Pando Core Rules

Welcome to Pando! Pando is a table top role playing game focused on immersion and extensibility. This guide will provide the basics for playing the game. It is currently intended for people with past experience playing table top role playing games, and assumes the reader has some understanding of common elements of tabletop game play, but will try to clarify concepts for newcomers as well.

Gameplay in Pando revolves around players creating and progressing characters (player characters, or "PCs") throughout a narrative, with a game master ("GM") providing the narrative, circumstances, and non-player characters ("NPCs"). While playing, players can progress and shape the story through taking actions with their characters. The efficiency of these actions is variable: sometimes they work on a basic level, other times they provide excellent outcomes, and in some cases they fail to be fruitful.

This section will cover some preliminary ground, such as the game's philosophy, what to expect when playing it, general notes on how a group should approach Pando's gameplay, and an overview of the game's mechanics.

Philosophy

Pando aims to:

Immersion

With Pando, the mechanical choices available to your character should be reflective of the narrative choices being made in the game. That is, we don't want players to have to depend on their imagination to tell apart a brutish, hammer wielding warrior from an elegant, poised duelist. Those differences should express themselves in the turn-by-turn choices the players make. To that end, Pando has an action system and mechanics meant to offer depth over simplicity, within reason.

Swinging at your opponent with a warhammer will be functionally different than taking a stab with your rapier. Being sliced with a blade will impact you differently than getting smashed with a mace. Trying to persuade someone can have vastly different results depending on whether you're providing a rational argument or a passionate one. For some, a defense strategy will be to dodge incoming attacks. For others, it will be to let their armor absorb the blow.

This level of immersion in your character is Pando's most important tenet.

Alongside mechanical depth, Pando puts an emphasis on smaller numbers. Having or doing a 1 on something should always be significant. While other games might bloat their numbers as characters increase in ability, in Pando a 1 is the difference between a minor achievement and a substantial one. Spending 1 character point on progressing your character should be a notable increase in ability.

Modularity

Pando is a modular game, in which a robust core system can be applied to varying settings and stories. The contents of this guide, the Core guide, are that base system, providing everything needed for a game to function, but leaving it to game modules to provide further substance and flavor. In this guide you will find information on how to build a character, take actions, roll dice, use equipment, interact with others, and engage with the game processes.

Other modules will then provide further information, such as the Spellcasting module providing the guidelines for magic users, the Medieval module providing content for the arms and combat of the era, or the Enchanting module, providing magic items and means for characters to enchant their normal gear. Combine all three for a classic fantasy setting, exclude any that aren't of interest, or even replace with a module of your own. Or perhaps mix the magic module with the sci-fi module for something more niche. Want to play a Lovecraftian campaign? Utilize a horror module that expands on the game with the appropriate actions, skills, and items.

Mechanics Over Rules

Pando strongly prefers mechanics over rules, meaning, having a rich array of game functions that interact with each other to provide desired results, rather than using a few standalone mechanics to handle some key factors and lean on a vast set of standalone rules to fill in the gaps of how the system works.

Game Experience

Finally, Pando is intended to make it easier for gaming groups to get the experience they want. The content provided in the core and other modules isn't intended to be the limit of available choices. GMs and their players are encouraged to think of up new items, new outcomes, and so forth, as fits their style and their wants. And this needn't be in advance; outcomes, especially, can be fun to figure out on the fly.

Pando stops short of trying to define every gameplay element that follows the game's logic, and instead let gaming groups determine how things should play out. For example, Pando's action system provides easy ways to enable handedness, with a rule that increases the speed cost for actions using the character's non-dominant hand. While immersive and fairly intuitive, it's also an unnecessary level of granularity for the core rules. Pando intentionally avoids going into such granularity, preferring to let gaming groups decide on whether they want to address such things in game, and how.

Overview

Below we'll provide high-level overviews of each section to come in the guide. It's an opportunity to familiarize yourself with the way the game works while not getting into the details of the implementation.

Fundamentals

The core elements of Pando are Actions, Outcomes, Attributes, and Skills. Combined they provide the essential experience. Everything else acts as a wrapper to make these elements more meaningful, and hopefully, more interesting.

Actions represent the way players use their characters. When a player wants to do something, they have to take an action to do so. Whether this means exploring their surroundings, interrogating a suspect, or participating in a physical melee, doing so is a form of taking an action.

Some forms of actions lead to a range of outcomes--literally. Each of these actions has a related list of Outcomes possible for that action. Depending on how efficiently the character performs the action, they may be limited to simple outcomes, access truly impactful outcomes, or in challenging scenarios, possibly fail to achieve any outcome whatsoever.

