The Wyrd Abacus underpins the stories told in Solemn Vale’s nexus of the weird and the horrible. This game system serves as the bones upon which Solemn Vale’s flesh is draped. It facilitates the narrative of your own journey through the seething cauldron of both occult and entirely human nastiness that lies just beneath the town’s placid, bucolic veneer.
The Wyrd Abacus uses attribute pools, dice and a simple bidding mechanic to support the flow of the fiction as each story unfolds. As characters become more embroiled in the blood, fear and witchcraft of Solemn Vale, they risk being caught in the threads of the Wyrd itself – a force of destiny and fate. When faced with threats and challenges, you can draw upon the Wyrd to tilt the odds in your character’s favour, but beware; the consequences of doing so will linger, risking outcomes both fair and foul.
To play through a Solemn Vale story using the Wyrd Abacus, you will need:
While a regular Solemn Vale story has a narrator at the helm, you can also play the game without any narrator at all. The game proceeds through a series of scenes, with Wyrd rolls helping shape the direction of the fiction as you go.
Not every tale will be suitable for this purely player-driven approach to the narrative. Narrator-less play requires buy-in from all involved to work well. Without a narrator, the actions of Solemn Vale’s denizens are entirely down to the choices of the players and the whims of the Wyrd dice.
Solemn Vale is intended to be run as single stories, with the players generating their characters specifically for that tale. The story might play out in the course of a single sit-down session or it could run across several sessions. The game is aimed at specific, focused arcs, rather than supporting a longer chronicle or campaign.
Here follows a quick summary of terms used in the Wyrd Abacus system. You do not need to learn these, but this list may help provide clarity as you read through the rules and encounter references to sections you have not reached yet.
During a game of Solemn Vale, you will:
Each existing story in Solemn Vale indicates the key locations, denizens and agendas involved in the particular game at hand. A story may provide a set of specific scenes to play through or could offer a more freeform approach as to how it unfolds within the community of Solemn Vale. Stories come with suggested character concepts or origins that will best match the narrative at work.
Each story also has a set of overarching stage rules affecting it. The distinct mechanical elements that may recur across several scenes, play a key role in how the game unfolds or otherwise are core to its concept or theme. These rules set the stage, so to speak. They combine with any stage rules for locations, denizens or other effects at work to create the challenges in each scene. In the Appendix you can find a wide range of stage rules to support play.
Some examples of possible stage rules might be:
In Solemn Vale, each player takes control of a single character, roleplaying their personality and choices. The player decides how the character tries to make their way through the unfolding horror of the situation they are in.
To build a character, you decide on the concept, assign abilities and choose facets for each ability.
The concept is the heart of the character. It is who they are, what they want and why they are in Solemn Vale. It is that most terrible of choices, the character’s name. The concept underpins how the character will act in the narrative of the story.
It is important to pick a concept with the story in mind. A tale of hapless hitchhikers stumbling upon a remote town as the mist rolls in off the moors will need a different cast than a story of backstabbing, envy and occult transgression among the local parish flock.
Sample character concepts include:
This is not an exhaustive list. It is just a quick-fire selection of possibilities to help stir your imagination.
It is a good idea to create characters who have pre-existing connections to one another, even if your characters come from an infinite variety of disparate backgrounds. The story will probably be more compelling if they have good reason to interact at a deeper level than just-met acquaintances. It will also make things easier when it comes to figuring out why your characters are all willing to work together rather than go their own ways – and making that happen is your responsibility as a player, not the narrator’s.
Even if you are playing in a story that pits the characters directly against one another, personal connections will make the resulting conflict a much richer tale.
If your group agrees to it, here is a potential optional rule your characters can benefit from when recovering spent ability points; see Recovering Ability Points on p. 40. During character creation, choose another character in the group and determine how your character knows that person and what sort of strong reaction they have to them. Whether it is friendship, bitterness, rivalry, protectiveness or anything else in the gamut of human emotion. At the end of a scene, if the group agrees that your character strongly drew on that connection to help achieve their goals, regain one additional spent point in any ability of your choice.
Each character has three abilities: Body, Mind and Soul. Each of these has a numerical value assigned, which indicates the starting and maximum number of points the character possesses in that ability and dictates the size of any influence rolls made with it.
You have 15 points to spread between the three abilities. You can assign a minimum value of 3 and a maximum value of 9 for any single ability. Note that having a high value does not necessarily mean the character is strong, brave, smart or the like, although that may be the case. Rather, a high value means that, narratively speaking, the character possesses a great deal of capacity for overcoming challenges of that kind, even if in non-traditional ways.
