Pitch

Start the day believing you might carve your future by the blade, end your life in a gutter.

Build your table's city, witness the tutorial Duel, introduce your Duellist telling their version of its story, then explore the city you built and fill out your social calendar. Enter into Scenes with other Duellists and attempt to close out on top - or bring it over-the-boil into a Challenge for a Duel. The Duel operates as a secret bid dice game, where weapons clash, pointed questions are asked, and Mercy may come in one blow and Death comes in two.

Our want for this game was to simulate at the table the emotional tensions of duelling, and to dirty the squeaky-clean romance of Three Musketeers RP, as well as decrease the emotional distance players can feel when inhabiting less heroic duelling fops. In addition, we wanted to take the base structure and character beats of our previous, lighter-weight, rivalry RP game Rising Star, and develop it for longer term play. Including experimenting with bespoke combat systems and inventory management.

Social Scenes

The core social mechanic is a sort of dice Hot Potato.

1. First, a Player introduces a Scene to place their Duellist in, and invites in other Players to insert their own Duellist or to fill out the roles of any Ensemble (NPCs).
   • When a Duellist enters a Scene, they set a die in front of themself, with the 1 facing up.
   • Additionally, a Player may choose to invite themself into a Scene at a later point.
2. Then; Players in a Scene may at anytime opt to increase the temperature of the room, and increment their die value up by 1, by 'Marking a line of Prose' - which is to say, reference a role-play prompt.
   • This Prose may be on their character leaf, their Accoutrement (Weapons & Wardrobe), or the City. They then cite it in their role-play.
   • Other conditions impacting Player die values: voluntary upon allowing their Duellist to be drawn into the heat of the moment, writing down a pointed question to potentially ask another Duellist blade-to-blade, entering a Scene uninvited, special conditional moves.
3. A Scene progresses until meeting a threshold of 6. Then, Duellists in the Scene decide whether to close the Scene at mechanical deficit, or have the Scene spill out into a deadly Duel.

Duels

Duels involve Duellists making secret bids from a visible, randomly rolled pool, of moves. Mercy may be given in 1 Hit, Dying inflicted in 2.

1. First, the two sides of a Duel both roll 6d6. They each take a separate d6 a use it to secretly bid one of the dice in their 6d6 pool.
2. The Duellists resolve the bids against the Duel Matrix. (rock-paper-scissors with 6 options, interactions mimicking rapier fencing). Each Duellist can be Safe, Open or Hit.
   • When a Duellist isn't Safe, they may ask one of their pointed questions. The opponent may either answer, or withhold their answer then re-roll their 6d6 move pool.
     1. When Open, that Duellist next bid is made openly (opening them pup further to danger).
     2. After receiving 1 Hit, that Duellist may ask the attacker for Mercy. If the attacker grants it the Duel ends.
     3. After receiving all possible Hits, a Duellist becomes Dying and the Duel ends. (Dying Duellists continue as normal, incorporating their potentially fatal wounds into the fiction. They may choose to Succumb at any time - if they receive 1 more Hit while Dying, the Succumb immediately.)
3. When a Duel ends (no more willing combatants, all Duellists given Mercy or Dying, effect of a player ability) the winner/s receive a reward. (🥲 it's meta-currency)

Supporting Mechanics

It's Meta-Currency 🫣

Caught red-handed. Fortune is acquired come the end of a Duel (remaining # d6 in move pool when you Win a Duel), as a reward for having the highest dice at Scene's end, and reduced by turning down a Challenge, spending it on Weapons & Wardrobe, and the effects of Duellist abilities.

Playworld Generation

City Setting Generation

There is a world-building game that prompts players to describe their City setting, starting with a wide view outside the City, narrowing in to a street, a building, then a room, and finally a single weapon in that room.

Each of these items contains a list of 6 prompts to answer - chosen or rolled for. Each Player has the option to instead Pass, not answer any prompt and choose or roll for a prompt to remove from play (that detail may be later addressed in role-play, or left out the story altogether). Each time a player Passes they increment a personal die count by 1. At the end of the world-building game that die count impacts a Duellist's starting Fortune.

Social Events Calendar Generation

This is being developed out in response to playtest feedback - a voiced desire for more explicit Scene prompts from the City. As it stands, the system would be pulling a limited number of City prose to fill out a small handful of upcoming seasonal events and functions of Duellists to play around.

If a Player has a Desire they are seeking, but is not sure how to marry it to the rest of their Character, the others at the table, and the City to kick off a Scene - then presenting a limited number of Events to choose from could hopefully narrow things enough to reduce decision paralysis, but not so narrow that it is smothering. We are considering then limiting citing City Prose in Scenes to just Event Prose.

Character Generation

There 5 character roles for Duellists. You can either pick or answer a magazine-style personality quiz to derive a choice (this was the second thing Locked-In after the dice game duels, lol). Each role has a series of 2 unique moves, followed by a series of characterising pick-lists for Prose to prompt improvisation (and inspire those who wish to write their own).