Actions are also used to deal with obstacles and hazards. Obstacles are impediments or circumstances that your character has to overcome, such as locked doors, or supernatural, crippling fears. Hazards are momentary threats that a character must react to--if it is able to use an action to react--or else suffer a consequence.

When taking actions, skills are the primary element determining the degree of impact. In some cases, it falls to skills alone. In other cases, you have to use your skills in combination with your attributes to determine the outcomes. The higher the level of the skills and attributes, the better the outcomes a character can achieve.

Attributes have additional impacts on the game, though we'll discuss those in a later chapter.

Physicality: Health and Body

Pando represents a character's body and physicality through several systems.

First are the body parts, which are simplified to the following: The head, the torso, the left arm, the right arm, and the legs. The list of body parts might be different for some characters, such as those that underwent an amputation of their legs, or received a bionic implant providing an additional limb, or possibly non-human species that have a different set of body parts entirely.

Your character might receive harm to one or more of its body parts. As a body part receives more harm, it becomes harder to use. With enough harm, it becomes lame, meaning you can't use it until it's had a chance to heal for a while. With even more harm, it may become maimed, meaning permanent loss of that body part. A maimed head or torso is fatal.

The second system is the Speed system, representing how much capacity your character has to act. Some statuses and effects will cause your character to suffer fatigue, reducing your available speed. The less speed you have, the fewer actions you are able to take, meaning fewer opportunities to defend against incoming attacks, or deploy attacks of your own. A major source of fatigue is exhaustion, which results from bleeding, poison in your system, and even extremely cold environments, among other sources.

Armor can help protect you from such afflictions, reducing the amount of harm or fatigue you take. This can come at a trade off, though, as wearing heavy armors will itself reduce your speed. It's impossible to protect from everything without weighing yourself down to the point of uselessness, you'll have to carefully select what you think is the most important protections for your character.

Character Points and Equipment

Characters are created and improved through two primary means: Character Points, which can be spent to improve attributes and skills, and obtaining equipment.

When first creating a character, you will start with a given amount of Character Points (CP), as determined by the game's GM. CP can be used to increase your characters attributes and skills. As they increase, your character will achieve better outcomes at the various actions they take. As you play, your GM will provide you with additional CP. While inexperienced characters, represented by smaller amounts of total CP, may struggle to succeed consistently, more advanced character's actions are much more reliable. And as their expertise improves, not only do they become reliable, but they become reliably impressive.

Equipment are all the clothing, weapons, and miscellaneous objects your character has available. They provide access to new actions, and some can impact your skills and attributes.

Play Structure

The actual playing of Pando can take two different forms: Free play and Turn Order.

Free play allows players to act and use their characters as they like, without having to wait their turn or follow action limits. It's the recommended style of play whenever there isn't a reason to take a more structured form of play.

Turn Order provides a structured form of play for when a high level of organization is useful to streamline activity. Combat encounters are typical examples of this, but a GM may also call for turn order during exploration or social encounters if they think it appropriate. When using turn order, characters take actions one at a time, and can use interruptions on other characters turns to interfere with their goals.

Players are limited by their Speed in how many actions they can take. Players can use any action they like during their turn, and use interruptions on other players turns. The speed cost to take an action starts at 1 and increases by 1 for each additional time that same action is taken that turn. Speed regenerates at the start of a character's turn, though exhaustion will limit their available speed.

The Pando-Folk

Throughout this guide we will provide examples of the mechanics and gameplay with The Pando-Folk, a band of adventurers set to take on the world. Through their exploits, triumphs, and face plants, we'll help you better understand how Pando works and what to expect.

The Pando-Folk are composed of:

Alex, a sword-and shield warrior with a mind for logical problem solving.

Pablo, a ferocious hand-to-hand warrior and life of the party.

Charlotte, a classic rogue-type, juggling a bow, lockpicks, and chutzpah.

Ira, a medic and investigator known for their care and compassion.

In this section, we'll cover the fundamentals of Pando. We'll explore in depth the basic components of play, such as actions, attributes, dice rolling, outcomes, obstacles, and other essentials.

Actions

Generally, when doing something with your character, it will take the form of an action or an interruption. Actions are proactive measures taken in order to progress your character's goals. Interruptions are taken in reaction to situational events, such as other character's actions or environmental effects, and should not help the character in achieving their goal. Interruptions are generally only taken when using Turn Order, which we will cover later.