Body deals with the physical challenges of Obstruction, Pursuit and Threat. Body is likely to be needed for grappling with a furious denizen, shoving a heavy barrier out of the way in a hurry, or running from an angry bull in a field.
Mind deals with the mental challenges of Logic, Pressure and Wits. Mind is likely to be needed for puzzling through a devious cipher, convincing an obstinate denizen to help, or quickly spotting a clue in the environment.
Soul deals with the spiritual and occult challenges of Foreboding, Invocation and Taint. Soul is likely to be needed for gathering the courage to overcome fear, grappling with the occult forces of a spell and resisting the tempting corruption of Solemn Vale’s dark powers.
When you note down your character’s ability scores, keep a space next to them where you can record their current number of points. At the beginning of the game, they have ability points equal to their score, but as the story progresses, they will expend and regain ability points to overcome challenges.
Mark a circle, box or other indicator next to each ability’s score. If the character has the ability scratched out due to the consequences of a failed challenge or the influence of the Wyrd, fill the circle in to mark its damaged state.
Finally, pick 2 facets for each ability. A facet is a brief description that adds depth and detail to your character.
A facet does not have to be positive in nature. A character might be athletic or quick-witted but being clumsy or aloof can add just as much to the story.
By default, facets do not have a mechanical effect in the game system. You might decide, as a group, to use the facet recovery optional rule, however. See Recovering Ability Points, on p. 40, for more information.
A selection of example facets can be found in the Appendix.
Once you have created your characters, take some time to flesh out their context. Do any of them know each other before the story begins, whether as friends, rivals or acquaintances? Do they possess any connections with Solemn Vale itself? What are the specifics of their immediate situation? A family whose car has broken down while passing the town on the way to somewhere else will have a different attitude to Solemn Vale than a group who have purposefully come to the town without any such mishaps.
You may optionally choose to begin with a single point of Wyrd in your character’s personal Wyrd pool. This reflects an existing entanglement with the mysteries of Solemn Vale and could bode for good or for ill.
Solemn Vale is a game where the story matters most. You will likely be cheering your particular character on through the horror that unfolds, and that is great! However, the game is not really about winning on a personal level – it is about seeing how events unfold and what fates befall the characters.
This means terrible things may happen to your character. They may be injured; their soul be tainted or become ensnared by the Wyrd. If your character suffers in this way, it is not a failing on your part. Rather, it is an opportunity to explore the role of the character as they struggle through such calamity. Setbacks and disasters help bring the story alive and provide everyone at the table with a fulfilling experience, even if some of the characters involved do not make it to the end of the tale!
A game of Solemn Vale begins with an opening scene and, as the story progresses, the characters will move from one scene to the next until the story concludes. The narrator keeps oversight of the story’s progression and how the denizens and environs of Solemn Vale change as the game continues, but the players also participate heavily in detailing how the narrative unfolds.
A scene occurs when something narratively important is happening in the story and will often feature one or more challenges to overcome. The game assumes that when one scene is resolved, the narrator and players will move the action onto a new scene; see Between Scenes on p. 37 for situations where that is not the case.
To set the scene, the players first decide which characters are present.
It is not necessary to have every character present in one scene. However, if the characters are split off doing various different things, the narrator might choose to run one overarching scene. They could flick the focus of attention between the different characters as they tackle whatever challenges they are present to deal with.
The narrator then assembles the scene’s Wyrd pool and lets the players know of any relevant and evident stage rules at play within the scene.
A scene usually involves one or more challenges. A given element of the scene might contribute several challenges at once. Each challenge has a value assigned to it, indicating the numerical value that a challenge roll must equal or beat to overcome it. Challenges are divided between nine types of obstacle, each associated with one of the three abilities.
The challenges of Body are Obstruction, Pursuit and Threat.
Obstruction is a physical barrier or impediment of some kind. It might be a heavy door that must be bypassed, solid chains shackling the character or the hard work of digging up a fresh grave to discover just who was really buried there.
Pursuit is a challenge of physical swiftness and movement. It might be pursuing (or fleeing from) a denizen, running a race, hiding from a hunter or trying to crank the motor fast enough to get the engine started before the Night Hound arrives.
Threat is direct danger of a physical kind. It might be struggling with a knife-wielding denizen, trying to avoid getting shot by an angry farmer with a shotgun or bashing the squire over the head with the bust of his ancestor.
