein line takes his place as the new masterof Castle X. Rumors abound that his land teams with monsters-werewolves, ghouls and the like. A group of adventurers wish to vist the town of Silver towers and find the cause of the legends. A priest, journalist, ex-soldier and jewel thief.

An invetgiation game. A benny refresh (keeping surplus bennies) make excellent investigative progress through initiative. Bennies for indoividual players if they make some progress. No bennies provided if the GM moves the action on with fiat or ex machina clues.

hOMERULES:
SKILLS

'CLASSES' BACKGROUND EDGE TAKEN AT START OF PLAY :

• GENTLEMAN- , horsemanship, persuasion and and Start at d4. +2 to CK rolls concerning gentlemany pursuits, family history, etc.
• Ex-soldier- athletics,shooting and fighting are class skills. +2 to CK rolls concerned with miltary equipment, hsitory,
• scoundrel -pracktic, stealth and streetwise are class skills. +1 to streetwise rolls and larceny
• journalist -records, persuasion are class skills +3 to CK rolls
• presit:

Map of Nachtberg

System

ONE-SYSTEM GUMSHOE
Rules as per Gumshoe SRD RAW, in which players spend from pools of points for listed investigative skills to move the investigation/story on. Except that the system for investigative abilities is extended to cover all (investigative AND general) skills. As in RAW, having any points invested in a particular investigative ability is sufficient for the character to reveal a GM-intended clue related to that ability, without spending points from the pool. Players can though also optionally spend points to get better, more revealing clues in situations where the GM says better info is available.

In this simplified version of the game, players invest between 1 to 6 points in each of the (just) twelve general multi-purpose skills, most of which cover both investigate knowledge AND practical competence , e.g outdoorsmanship can be used to identify tracks, animal fur, etc. as evidence but also reflects the character's practical ability to hunt, make camp , read the stars, etc. General skills now work just like investigative skills so that any investment of points in a skill means a character can perform a relevant task at a passable level of competence without spending points, but might be able to spend points to perform skills more decisively. The GM may rarely demand points be expended if the difficulty of a task is unusually high, e.g. to resist a greater vampire’s domination may require a point spend of will, rather than the default zero spend needed for lesser will tests. Punching out a tavern thug does not require a point spend if the character has any points in fighting, but a GM might ask for a spend of two to survive an encounter with the Wolfman, or three or four points to beat the bum up!

The twelve generic skills are:

• outdoorsmanship
• will

One sub-skill in each pool can be asterisked. This reduces the point spend cost of this sub-skill by one, so that a three point spend costs two, a two point spend costs one, and a one point spend costs nothing.

The notion of skill pools in the game is that they represent time that the character spends centre stage. Points are expended so that every character gets their turn, and a player does not resort repetitively to the same strengths and strategies. This concept is retained but the asterisked skill mans that players retain unusual competence in key skills even when their pool is emptied.