While Actions could apply to each and every thing a character does, in game terms, we're looking at times when a character is trying to overcome an obstacle, and/or where success in that action is not guaranteed, and the rules are used to determine the character's success. That is to say, the rules for actions here don't need to apply each time a character walks around, lifts a simple object, or writes a letter. These rules are for occasions where a character is trying to move fast enough to catch a falling object, lift an immense weight, forge a signature, or similar situation that pushes the action beyond the ordinary.

Actions can be taken as either at leisure or under pressure. At leisure actions are actions taken comfortably, with plenty of time to tackle it thoroughly and to the best effect. Under pressure actions don't have the luxury of time or comfort, and use a die roll to determine the extent of the action's effectiveness. At leisure actions can optionally be chanced and taken with a die roll, allowing for a possibly greater effect than they would otherwise be able to achieve, or possibly a worse one.

It is ultimately up to the GM whether an action is considered at leisure or under pressure, and up to the player whether an at leisure action is chanced.

At Leisure Actions

When an action is taken at leisure, it is assumed that the character taking the action has the necessary time and space to invest in the action and ensure it executes efficiently. For example, if picking a lock at leisure, then the character has time to relax, focus, and try different approaches in their effort to pick the lock. At leisure actions don't require a die roll, instead treating the situation as if the character succeeded to the best of their ability.

When an at leisure action is taken, the character's player selects a skill of the character to use for the task, the higher the level the better. The chosen skill must be relevant to the action taken, and if the GM feels the skill is unfit, may ask the player to choose a different skill. The result of the action is determined based on the skill's level. See the table on the previous page to see the impact a given level should have.

As a side note, while most at leisure actions will likely take just minutes or hours to complete, loftier actions, such as the above mentioned "creating a masterpiece musical composition" may take on the order of days or weeks, as determined by the GM, during which the character needs to be primarily occupied with completing the action.

Under Pressure Actions

When an action is taken Under Pressure, then the circumstances are such that various effects are preventing the character from giving the task their full attention. They might be under a very short time constraint, or are trying to complete the task under water, or are in the midst of a battle, or some other similar predicament which prevents them from approaching the task comfortably. Completing an action under pressure often requires a die roll, which represents how well that character succeeds at the given action in their situation.

Under pressure actions have the following characteristics:

Some actions are straightforward, with simple effects. But many actions have built-in variance in the form of Outcomes. These actions will require the player to roll dice to determine efficiency points for the action, and players can use those efficiency points to invoke their preferred outcomes. Outcomes for an action will be listed alongside that action, though GMs and players are encouraged to improvise their own outcomes if they are appropriate for the action taken.

When taking an under pressure action, the player must choose a combination of an attribute and skill to use for the action, the higher the level of each the better. The chosen attribute and skill must be relevant to the action taken, and the GM may decide that a selection isn't sufficiently relevant. Try as he might, Pablo's headbutt skill only has so many applications, and cannot be used to pick a lock (though it might serve to try and knock the door open forcefully). Characters can always resort to the Capability skill (level 1) if they have no alternative applicable skill. All characters have Capability by default.

Sometimes, the GM may decide that a given skill, although not immediately relevant, can still be used but at a penalty. In such cases, the player may use the chosen skill, but their action will be less efficient than it would normally be. It's a compromise, but sometimes still the best course of action.

The list of actions has some of the more essential actions, but it is by no means a final list of things a character can do. Players are permitted and encouraged to take whatever actions are deemed appropriate for their character, even if they have to work with the GM to figure out how that plays out, and which skills, if any, apply to that action.

Interruptions

Actions are taken by a character to accomplish a goal or achieve an effect. Interruptions are actions taken to prevent someone else from doing the same. They are reactions to someone else's action, with the intent of preventing or mitigating its effects. Blocking an attack with a shield, for example, would be an interruption.

Interruptions may have direct effects or call for a roll with outcomes. Dodge will challenge an attack on the dodger, no roll needed. Parrying, however, requires a roll, and provides the possible outcomes for those rolls.

An interruption, unless it explicitly states otherwise, can only ever prevent the effects of the action it is reacting to. They cannot achieve effects of their own. If you were to interrupt an attack by dodging, you cannot take that as an opportunity to move or take further actions. An example of an exception is Parry, which has an outcome allowing the parrier to take an action to attack the original aggressor.

Interruptions may list a specific trigger, but these are aids to help give direction on where and how to use the interruption. Generally they can be used at any time it would be deemed appropriate and possibly effective. A GM may let you use Dodge to evade falling debris, but won't likely allow using Dodge to evade brain freeze from an icy treat.

Interruptions are still actions in their own right, and so cost speed. If a character has no remaining speed, they are unable to interrupt actions. Something to be mindful of when planning your turn and deciding what you can--and can't--afford to do. More on that later.

