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How to Play

Progression

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Progression in Stones, Scrolls, Swords & Sorcery is designed to happen steadily through play without dramatically separating characters in power. The game is built primarily around single-session adventures and shorter story arcs, though it also comfortably supports longer campaigns.

Characters gain Experience individually at the end of each Session for things such as overcoming adversity, pursuing goals, discovering important information, creating meaningful consequences, or shaping the world around them. It takes 10 Experience to level up, which will usually happen every 2 Sessions or so depending on the pace and style of play.

Experience is always awarded at the end of each Session, no matter how much has been accomplished. Each Experience trigger may be awarded up to twice per Session if it occurred in a particularly significant or repeated way.

Opportunities for gaining experience:

  • Overcame a meaningful obstacle, danger, or conflict
  • Reflected your character’s Origins, or achieved a personal goal
  • Learned, discovered, or uncovered something significant in the world
  • Expressed, challenged, or developed your character’s beliefs, personality, or relationships
  • Took a major risk, suffered consequences, or meaningfully complicated the story

When a character levels up, they gain 4 Points to spend on improving their character.

Every 3 Levels a character may also increase an attribute of STONES, SCROLLS, SWORDS OR SORCERY, by 1 or learn a new Archetype or Pathway from among the Archetypes you have learned.

Learning a new Archetype or Pathway gives you access to the full list of Abilities to learn from of the that Archetype or Pathway as well as all of the Words of Power, counting it as one of your sources.

Higher level characters gain more options and versatility, but levels intentionally have a limited impact on raw survivability or numerical dominance. A Level 1 character and a Level 10 character are still both fundamentally vulnerable — at the end of the Long Rest, everyone can only suffer 6 Harm before death becomes a very real possibility.