The challenges of Mind are Logic, Pressure and Wits.
Logic is a challenge of intelligence. It might involve figuring out the pattern behind the murders, deciphering a code or conducting an investigation.
Pressure is a challenge of social interaction – putting pressure on people to do what you want. It might involve manipulating the vicar, charming the shopkeeper or shouting down the angry mob.
Wits is a challenge of perception and swift reactions. It might require spotting a hidden clue, identifying the figure fleeing in the dark or figuring out that the Vicar is lying.
The challenges of Soul are Foreboding, Invocation and Taint.
Foreboding is a challenge of fear and determination. It might be finding the courage to enter the dark woods, fighting down the paranoia fanned by the cult leader’s demagoguery or holding your shit together in the face of the abattoir-like basement of a demented killer.
Invocation is a challenge of occult control. It might be incanting a spell from an old book, attempting to speak the Seven Names of the Black Beast to fend off a monster or attuning oneself to the strange energies that indicate a dark rite performed previously in the location.
Taint is a challenge of resisting corruption. It might be resisting the tainted magic of the Old Witch, fending off a warping occult infection or holding back the desire to just give in to the monster’s whispers and embrace the darkness.
As the events within the scene unfold, the narrator will place down various challenges on the abacus and indicate their value, as well as any immediately relevant stage rules associated with them. A scene might begin with no evident challenges, could involve tackling several challenges at once or require the characters to overcome a series of challenges in turn.
As an example of how challenges within a scene might play out, imagine that the characters seek to confront the Old Witch in the Dark Forest. It is nighttime, but the characters are desperate to stop the Old Witch soon so they press on regardless of the gloom. To find the courage to even enter the midnight woods, the narrator tells the players their characters must overcome the challenge of the Dark Forests’ Foreboding rating. This has its value increased due to the time of day. Having managed to find the bravery between them, the characters face down the Old Witch, whose terrifying aura and dark sorcery imposes challenges of Foreboding, Threat and Taint. Upon attempting to escape the twisting paths of the Dark Forest, a Wyrd roll catches several of the characters within a thorny maze, requiring they overcome challenges of Obstruction, Threat, or Logic to bypass its tearing thorns.
Solemn Vale provides various premade denizens and dangers with challenge values for a narrator to use. However, you may want to create your own story or need to create new challenges off the cuff as the narrative goes in directions that the story has not predicted. When this happens, what values should you be using for new challenges?
A challenge with a value of 2 to 3 is relatively trivial; without spending any meaningful effort, a character will overcome it more often than not. A town drunk beyond his wits who wants a brawl, a crossword puzzle that actually hides a meaningful clue or gathering the courage to enter an eerily abandoned building during the daytime. These could all be examples of challenges in this range. The players may consider just taking the luck of the dice rather than spending ability points to ensure they pass, but failures do happen and can sap precious Wyrd points from the scene pool, making later rolls riskier. A player can draw a Wyrd point from the scene pool to alter a challenge roll.
Values of 4 to 6 pose a genuine obstacle or threat where the players will likely consider spending ability points to ensure they can overcome it. However, it still lies within the realm of success just on pure luck. A determined but not particularly skilled cultist, a tricky lock, or resisting a malevolent but lesser curse are all examples of challenges in this range.
Values of 7 and above; the players have to spend ability points to have a chance of overcoming the challenge. Here, you are looking at challenges that are genuinely difficult, such as dangerous occultists, heavily ciphered texts or soul-draining incantations. The most potent challenges have a value of 10 or more.
Relatively Trivial - 2 to 3.
Genuine Obstacle - 4 to 6.
Difficult Obstacle - 7 to 9.
Potent Obstacle - 10+.
Note: Regardless of how high a challenge’s value is, if the characters possess enough ability points, they will be able to overcome it with certainty. The crucial question then becomes how much risk they are willing to take in doing so, as those valuable ability points could potentially save them in a later scene. Your goal in setting challenge values is not to witness the characters fail, but rather to provide players with meaningful choices about how much they are willing to invest for success.
While the narrator can present a single challenge to the players just by announcing the challenge and its value, a scene can get quite complex with several denizens, elements and stage rules in play. In these circumstances, trying to keep track of everything verbally might become confusing and difficult.
You can manage challenges on the Abacus by tracking them with cards, like the blank templates in this book (which you can find in the Appendix). Write the name or source of the challenge on the card, along with its challenges and their values and place the card down so that everyone can see it.