Chancing At Leisure Actions

When a player chances an at leisure action, the action is played out as if it were an under pressure action. The player must select both a skill and an attribute and roll the dice, and the efficiency of the roll determines the degree of efficiency for that action. This can potentially result in better outcomes than using the skill alone.

However, unlike typical under pressure actions, a chanced at leisure action cannot be repeated, even if the result is lesser than it would have been had it not been chanced. The chanced at leisure represents the best this character is able to do in the current circumstance.

Challenging Actions

Sometimes an action will be challenged. This can be from a game effect like an interruption, or the GM deciding that a particular action is difficult and will be challenging to overcome. Challenges have a corresponding number, and are often expressed as "challenge the action by 2" or another number.

When an action is challenged, its effectiveness is reduced by the given number. If an action is reduced to 0 or less efficiency, it fails to achieve its goal. This applies to at leisure actions as well, reducing the effective level of the outcome.

Influence Actions

Actions to influence someone interpersonally, whether through speaking or more physical means, like a menacing glare, have two special rules:

1. These actions must always use one of the personality attributes: Rationality, Perspective, or Presence. We will delve into the specifics of those attributes later on, but for now, those attributes respectively translate into trying to influence someone through practical, reasonable arguments, through introducing a perspective that might appeal or impact the target, and through trying to awe the target with words, performance, or stature.

2. These actions are automatically challenged by the target's appropriate resistance, listed below. Resistances will be covered in depth later on in this guide.

Hazards and Obstacles

While actions are taken by characters directly, hazards and obstacles are dangers that happen to characters, and need to be dealt with. Hazards are immediate circumstances endangering your characters, such as tidal waves threatening to wash them away, or disease-ridden marshes afflicting plagues. They deliver an immediate impact, unless the characters are able to resist and mitigate the effects. Obstacles are more static, representing a circumstance that a character has to work their way out of or past, like a locked door or being gripped by another character. They require active effort from a character to be removed.

Hazards

Some game effects or circumstances will present a hazard to a character, requiring them to overcome the hazard or suffer a consequence. Typically the player is free to choose the form in which they react to the hazard, but some effects or circumstances might limit a player's options, or even require specific actions be taken. When a player chooses their action, the GM may decide that the chosen action is a difficult endeavor and challenge the action, reducing its EP.

Like actions, hazards will have a list of outcomes. Unlike actions, these outcomes are undesirable for the characters. The cheaper the outcome, the worse the effect. Characters must take under pressure actions to resist the hazard, and the more EP they generate, the more they are able to mitigate the impact of the hazard.

A character can select an outcome that costs less than their EP, if they have other ways they want to spend that EP. For example, they may use the additional EP to protect a teammate.

If the game is currently using Turn Order, reacting to the hazard will require taking an interruption (and using up speed) to do so. A player with no speed left, or who would rather reserve the speed, can opt to not react to the hazard and suffer its full effect.

Obstacles

Sometimes the game may present you with an Obstacle. Obstacles can come in any form, whether a literal physical obstacle, such as a locked door, or an affliction on your character, such as becoming stunned. Every obstacle will have a level, with easier obstacles having low levels, and more challenging obstacles getting significantly higher in level. Characters can overcome obstacles by taking actions and using the EP to deal with the obstacles. When enough cumulative EP has been spent on overcoming the obstacle it is resolved, meaning the lock has been opened, or the stunned character regains control of their faculties. The EP can be accumulated over multiple rolls.

When presenting an obstacle, the GM will specify how it limits the character(s). The obstacle may have other restrictions, such as whether the EP needs to be accumulated within a time frame. Typically this information will be made available to the players upfront, but sometimes the GM may choose for the obstacle's level and/or its restrictions to be secret, and only share that information when specific milestones are reached, or demonstrate it through context clues rather than exposition. Taking actions to assess the situation may expose any such hidden information.

Attributes

Pando characters have 7 attributes, each of which plays a significant role in a character's exploits. They are often used to determine a roll's potential (more on that later), but other game effects also refer to them directly. Each attribute is represented as a number value. 0 points in an attribute represents an inability to use that attribute. A value of 1 or 2 represents an average score. Values of 3 or greater represent a high ability with that attribute. A character's initial attributes will be determined during character creation, but players can continue to invest in attributes throughout the campaign.

The personality attributes (Rationality, Perspective, and Presence) are also used to determine the character's resistances: Awareness, Insight, and Willpower. Which attribute determines which resistance is decided on by the player when creating the character.

Below we'll explore each of the attributes. We'll reference some concepts that won't be explored until further in this guide, so don't worry if it doesn't make sense yet. We still include it here for easy future reference.

