Turnsheeting

PCs get around 10 points of Resource (12 for New Gods) to spend in any given turn. The exact value varies based on your starting quirks and in-game events. Different types of action have different minimum power costs, as follows:

0 Points: To Discharge your Duties. If you have a Duty you must do at least 1 Duty action per turn.
1 Point: To Exercise your Rights.
2 Points: For a Mundane action.
4 Points: For a Legendary action.
8 Points: For an Epic action.

It should be stressed that these are the minimum costs for these actions: if you like, you can pay extra points to represent your character putting additional effort into them.

Be aware: Often you'll get discounts towards the Resource cost for various actions. There's two things to remember: firstly, Resource discounts never stack. Secondly, unless you're discharging your Duty, there is always a minimum cost of 1 point of Resource per action. If your discounts bring the price lower than that (for example, if you have a discount of 2 for Violent actions so Mundane Violent actions cost 0), the additional points go into Overspend (so a Violent PC always gets at least 1 point of overspend in Mundane Violent actions).

The different sorts of Actions are defined as follows:

Duties are things your character has to do as a function of their Estate or of the Duty quirk. A Duty is a task, the responsibility for which is given to a single god, which must be completed on a regular basis if Creation is not to fall apart at the seams. For example: it costs 0 points for someone possessing the Estate of the Sun to chart the course of the Sun across the sky, since this is the Duty of the God of the Sun. (It would cost much more for someone who was trying to attain the status of Sun-God - if you don't have the Estate yet, you don't have the Duty.)

Rights come from Estates or from individual Quirks and always have Duties attached. They are the perks which come with the position, the rewards that Creation gives you for fulfilling your role in it. Exercising them costs only 1 point.

Sometimes your Right and your Duty will be the same thing - for example, it is the Right and Duty of the Court rulers to rule their Courts. When this thing happens, the action counts as exercising a Right if it's for the personal benefit of the God in question, or the advancement if the God's plans. It counts as exercising a Duty if the God has to do it in order to do his job properly. Duties are things which you are obliged to do as a result of your position, Rights are things which you do off your own bat. For example, a Court ruler marshalling the armies of the Court in order to defend it against attack would be fulfilling his Duty, a Court ruler who marshalled them in order to pursue an uppity tree-sprite across the countryside would be exercising his Rights.

All actions which don't involve Rights or Duties fall into one of three categories: Mundane, Legendary, or Epic. Note that the difference in point costs reflects the fact that these are distinct types of action - it does not reflect the amount of effort put into them. A 4-point Legendary action is not the same thing as a Mundane action you've put 4 points into.

Mundane actions are things that you could imagine mortals doing - obviously, Gods tend to be much better at these things than most mortals are. A Mundane action is something can be anything from leading an army to advising a king, to smithing a sword, to Challenging a mortal to a weaving contest or a giant to a drinking contest. Mundane actions cost a minimum of 2 points. Mundane actions cannot lead to gods being harmed: you cannot cause injury to a God with Mundane actions, you can't end up hurting yourself if one of your Mundane actions goes wrong, unless you do something truly daft like "walk into the maw of the Unreal and dare them to attack me".

Legendary actions are things which no mortal could ever do without the aid of some very powerful magic indeed, and more often than not the aid of a god as well. These are potentially limitless in number and, in keeping with genre, are determined largely by what seems to work at the time. The archetypal Legendary Action is turning yourself into a swan/shower of gold/cup of tea in order to seduce somebody. Turning the unfortunate woman who beat you at your Mundane action weaving contest into a spider is also a Legendary action. They cost a minimum of 4 points. Legendary actions, like Mundane actions, cannot lead to gods being harmed seriously, unless you do something silly like "turn into a pig, walk into the maw of the Unreal and dare them to attack me".

Epic actions are full on "steal the sun from the sky" effects. No mortal can attempt them without divine backing, even with divine backing very few mortals can even survive trying them, and they're a serious buisiness even for Gods. Levelling mountains, sinking islands, destroying kingdoms and cities in rains of fire and creating an entirely new sentient species all fall into "epic" territory. Epic actions cost a minimum of 8 points. There is an inherent danger to Epic actions: it is possible to severely injure and even kill a god in the course of an Epic action, and if your Epic action goes drastically wrong you may even die.

You can have as many turnsheet actions as you like, so long as you have the Resource to pay for them. Be aware that this is a crazy avant-garde experiment on the part of the GM team which we may suspend if people start taking the piss - no turnsheets with 3000 actions each tangentially relevant to your Duty, every one of those actions will fail. Some interesting things you might want to keep in mind.

Overspend: You can, if you wish, spend more Resource on an action than is necessary, to represent your PC putting more effort into it. This will help if you should come into competition with anybody (see below).

Multiple Types of Action at Once: You might want to turnsheet seducing somebody (Mundane) whilst transformed into a Swan (Legendary), or having the contingency "Turn her into a spider" (Legendary) "If I lose the Spinning Contest" (Mundane). When this happens, don't pay for several different types of action, just the cost of the most expensive type of action involved. So, for example, in both the above examples you would pay the cost for a Legendary action (plus overspend if you wish).

Underestimating the Challenge: You think that you've agreed to a normal drinking Contest (Mundane), when in fact your wily opponent has connected the end of your vessel to the Ocean (Epic). Under these circumstances, you fail. You've been tricked, and trickery is the great leveller.

Cost Reductions: Many Quirks (usually Nature quirks) will reduce the cost of actions in certain circumstances. The cost of actions can never be reduced below 0. (see below)

Cooperative actions: All PCs collaborating in the action will have to pay the normal Resource cost, but any advantages the PCs have (due to Quirks, Natures or Overspend) will stack. Dragon-fighting posses tend to be more successful if most of the members have some skills useful to dragon-fighting, after all, and if someone is really quite poor at dragon-fighting (ie, has a nature which gives them penalties to the action) they're going to be more of a hindrance than a help.