To resolve a challenge, one of the players attempts a challenge roll; rolling one die with the aim of matching or exceeding the value of the challenge in question. This may represent that player’s character trying to overcome the challenge or it could be that several characters are working in tandem. If multiple characters are acting together, the narrative will generally suggest a primary or leading character. The lead character’s player would usually roll the die, but the players can freely decide among themselves who takes the physical action of throwing it should they wish.
Before throwing the die, the players can choose to assign ability points to the roll and boost the outcome. Every ability point assigned increases the result on the die by 1. Any player whose character is involved in the attempt to overcome the challenge can spend ability points in this way. There is no limit to how many points can be spent in one go. Some challenges may have a high enough value as to require the spending of ability points for any chance of succeeding at all.
Normally, a player can only assign points from the ability associated with the challenge type in question. If the characters are brawling with a denizen in a Threat challenge, for example, they can assign points of Body but not Mind or Soul. However, a player can take a single point from the scene Wyrd pool to allow their character to spend points from a different ability on a single challenge, as long as it makes narrative sense. Faced with a complex puzzle-lock posing a Logic challenge, perhaps one strong character decides to try and brute-force the mechanism, taking a Wyrd point and spending points from Body rather than Mind.
The Wyrd also offers a means to influence the attempt even if a character is not present at all. A player can take a single point from the scene Wyrd pool to allow their character to assign points from a relevant ability into the effort despite being elsewhere. As with using an alternate ability, this needs to make narrative sense and be justified by the player. You could flash back for a moment to a discussion before the scene began where one character gave the other some advice or a specific tool for the job, or you could decide a wound inflicted by the character on a denizen the others are now struggling with was more serious than originally appeared, for example.
It is even possible to use both of these options together, taking two points from the Wyrd pool to allow a character who is not present in the scene to contribute via a different ability than the challenge would normally require.
Once points are assigned, you make the roll. If the sum of the value rolled and the points assigned is equal to or greater than the challenge rating, you overcome it. Players can then narrate how their characters overcome the challenge in question, with details added or adjustments made by the narrator as appropriate.
If the roll fails, you have a second chance to overcome the challenge by drawing on the power of the Wyrd. For every point of Wyrd that any involved character takes from the scene’s Wyrd pool, add 1 to the result on the die after it has already been rolled.
If the roll failed, and the players choose not to draw on the Wyrd, or if too little Wyrd remains in the scene’s pool, the challenge has not been overcome. The narrator details the consequences of failing the challenge.
Any ability points spent on a challenge roll are lost, whether the roll is successful or not. It is possible to regain expended points later. You will need to keep track of your character’s current and maximum ability points as the game progresses.
Depending on the scene, the stage rules, and the narrator’s decision, the players may face complications as to how they approach challenges. Some may be sequential, where one challenge must be overcome before another can be tackled; the obstruction of an ancient door to the barrow mound must be pried open before the seething darkness within can be faced. Powerful denizens or fiendish puzzles with several challenge types may need each complication to be overcome before they are resolved or defeated. Alternatively it may be enough to handle just one or two; escaping the Night Hound via its Pursuit challenge keeps a character safe from having to tangle with the Threat challenge of its vicious teeth.
Challenges may have other triggers that affect their success or failure, outside of the characters making a challenge roll to overcome them. For example, if the characters have not diffused the old unexploded ordnance before a Wyrd roll comes up with a 6, it could go up in fire and smoke and causes a character’s Body to be scratched out regardless of how the rest of the scene’s challenges are going.
When adding a challenge into a scene, you are presenting the players with an obstacle that they must attempt to overcome, narrating the consequences thereof. A challenge represents the entirety of that particular obstacle; the Wyrd Abacus is not attempting to simulate a round-by-round, blow-by-blow conflict. Fighting an angry resident with a knife might be a Threat challenge to deal with in its entirety; the players will not be rolling to dodge or beat him down several times in a scene. The particulars of the fight come out in the descriptions and the roleplay, rather than through specific actions being given mechanical heft within the system.
Failing a challenge can unleash consequences on the characters. So can failing to tackle a challenge at all. The flow of the narrative and the guidance of the narrator will suggest when and how a particular challenge should inflict consequences.
Failure and consequences can take several forms.
Stage Rules: Particular stage rules may interact with consequences. For example, if the characters fail to stop a bloody-handed murderer from killing again. Her Kill Count might go up by 1; and whenever the result of a Wyrd roll is equal to or less than her Kill Count, another denizen is injured, killed or turned away from the characters.