Strength represents a character's physical might. It:

Endurance measures a character's ability to withstand hardships. It:

Agility is a measure of how quickly a character can act and react. It:

Coordination represents a character's ability to make intricate hand movements. It:

Rationality is a character's capability for piecing together clues, making coherent arguments, etc. It:

Perspective measures a character's imagination and ability to approach a matter from different angles. It:

Presence is a combination of the character's awareness of its surroundings as well as its ability to command the attention of its surroundings. It:

Skills

Skills represent your character's learned abilities and talents. While attributes represent broad characteristics, skills are the collection of all the hours a character spent training, practicing, researching, or experimenting. Each skill has a level, between 1 to 5, which contributes to the efficacy of their actions.

Every character starts with the sole level 1 skill: Capability. From there, skills branch out like a tree. Capability allows a character access to all the level 2 skills. Each level 2 skill provides access to relevant level 3 skills, and similarly those level 3 skills provide access to relevant level 4 skills. Successive levels represent further and more focused training in their parent skill, so while they're a higher level skill, they're also applicable to a narrower range of circumstances. Each level 4 skill only provides access to one level 5 skill, which is mastery of that level 4 skill.

Dice Mechanics

Actions, Attributes, and Skills culminate in the game's dice mechanics. Rolling dice determines the efficiency of your action, represented by Efficiency Points (EP), and influenced by your chosen attribute and skill for the action at hand. Rolls in Pando aren't a matter of success or failure, but rather a full range of performance. On each action, EP can be spent on action outcomes, such as hitting a target with a weapon or swaying another character's attitude. The more EP you have, the more impactful your action.

When taking an action, you select one each of your attributes and skills. The selected attribute represents the maximum you can accomplish with a roll. When making a roll, you roll a number of d6 equal to the attribute's value. For example, using weapons requires Coordination, so if a character had 3 Coordination, they would roll 3d6.

The skill's level represents the likelihood of achieving the roll's fullest potential. For each die that rolls less than or equal to the skill level, you get 1 EP.

Outcomes

Actions and various usable items have outcomes, each of which costs a specified amount of efficiency points. After rolling, the player taking the action selects an outcome with a cost equal to or less than the roll's EP. Only one outcome can be selected, even if the roll generated enough EP to select multiple. The exception to this rule are outcomes marked as chainable. Those outcomes can be used multiple times, and in addition to other outcomes (even non-chainable outcomes).

Outcomes have the following characteristics:

Available outcomes are listed along with their relevant action or item, but players and GMs are free (and encouraged) to add their own.

In this section, we'll cover the various aspects of a character's physicality and health: Body parts, taking harm, suffering fatigue, gaining exhaustion, resistances, and healing.

Body parts represent a character's physicality and health. Harm is applied to body parts, impacting the effectiveness of a character's actions. Fatigue reduces character's speed, preventing them from acting. Exhaustion accrues over time, causing fatigue. Resistances are the mental faculties a character leverages to keep control and avoid falling prey to deceptions and manipulations. Healing is the means by which a character recovers from afflictions to their physical and mental health.

Body and Harm

Pando represents a character's body as being divided into multiple parts. Each body part can then be used or harmed as its own entity, impacting how effectively the character can use that body part. As more harm accrues, a body part becomes less useful.

The exact body parts of a character may vary depending on their species, as alien or fantasy races might differ from the standard humanoid. But humanoids, the most common physiology encountered, all have the same 5 body parts:

Generally, when taking an action, you will have to use one of these body parts to execute that action. If a game effect prohibits you from using a body part, such as having your arms chained to a wall, you cannot take actions requiring that body part.

Some game effects may apply harm to a particular body part. As a body part accumulates harm it becomes more difficult to use:

On top of that, a few special rules exist:

A body part cannot have more harm than the amount needed to maim it. If its harm would be increased beyond the maimed amount, it remains at the maimed amount.

Healing from harm depends on the degree of harm:

"Rest" here means the character cannot be meaningfully active during that time. Perhaps it can go for a walk, but it certainly can't go on an adventure, participate in combat, etcetera.

A character receiving active medical attention from another character with a relevant healing skill of level 3 or higher removes an additional harm during each period of rest.

Speed and Fatigue

The second health system in Pando is the Speed and Fatigue system. While taking harm can lead to big consequences that take time to heal, in a sense making it a long-term affective system, Speed and Fatigue provide a system with more immediate consequences, and more room for recovery, focusing on short term impacts and rebounds.