Competition: Is always a messy thing in turnsheeting-based systems. Here's how we intend to deal with it.

When two Gods are competing, or a god is competing against a particularly unusual mortal hero (we're talking unusual in the "this guy's a demigod" or "he's got serious magical backing, or another god giving him support" sense), only one can prevail. To determine who wins out, the GM team will compare the following:

Greater Action Trumps Lesser: An Epic action will always trump a Legendary one, a Legendary action a Mundane one. Duties are considered equivalent to Epic actions, Rights to Legendary actions for the purposes of this.

Compare Points If both sides are using the same type of action (or equivalent) then the GM team will sigh deeply, make more coffee, mutter about how bloody long the GM meeting is taking, and start stacking up points on both sides according to the following:

• Overspend: Each side counts its total overspend as a point in its favour. If Wart spends 4 points of power on the Mundane action "buy jam from the shops in order to fuel my shameful habit", and Joe spends 2 points on the action "keep Wart out of the jam shop, for I fear that a jammed-up Wart will be invincible", it's +2 in Wart's favour.
• Nature: Any relevant Nature quirk will add a bonus here, usually +3. For example, the "Affinity for Jam" Nature will help Wart get past Joe and into the safety of the jam shop.
• Skill: Add the value of your Mundane Skillset Quirk here, if it's relevant. If Joe is a skilled jam-denier, he'll have an advantage.
• Other, by Circumstance: Usually this will add up to a +1 to +5 for one side or the other depending on precisely what is going on. If Joe has come up with a fiendishly clever plan to keep Wart out of the jam shop, Wart will be at something of a disadvantage.

Gaining and Losing Resource: Resource does not carry from turn to turn, so it can't be saved up. It can, however, be gained and lost in a number of ways.

• Resource Ties: At character generation, or during play if they so wish, a character may invest some of their essence into something (this is represented in the system as tieing their Resource to that thing). Usually this "something" will be their Cult, their Estate, a hero they favour or whatever, but it could be any number of things. This is a double edged sword, since a Resource Tie cuts both ways. Please note that while many Gods are Resource-tied to their Cults, this is not the same as the sub-Pratchett idea that Gods only exist so long as people believe in them. Terry Pratchett is a fine man and writes excellent books, but they aren't the be all and end all of alternative theology.

• Gaining and Losing Estates: Gain an estate in play, and you gain a bonus of 3 points. Lose an estate and you lose a similar amount. Simple as that.

• Failure to Discharge Duties: Duties, let's face it, are a pain in the arse. Sometimes you may be tempted to ignore your Duties if there's a big, important thing which you would like to go and do instead. If you deliberately do not discharge your duties in any turn, you can get a one-off bonus of 5 points of Resource to use in that turn.

  There is a price to pay for this, however. After any turn in which you fail to discharge your Duties, you lose a point of Resource. Fail two turns running and you lose the Estate or Rights the Duty comes with (if any), with all that entails.

  Be warned! These are only the system-related consequences of failing in your Duty. There may be IC trouble as well. Neglecting your Duty undermines the efforts of all the gods to stop Creation falling to bits: if the other gods find out you've been slacking off you'll be in everyone's bad books, and unless your Duty is very obscure it's likely someone will notice.

  Furthermore, even if you don't understand why killing ten kittens at midnight every Halloween stops the world collapsing, it's safe to assume that there's a very good reason they have to be splatted. If you don't pull your weight you may find that what was something of a chore ends up becoming a serious problem - at the GMs' discretion this may require more Resource points than usual to sort out. Them kittens is vicious.

• Sacrifices: Some but by no means all Gods can draw power from accepting sacrifices. There's a Quirk for it.

• Other things: There's probably a bunch of other ways to do it as well. Come up with something cool and we can talk.

A Sample Turnsheet

Whenever somebody asks us a question about turnsheeting from now on, we will update the sample turnsheet, so that as the game goes on it should provide answers to more and more of your questions...

1: I will lead the dogs into battle against the armies of the cats personally (Mundane), hacking down cat-people left, right and centre. Should the battle go against us, I will smash the ground with my great mace Barker, in order create a huge rift between the feline and canine forces, so we can make our escape (Legendary). Resource spent on this action: the most expensive type of action involved in this is Legendary, I could buy this for 2 points since I have the Violent nature but I want to put some overspend into this action, so I will spent 4 Resource (2 for the Violent Legendary action, plus 2 overspend - this accounts for all the Resource in Barker this turn). The God of Mice should also be turning up - Frank told me over e-mail he'll be putting a couple of points of overspend into the action, so hopefully we'll beat the God of Cats.

2: I discharge my duty and fetch the Sacred Slippers for the God of the Hearth. (Duty action, no overspend - 0 Resource spent.)

3: I feel that mortals have betrayed the sacred covenant between men and dogs. It's time, therefore, for dogs to rise up and slay their human masters. This is going to be an Epic action, since I want to help the dogs of the world rise up and become masters of the humans. I will do this by visiting every dog in the world in the dead of night, licking them once to invest them with the free will and intelligence they gave up when they entered the service of men, and then giving them each a sword, a pistol, and a pouch of gold shillings (the tokens the dogs gave the humans at the beginning of things to signify their surrender). I will also come to the rescue of any dog who meets resistance from his master. (Epic action, no overspend, 8 Resource spent.)

4: A mundane action this time: I break into the palace of the Mayor of Tower Hamlets and try and find any evidence he's been talking to the Unreal. (Mundane action, 2 points of Resource spent.)