A failed challenge may inflict several kinds of consequences at once. Crashing a car could well inflict the narrative consequences of the car being wrecked, a substantial amount of Body damage and a Wyrd roll to see whether the characters attract the attention of the mundane authorities or altogether weirder antagonists.
If a character would suffer a consequence that scratches out an ability they have already had scratched out, the character has been defeated. They are dead or permanently maimed; they are convinced the cult is right or so completely flummoxed by the mystery they cannot be convinced from their false conclusions; they are a gibbering wreck or they have fallen completely to corrupting taint.
Damage generally should not be the sole consequence of a failure. This is to avoid putting the players in a position where they should game the system. They might be tempted to try to estimate whether overcoming a challenge successfully will cost more ability points than just letting it fail and soaking up the damage instead. You can couple it with other ramifications to keep the story interesting and moving forward.
In general, damage should be equal to about half the value of the challenge in question, but scale it appropriately to reflect particularly dangerous challenges.
At the beginning of each scene, the narrator assembles a Wyrd pool equal to the number of characters plus one. It is a good idea to represent this pool as something the players can see and interact with, such as beads in a bowl that everyone can reach.
A player can draw Wyrd points from the scene pool and add it to their character’s personal pool to do any of the following:
At the end of the scene, all remaining Wyrd points in the pool are lost, it is refreshed when the next scene begins. Characters’ personal Wyrd pools remain, however, and will likely rise throughout the game as the players draw further on the Wyrd pool.
The action and story in a game of Solemn Vale focuses around the scenes, but sometimes brief interludes or interactions that do not feature meaningful challenges may be necessary. The characters may want to discuss their next moves, plan ahead or perform some minor and unchallenging actions to get more information or figure out where to go next.
Characters never face challenges or experience consequences between scenes; if such a situation arises in the narrative where they would face a challenge, it becomes a new scene. The characters cannot access the scene Wyrd pool between scenes.
In certain situations, an encounter or event may present a challenge, while in others it might not. For instance, in a game centred around paranoia and the dynamics amongst townsfolk, a trip to the pub to sound out rumours could entail Pressure, Wits, and Foreboding challenges. The characters would have to extract information, discern truth from falsehoods, and navigate without offending the locals. In another game with different themes, the narrator and players might agree that it should just be a quick influence roll with Mind, glossing over the minutiae of small talk so they can move onto the scenes they are really excited for.
If the need arises to determine an outcome between scenes, it always uses an influence roll as detailed on the following page, whether an ability roll or a Wyrd roll.
The narrator may want to determine which character is affected by a particular twist of the narrative or to pose a minor contest which does not warrant a challenge but could shape the outcome of the current scene. This is done via influence rolls, based on either abilities or the Wyrd.
When the narrator calls for an influence roll, you assemble as many dice as your character has in the particular value at hand. Roll the dice and note the highest value on any die as the result. If a tiebreaker between players with the same result is necessary, use the number of times the highest value came up in the pool.
The narrator might use influence rolls in the following circumstances:
Influence rolls for abilities always use a character’s initial ability value, not their current total of points in the ability. Even if a character with Mind 6 has already spent three points to meet challenges in the story so far, she still rolls 6 dice on any influence roll with Mind.
If an influence roll would be made with a trait that is at 0 – for example, a character making a Wyrd roll before acquiring any Wyrd points at all – treat their result as having rolled a 1.
Characters may clash during the course of a Solemn Vale story, but the assumption is that the players will generally be working together to move through the narrative. Sometimes it may still be necessary to determine who comes out on top when two characters conflict, particularly for stories that intentionally support some level of player-versus-player competition as part of their arc.
A given story may have one or more specific stage rules relating to this sort of inter-character conflict. As a general rule, use an influence roll on a relevant ability for the characters involved, with whoever rolls the highest value winning.
The results of this kind of conflict should generally be narrative. One character, screaming in terror, breaks free of another who is trying to restrain him and runs off into the night; or the winner is the one who manages to seize the knife in a scuffle. A character might try to deliberately attempt to render a challenge more dangerous – by betraying their friends and aiding an enemy or attempting to slow down their rival investigators by putting more obstacles in the way of the goal for example. In this case you can increase the challenge’s value by the number of 6s the character achieved on the influence roll.