When playing using Turn Order (which will be explored in a later section), characters generate Speed on their turn. The more Speed a character can generate, the more actions they are able to take, and the more they are able to get done. Some game effects can reduce a character's Speed, preventing them from using that Speed on actions until they gain more on their next turn.

At the start of their turn, a character gains Speed equal to 3 plus their Agility score. They can then spend the speed on actions on their turn and on interruptions on other characters' turns.

Fatigue

Some game effects can Fatigue a character. When a character suffers fatigue, they lose that much speed, to a minimum of 0. If a character is reduced to 0 speed from fatigue, they are unable to take any actions until they regain speed. Characters naturally have Protection (Fatigue) equal to their Endurance.

A significant source of Fatigue is Exhaustion. Characters accrue points of exhaustion over time and from a variety of sources, such as bleeding, extreme cold, and sickness. When a character is given exhaustion, it will be of a certain type and value, such as "3 Exhaustion (Bleeding)" or "1 Exhaustion (Cold)".

During turn order play, at the start of each character's turn, after they regain speed, they suffer fatigue equal to their total exhaustion. For more information on speed and taking actions, see the Turn Order section.

Certain character traits or equipment may interact with exhaustion. For example, for characters in a cold environment, dressing in insulating clothing may offset the Exhaustion (Cold) they experience. Applying a bandage to someone can remove their Exhaustion (Bleeding).

Resistances

Each character has 3 forms of Resistance: Awareness, Insight, and Willpower. These act as static defenses against social actions and various game effects. They are static in the sense that the character doesn't need to act to use them. Unlike dodging an attack or blocking with a shield, actions a character has to take in reaction to events, resistances apply automatically, without an action. Social actions are automatically challenged by the appropriate resistance, and some game effects will explicitly say what happens to a character if it has sufficient resistance.

A character's Awareness, Insight, and Willpower values depend on that character's personality attributes (Rationality, Perspective, and Presence). Each resistance is assigned to a different one of these attributes, and its value is equal to the value of the assigned attribute. This selection happens during character creation and cannot be changed later. No two resistances can use the same attribute, so each attribute has to be used.

Characters with high Awareness are more conscious of their physical surroundings, from the nearby objects and terrain to small things such as body language and small shifts in temperature. They are better prepared to respond to surprises in their environment and see through attempts to intimidate. Presence influence actions are automatically challenged by the target's Awareness.

Insight represents a character's ability to see past delusions, lies, and manipulation attempts. They are aware that actions towards them can be made for various motivations, and are better prepared to deflect even rational arguments, knowing that their purpose is to manipulate. Rational influence actions are automatically challenged by the target's Insight.

Characters rich in Willpower know what they're about, what they value, and what their goals are. They can acknowledge perspectives other than their own, but don't feel any innate need to bend to those other perspectives. They can be stalwart in the face of external pressures. Perspective influence actions are automatically challenged by the target's Willpower.

Protection

Various game effects can provide a character with protection, listing what they are protecting against and by how much. An effect granting a Protection of "2 Harm" will reduce incoming harm by 2, eliminating it entirely if the harm taken is 2 or less.

Some protections only safeguard against specific types of effects. Protection such as Exhaustion (Cold) only prevents exhaustion from sources listed as Exhaustion (Cold), and won't alleviate Exhaustion (Poison) or others.

Protection is sometimes localized: If wearing a breastplate that grants protection against Harm, that protection only takes effect when the Harm would be applied to your torso. It will not prevent harm to the head, legs, etc. But some are universal. If wearing a coat providing protection against Exhaustion (Cold), that will provide protection against any Exhaustion (Cold) taken. The source of the protection will specify what is or isn't covered.

Some effects may bypass protection. In these cases, the amount bypassed will always be applied, regardless of how much protection would apply against the effect. If a character has a protection of 3 Exhaustion (Cold), and an effect applies 2 Exhaustion (Cold) bypassing 1, the effect will still apply 1 Exhaustion (Cold) to the character.

Characters are created and advanced through two mechanisms: Character Points and Equipment. Character Points are points you accrue while playing and can spend to increase your attributes and learn new skills. Equipment are various items, weapons, armors, and other resources you accrue which are utilizable by your character.

Character Points

Character Points (CP) are points that you receive when first creating your character and continue to gather while playing the game. They are the primary means to increase your attributes and gain skills, though some equipment pieces may also provide such benefits.

When creating your character, and whenever your character experiences a day of rest, you can spend any of its available CP to advance the character. You can increase an attribute to the next number (eg from 1 to 2, or from 2 to 3) or learn a new skill, as long as you have the prerequisite skill for it.

