4 Skull cards and Woe

Back: Cardplay and core mechanics

Skulls Cards and Woe

Woe represents the influence of the Malignant Forces which underpin the tapestry of the Frontier. This malign influence will grow over time, and the Posse will experience more and more Woe as the campaign progresses. Woe is measured during the game by black Woe chips, which the Dealer accumulates and spends throughout the course of a session.

Generating Woe

The Dealer begins each session with one black Woe chip equal to the current session number plus one (so two Woe chips at the start of the campaign’s first session, three at the start of the second session, and so on), plus one chip per player in the Posse.

Example: it is the third session of the campaign, and tonight the Posse includes four players. The Dealer would begin the session with 8 Woe chips. 

Throughout play, the Dealer also gains one additional Woe chip at any time that:

• a player plays a Skulls card;
• a player or the Dealer flips a Skulls card;
• an effect causes a player to discard some number of cards, and at least one of the cards discarded this way is a Skulls card;
• a player fails a test to perform an Invocation.

Woe chips do not carry over between sessions. Players can never gain Woe chips.

Using Woe

Woe chips can be spent by the Dealer for one of three purposes:

• Unsettling Presence: one or more Woe chips may be added in with the Difficulty chips when secretly marking Difficulty Value. Each Woe chip added this way adds +1 to the DV of that test. Failure during a test with an Unsettling Presence results in burning a card. Imposing an Unsettling Presence represents the Malignant Force interjecting its influence to thwart and torment the Posse, and will always manifest in unnerving, disquieting, or horrifying ways. An Unsettling Presence may not be imposed while resolving an act of violence. 

• Horrific Violence: If a Woe chip is added to the difficulty while resolving an act of violence (for example, the Posse and a number of foes are having a free-for-all in a canyon, and a PC attempts to shoot an NPC - see Violence), this does not trigger an Unsettling Presence. Instead, the Woe chip will remain on the table and the +1 Difficulty Value will continue to apply to all cardplay until the violence has been resolved. Any time a PC fails at cardplay during the remainder of the scene, burn the played card. Only one instance of Horrific Violence may be in play at once - this usually takes the form of an unsettling environment (bitter cold, howling wind), supernatural power within the foes, or some interference from the Malignant Entity. Only a single Woe chip may be added to the difficulty when resolving an act of violence. 

• Metaphysical Encounter: the Dealer can spend a Woe chip at any time to inflict a Metaphysical Encounter on a character, interrupting the current scene and disrupting any action the players wish to take. The Metaphysical Encounter targets a particular PC, and will typically take the form of some horrifying manifestation of the malignant entity; a vision from the PC’s past, an intersection of the PC’s previous wrongdoings with the present; or some other unsettling, metaphysical interjection. Resolving the Metaphysical Encounter will always require cardplay to overcome (whose Difficulty is set by the Dealer given the typical guidance, and is increased by the Woe chip spent to invoke the Metaphysical Encounter). Resolving Metaphysical Encounter will always come at the risk of loss of Will, but may also include other threats at the Dealer's discretion, if these are narratively appropriate.

Ending the session

Woe plays another important factor in the game - when the Dealer has run out of Woe chips, that is a sign that the session should soon draw to a close. The players have survived the Frontier for the time being, and the Dealer should find a way to resolve the immediate narrative and commence Ending the Session. 

Next: The Supernatural

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