In some circumstances a character is defeated and becomes an antagonistic denizen of Solemn Vale. In such circumstances, where a former ally is now a bloodthirsty cultist or is convinced the others are all mad conspiracy theorists, the narrator can quickly determine the appropriate value of a challenge by simply matching its value to one of the character’s former ability scores.
Characters can regain spent ability points over time. At the end of each scene where your character has faced at least one challenge, you pick a single ability and restore one of the character’s spent points in that ability.
If a character has an opportunity to properly rest and recuperate, such as through a good night’s sleep or a longer period of down-time, you may also make an influence roll in the relevant ability and regain an additional ability point for every 6 on the dice.
A character cannot regain spent points for an ability that has been scratched out. Treating an ability that has been scratched out requires the intervention of specific denizens, a visit to a specific location in Solemn Vale or particular stage rules. Treating scratched out Body requires serious medical attention, for example.
If a character would have an ability scratched out when it is already in that state, the character is defeated. They are no longer under the control of a player, although they may still play a part in the story depending on the nature of their defeat. The player rolls the defeated character’s Wyrd pool; if the result is a 6, the character will become a significant impediment for the survivors in some way. It might be that the character joins the enemy, obliviously spreads clues as to the remainder of the group’s activities or their bloody body parts keep mysteriously turning up in decidedly compromising situations. Perhaps they haunt the nightmares of their former comrades, or loudly declaim them as frauds in the town pub.
If your character is defeated, you have a few choices on how to proceed. If appropriate, you may want to create a new character or adopt one from the cast of denizens involved in the story thus far. If the story is short or the end is approaching, you may simply want to sit back and watch the rest of the events unfold, offering suggestions to shape the narrative.
Alternatively, you may participate through the Wyrd. You have two Wyrd points each scene you can spend in the same ways as are usually available to a player, but without adding to any character’s personal Wyrd pool. You can spend them on the behalf of other players’ characters, if they agree. This can be appropriate even if the defeat took the form of a character falling to corruption and darkness; they may now serve as antagonists, but perhaps a remainder of humanity or camaraderie causes them to stay their hand from their former fellows at a crucial moment.
Wyrd rolls are always influence rolls and will occur frequently throughout most stories. They are a very important part of the game and serve a key role in affecting the players’ decisions in drawing from the Wyrd Pool.
Wyrd rolls are used to determine how the Wyrd influences the characters and the story. Wyrd rolls determine which characters are targeted by dark powers or caught by narrative twists. They give the narrator guidance into how the denizens and environment of Solemn Vale react to the tale unfolding in its midst.
Sometimes, a high Wyrd can be beneficial. Getting a high result on a Wyrd roll could draw a character to a location of narrative and occult importance or it could shroud them from detection by malign sorcery. Other times, it can bring about doom, picking out a character as the suitable sacrifice that the cultists are looking for or letting them hear the siren song that mortal ears are usually safe from. A Wyrd roll may also serve to fork the narrative in some way, rather than being strictly good or bad. For example, if the characters have drawn too much attention to themselves, the results of the group’s Wyrd rolls may determine whether it is the mundane police who arrive or if darker forces begin to show an interest.
The narrator will call for Wyrd rolls throughout the game, but stories always end with a final roll of each character’s Wyrd pool. Depending on the story, this may directly influence the climax of the tale. The accumulated Wyrd of preceding scenes may be needed to control the power of a final ritual or it may leave the characters more vulnerable to the sadistic torments of a killer.
Otherwise, the final Wyrd roll influences the postscript of the story. A character whose final Wyrd roll is a 6 is truly caught in the influence of Solemn Vale, while a lower result frees them from its grip. Whether this is good or bad depends on how you choose to narrate the outcome; a character could become trapped in the madness of Solemn Vale or might manage to seize power over a cult. Another character might be free to escape back to the safety and sanity beyond Solemn Vale’s borders. However, without the protection of the Wyrd’s fickle influence, it could be they meet an entirely mundane fate. Perhaps with various murders or crimes pegged on them by police investigators who resolutely refuse to accept their stories of blood in the woods and teeth in the tilled soil.
We recommend that Wyrd rolls happen regularly because it makes the choice to draw on the Wyrd pool a meaningful decision that shapes the game’s outcome. However, when creating your own story, or when faced with twists in the narrative that go outside any existing suggestions in a premade story, it may not be immediately evident when you might specifically call for a Wyrd roll.
Ideally, you want a Wyrd roll at least once per scene. You can use Wyrd to determine who draws the ire of a denizen when no other ability is a more obvious choice for an influence roll. Perhaps to see who suffers the consequences of an occult threat or to see if a major antagonist has clocked onto the characters’ actions or the threat they present.