The CP cost to increase an attribute to the next value is twice the value of that next number. So to increase your Strength from 1 to 2 costs 4 CP, from 2 to 3 costs 6 CP, etc. To increase your strength from 1 to 4 would cost a total of 18 CP (4 + 6 + 8).

Learning a new skill costs an amount of CP equal to that skill's level. So a level 2 skill costs 2 CP, a level 3 skill costs 3 CP, etc. The total cost for a level 4 skill would be 9 CP (2 + 3 + 4). If you master a skill, an additional 5 CP, it would cost a total of 14 CP.

You can increase attributes as many times as you like and learn as many skills as you like during a single rest.

Equipment

Equipment can provide a wide variety of utility and abilities to a character. These are the weapons and armor you carry into battle, the tools with which you arm or disarm traps and pick locks, and more. It includes watches, phones, clothing, and just about anything that your character may come to possess that isn't intrinsically part of the character.

There's no particular framework or structure which shapes pieces of equipment in Pando. Some equipment will need to be worn or wielded. Some will provide you with actions that you can take and the outcomes for those actions, while others might provide static, ever-present effects. Some may require attribute or skill levels to use. We'll cover some of the more frequently occurring patterns here, but there's no limit to how a piece of equipment may be represented or how it affects your character. But first, let's cover some basic elements that equipment might have:

Wielded equipment needs to be actively held and engaged by a character. Such equipment will specify if it requires one or two arms to wield. An arm can only wield one item at a time.

Wearable equipment can be worn on your body. Each piece of wearable equipment will specify one or more body parts on which it is worn, and one or more apparel slots it occupies. Most equipment can only be worn on one body part, such as a helmet on the head, a bracer on the arm, etc. Some equipment, though, may be worn on multiple body parts, such as a hauberk, a single piece of armor that covers the head, torso, arms, and legs all at once. Each body part can only have one wearable item of a given apparel slot. So, for example, a character's right arm can only wear one bracer. If already wearing one, the character cannot use another wearable equipment that would cover its right arm and also has the 'bracer' apparel slot. This would also prevent the character from dressing in the hauberk described above.

Range specifies the distance in which the equipment has an effect. For example, a compound bow has a range of several hundred yards. A radio communicator can have a range of several miles. If an equipment piece doesn't have a listed range, then it is not able to be used at a distance.

Actionable equipment will provide you with actions you can take with that piece of equipment, as well as the results of the action (whether a direct effect or a roll with outcomes).

Protection equipment will provide some means of protection, reducing the effectiveness of harm, fatigue, exhaustion, or other afflictions. Each instance of Protection will list what it protects against and the value by which it reduces that effect. Armor, for example, will reduce the harm that body part takes. A coat may reduce any Exhaustion (Cold) affecting the character. Some effects will specify bypassing protection, meaning that for that effect, the protection is reduced by the given number.

Encumbering equipment, such as heavy or cumbersome items, reduce a character's max speed. Each encumbering piece of equipment will have an encumbrance value. A character wearing or wielding the piece of equipment loses max speed equal to that value.

Character Creation

A new Pando character starts with no equipment, a value of 1 in each of its attributes, and only the level 1 skill Capability. The GM of the game will then let you know what your starting resources will be.

Starting resources come in the form of Character Points, Equipment, and currency. How many of each will vary from game to game. Games starring relatively inexperienced characters may provide you with few Character Points, while games where your character should feel like a superhero will give you significantly more.

Games may start you off with an equipment template, allowing you to pick from specific sets of items, or even no equipment at all. If a game provides you with starting currency, they may allow you to purchase items for your character before starting the game proper. Or they might instead require you to spend your currency during the play sessions. Each game of Pando runs according to its own needs.

We've covered a lot of detail on what constitutes a character, taking actions, etcetera, but it's time to address how all of this fits together into a play session. Play can take the form of Free Play or Turn Order. Free Play offers a very rules-minimal experience intended to let players go about and act freely, whereas Turn Order is a mechanic-heavy tool to use when many things are happening quickly or at once, and we want to make sure that all participants (both player characters and non-player characters) have their chance to act.

Free Play

Free Play is a fairly straightforward experience. In this mode, there aren't any rules or expectations that govern who can do what and when--if something is to happen, it happens. If a player wants their character to take an action, all they have to do is announce the intent and the GM will see it through. Similarly, the GM is free to have NPCs take actions, or describe other circumstances or events taking place.

Free Play is great for general play, when the characters are out and about in town, shopping, relaxing at a camp, or partaking in other fairly low-stakes, low-adrenaline scenarios. It can also be useful for social interactions, as it allows people to talk and interact in an organic way, rather than having to wait for their turn, or be limited in what they can do. Despite this, the GM may still enforce some occasional structure, such as asking players to wait on their actions until the GM has had a chance to finish an interaction between one PC and an NPC, or some similar circumstance.

If at any point during free play a lot of things start to happen at once, such as multiple people reacting to an event, or a character beginning a combat scenario, the GM may decide to start using Turn Order.

Turn Order

With Turn Order, Pando provides a means for play in which characters can act in turns, with each having the opportunity to take actions. Most actions can only be taken on a character's turn, but Interruptions can be taken outside of a character's turn when reacting to an appropriate action by another character or circumstance. How many actions a character can take is limited through its Speed attribute.

We'll take a quick dive into the various mechanics at play in Turn Order, and then take a deeper look into each of those mechanics.

The order in which characters take turns is called the Turn Sequence. When first starting Turn Order, each character's position in the Turn Sequence is determined, and characters take turns according to that sequence. A character's place in the sequence may change, allowing them to act before others, or pushed into acting after them.

At the start of each of its turns, a character is given a certain amount of Speed it can use to take actions. Taking an action costs 1 speed, meaning the character's speed is decreased by 1 on taking that action. The speed cost of an action goes up if it has been used since the beginning of the character's most recent turn (or start of turn order, if they haven't taken a turn yet), costing 1 more speed for each previous usage. A character cannot take an action if they do not have sufficient speed for it, so a character cannot take an action costing 3 speed if they only have 2 remaining.

The Turn Sequence

When entering Turn Order, we determine the initial ordering of the turn sequence. Each character adds their Agility to their Presence, and the initial turn sequence follows from the character with the highest total to the character with the lowest total. Sometimes, when a multitude of NPCs are included in Turn Order, the GM may opt to have them all use a single turn in order to simplify things. In this case, their initial sequence position uses the average of their individual totals.

Each character starts Turn Order with speed equal to their Awareness. Since a character's speed is restored at the start of their turn, this initial speed is only useful for interruptions such as defending against other character's actions.

The turn sequence is considered to be circular: after the "last" player in the sequence takes their turn, the next turn goes to the character at the start of the sequence. If a character moves forward in the turn sequence, they move up the sequence to act ahead of the person previously ahead of them. If the character at the "start" of the sequence moves forward up the sequence, they move ahead of the "last" character in the sequence. Likewise, characters can be moved down the sequence, and if the "last" player is moved down, they will be moved to act after the "first" character.

When determining the initial turn sequence, if two or more characters are tied for their place in the sequence, the tie is broken first in favor of the character with the highest Agility value, and if still tied, then in favor of the character with the highest Presence value. If characters are still tied, each character's player rolls a d6 with the higher roll going first, and repeat until there are no ties remaining. The winner of the tie acts ahead of the characters that lost the tie.

Speed and Actions

Unlike free play, where characters can take actions without limitation, a character is limited in how many actions it can use before starting another turn. This is determined by the character's Speed, and influenced by the character's Agility, Endurance, and Exhaustion. Speed acts as a currency a character has to spend on actions. Each turn a character gets a set amount of speed, and can spend that speed to use actions.

The speed cost of an action depends on how many times the character previously used that action since the most recent start of their turn. The cost for an action is 1 speed plus 1 more speed for each previous usage. So the first time a character takes a given action after starting their turn, that action costs 1 speed. The second time they use it, it costs 2 speed. The third time 3 speed, etcetera. After the start of their next turn, it would start over and again cost 1 speed to take that action. So trying to use the same action over and over again (such as, say, only making attacks with an equipped saber) allows fewer total actions than using multiple different actions.

An action will also have its speed cost increased by 1 if the action utilizes a wounded body part. The body part must be a significant part of taking that action in order to have this effect. For example, attacking with a saber held in a wounded arm will cost an additional speed, since the arm is very meaningful to the attack. However, if it was only the character's legs that are wounded, the penalty wouldn't apply. While footwork can be considered part of making an effective strike, it's not quite significant enough where the wound will affect a slash with a saber.

Characters regain speed at the start of each of their turns, up to their Max Speed.

A character's Max Speed represents their natural limit for acting fast. It's how much the character can do given the character is fully rested and healthy. Its value is based on the character's Agility attribute, equaling to 3 + Agility. So a character with 1 Agility would have a Max Speed of 4. A character with 3 Agility would have a Max Speed of 6.

At the start of each character's turn, after gaining speed, that character suffers fatigue equal to their total exhaustion, reducing their available speed for the turn. Protection (Fatigue) will alleviate this penalty. Exhaustion can come from many sources, such as getting cut by sharp weapons, suffering from poisons, or dealing with overbearing coldness.