You can also use it to help inspire your own narrative decisions if the action has slowed down or you are not sure what to do next. Have the players roll their Wyrd, with any results of a 6 prompting the emergence of a new threat, an eerie twist to the tale or a direct and personal tie for the character who rolled the 6 coming into play. Drawing on the nature and connections of the characters themselves helps make the strange, occult forces of Solemn Vale feel more personal and visceral in their impact.
You can use low results to measure mundane influences or those intruding from outside Solemn Vale. If the characters are befuddled and lost in an otherworldly fog, it could be that a friendly denizen stumbles upon them (if anyone has a result of 1 or 2), with characters who have avoided the entanglements of the Wyrd serving as an anchor back reality for the rest.
Finally, Wyrd rolls can be used with a clock or countdown effect. Perhaps a horrific enemy is on the trail of the group, so you ask the players to roll their Wyrd at the end of each scene and count every 5 or 6 that comes up. After the count has reached 5, the beast is closing in and if the characters return to a location visited in an earlier scene, they will encounter it. After the count has reached 10, the beast is close on their trail; every scene involves an additional Pursuit challenge just to stay ahead of it. After the count has reached 15, the enemy catches up regardless.
The Wyrd coils and weaves throughout Solemn Vale, influencing the lives and destinies of all those caught in the Vale’s grasp; grim locals and luckless outsiders alike. It winds tightly around dark schemes and disturbing desires. It thrums with puissance where the wall between worlds frays and weakens. Through the Wyrd the impossible becomes achievable and the desperate and the damned seek to wield its power through the darkest art; magic itself.
Much of the magical and unnatural that player characters may encounter in Solemn Vale are the preserve of the place’s denizens and tales. These are the eldritch efforts and horrible dooms that are woven into the narrative tapestry of a story. As such, these phenomena manifest in play as challenges and stage rules for the characters to struggle with. Solemn Vale does not worry about the mechanical specifics of what game rules a cultist needs to follow to conjure up a ravening monster and instead focuses on the story and the aesthetics of it.
Where the player characters themselves stumble into an opportunity, or necessity, of using magic, it is normally presented as an Invocation challenge. This represents the sort of situation where the unfolding story provides a clear path to seizing the reins of fickle and dangerous sorceries. It is usually with the assumption that the characters are outsiders or otherwise lack the occult knowledge to pull this stuff off without assistance or context. Perhaps the hitchhikers find the mouldering old tome that details the rite to banish the Prince of Rot and must try to walk through its partly-decayed formulae. However, it is not a power they could wield beyond that specific provision.
The following section provides an alternate approach. With these rules, player characters gain the ability to draw on, or rebuke, the Wyrd to try and shape the story to their own agenda. The magic that characters can perform in this way comes in four forms:
Using magic always comes at a cost in Body, Mind, or Soul points. Narratively, this may be an offering of blood, the toll that channelling such power takes on the would-be warlock or perhaps an emotional response. An example of the latter could be the gnawing fear that builds in the character cowering within the warded house while something scrabbles at the walls.
Magic of any form can only ever be used if there is a narrative justification for it, usually via a motif or theme occurring in the story. A hitchhiker with no occult experience cannot suddenly decide to whip up a spell. However, there is a local saying that has been repeated a few times, “Always pay the Devil his due with another’s blood”. This could serve as the inspiration for that character to try a Ward when her friend has been possessed by something gibbering in ancient tongues. An old book from the manor’s library filled with ramblings about some sort of fungus could lead to characters summoning up some heaving aberration of mycelium. However, they could not use that same book to conjure a phantasmal night hound.
Characters can only attempt an act of magic once per scene, unless a stage rule states otherwise.
Wards protect against the Wyrd. They rebuke its power and weaken its bindings. Most Wards take the form of countryside superstitions, religious performances or basic witchcraft. These are sorceries rooted in the mundane, the reliable mud of the land and iron, of honest industry, or the desperate need for everything to be normal right now.
As the inspiration to perform a Ward, a character might draw on things such as the old rhyme that their grandmother always used to say and which they heard a local mutter yesterday; the rusting old horseshoes that hung over the doors and windows of the old man’s house in the woods or the prayers that the vicar has strangely struck out of the prayer-books in the church. Alternatively, it could be something that represents the mundane and humdrum from life before the Vale, something that firmly grounds the character.
The cost of a Ward is always at least one point of Body, Mind, or Soul from each character creating it. Additionally, such characters cannot draw on the scene’s Wyrd pool for the remainder of the scene for any reason.
A Ward creates a new stage rule in play, lasting for as long as the Ward remains in effect. In some cases, this might be some time; the horseshoes hanging over the door ward the house as long as they stay there. In other cases, the effect is used up as part of the narrative, such as a prayer to cast out evil influence so a victim’s supernatural wounds might start to heal.
Examples of stage rules that a Ward might create include:
Charms invoke the Wyrd. They are the simplest forms of magic, sometimes performed unwittingly by their practitioners through traditional rites and ceremonies. They call the Wyrd forth and encourage its choking influence. Some Charms are elaborate in performance; a tradition of creating little poppet-dolls of your enemies to direct your anger against or the old, red sacraments at the standing stones. Others are quick and swift, calling out to names that are better left unspoken or smearing a few symbols, from the fungus-induced visions, in your blood.
As the inspiration to perform a Charm, a character might draw on things in the environment around them. That might be the strange utterances of cult followers gathered in a basement, or the verse from the old country song that talks about turning widdershins three times to invoke a bounteous crop. Maybe they are covered in feathers left by a group of magpies whose number matches a particular superstitious resonance. Ideas could come from something that calls on the character’s alienation from mundane life before the Vale and lures them into the strange possibilities of the Wyrd.
The cost of a Charm is always at least one point of Body, Mind, or Soul from each character creating it. Additionally, such characters must draw one point from the scene’s Wyrd pool. If they cannot do so, then they cannot perform the Charm.
A Charm creates a new Stage Rule in play, lasting for as long as the Charm remains in effect. Charms are usually brief and direct in their impact, rather than lasting for some time, even though their actual effects remain in the realm of the subtle or influencing rather than outright manifestations of eldritch power. A Charm to call for good weather does not clear up a storm in a moment, but it might ensure clear skies come at a meteorologically valid speed. A Charm that seeks to bring fortune to the performer, and given the nature of the Vale, it is as likely to be bad fortune as good, will set the threads of the Wyrd thrumming promptly.
Examples of stage rules that a Charm might create include:
Spells bind and shape the Wyrd. Spells are true magic, albeit often practiced by those whose reach extends their grasp and their wisdom; as such, these invocations can cause direct manifestations of occult power. Spells are never innate or instinctive, rising above the common and petty superstitions that fuel Wards and Charms. They are the alphabet of power printed in the bloody, muddy substrate of the land and humanity; and they are the echoes of lexicons from places beyond sense. Someone needs to take these syllables of sorcery and shape them into a purposeful statement, one that spins the Wyrd’s tapestry into subservience.
As the inspiration to perform a Spell, a character might draw on: a spell book stolen from a coven witch; the pre-human writings etched into a tablet fished from beneath the fen; a pact with something clearly inhuman that speaks such honeyed, lovely words; or some sort of enduring history with the occult, delving into things best left buried. The result is a stitched together patchwork of jury-rigged sorcery.
The cost of a Spell is always at least two points of Body, Mind, or Soul from each character creating it. Additionally, such characters must draw one point from the scene’s Wyrd pool; if they cannot do so, then they cannot perform the Spell. Spells can provide an extremely broad selection of potential effects depending on the nature of the knowledge’s source and the narrative thus far.
Examples of stage rules that a Spell might create include:
As the inspiration to perform a Conjuration, a character might draw on: the ritual text from the old Roman temple, passed down by a local family and used to summon the first invisible killer, because fighting fire with fire could not possibly be a bad idea; the whispers at night that have plagued the character for her whole life, but now that she is in the Vale seem so much stronger, and urge her to finally let them out of her head and into the world so that she can be free of them; the pharmaceutical handbook detailing how extracts from a local fungus can render a victim subject to suggestion if added to their drink; or something that represents an occult means for dominion and power over others, rendering the character’s tyrannical dreams from her mundane life as a sudden and visceral reality.
The cost of a Conjuration is always at least two points of Body, Mind, or Soul from each character creating it. Additionally, such characters must draw one point from the scene’s Wyrd pool, if they can; if they cannot do so, they can still perform the Conjuration, but it comes with a greater risk because the Wyrd’s bindings on the subject are weaker.
Examples of stage rules that a Conjuration might create include:
Depending on who or what has been summoned with the Conjuration, the end of its control may result in fresh challenges occurring, or cause the story to twist in a new direction.