Building a Heroic Narrative

The game takes place in a series of scenes with the heroes as the main characters. An adventure is a collection of scenes that make up a story, with a beginning, middle, and end, and a campaign is a collection of adventures that tell the entire epic tale of a group of heroes. You can think of each adventure as a movie in a saga of films, a book in a series of novels, or a season of a television show. While many heroes have their stories told over the course of a campaign, some wrap up their careers in a single adventure that takes place in one game session, called a one-shot. You can think of a one-shot as a great stand-alone novella or movie.

This game is built so that each adventure you play and each battle you fight gets more exciting as it goes on. In fantastic tales, the heroes and their foes both grow in power over the course of an adventure. But it isn't time alone that grows a hero's capabilities. Rather, it's the adrenaline that comes from battle, the danger of the hero's profession, and the pressure to save the world—or at least some small part of it that pushes a character to do the impossible. Each small act of heroism gives a hero the confidence and bravery to perform legendary feats against all odds.

The things a hero can achieve at the end of the story are far more daring and impactful than what they do at the start, and the final showdown against a villain's forces is more deadly and desperate than the first. The rules of the game help build a heroic narrative in this same fashion, making use of the four most important mechanics for building heroic narratives: Victories, Experience, Heroic Resources, and Recoveries.

Victories

Victories measure your hero's increasing power over the course of an adventure, as they overcome battles and other challenges. At the start of an adventure, your hero has 0 Victories.

Victories For Combat

Each time your hero survives a combat encounter in which the party's objectives are achieved, you earn 1 Victory. The Director can decide that a trivially easy encounter doesn't earn the heroes a Victory, and can award additional Victories for particularly challenging encounters.

Victories For Noncombat Challenges

When your hero successfully overcomes a big challenge that doesn't involve combat, the Director can award you 1 Victory. Such challenges can include things such as a particularly complicated and deadly trap, a negotiation, a montage test, a complicated puzzle, or the execution of a clever idea that avoids a battle. Especially difficult challenges might earn you more than 1 Victory.

Victories Reset

Whenever you finish a respite (see Respite below), your Victories are converted into Experience.

Experience

Victories temporarily increase a hero's power during an adventure, but Experience (abbreviated "XP") permanently improves their capabilities. Each time you finish a respite (see below), you gain XP equal to your Victories, then your Victories reset to 0. In other words, your Victories are converted to XP when you finish a respite.

For more information on how XP increases your hero's power, see Heroic Advancement in Making a Hero.

Heroic Resources

Your hero has a Heroic Resource determined by your class, and which you manage during play. Earning your Heroic Resources can increase your hero's power, and you spend your Heroic Resources to activate your most powerful abilities.

Your hero's class description has more information about how to use your Heroic Resource.

Recoveries

Recoveries represent the number of times your hero can take a breather and keep fighting. Spending Recoveries lets you regain Stamina—the measure of any creature's physical vitality and capacity to shrug off or avoid damage (see Stamina in Combat). Running out of Recoveries means your hero has reached their uttermost limit.

When you spend a Recovery, you regain Stamina equal to your recovery value, which is one-third your Stamina maximum. You can spend your Recoveries with a special maneuver (see below), or you might do so with a little supernatural help from a conduit, a boost of adrenaline from an allied tactician, or inspiration from your party's troubadour.

Spending Recoveries

During combat encounters and similarly dangerous situations when time is tracked in rounds (see Combat), you can use the Catch Breath maneuver to regain Stamina. (See Catch Breath in Maneuvers for more information.) Some heroes have abilities that allow them or their allies to spend more Recoveries without using the Catch Breath maneuver.

Outside of combat and other dangerous situations, you can spend Recoveries freely.

Regaining Recoveries

You regain all lost Recoveries when you finish a respite (see below).

Respite

A respite is a focused period of rest and recuperation that allows heroes to regain Stamina and Recoveries. During a respite, you must spend 24 hours uninterrupted and doing nothing but sleeping, eating, dressing your wounds, and recuperating. You can also undertake one respite activity, such as making a project roll (see Downtime Projects) or changing your kit (see Kits).

After 24 hours, your respite ends. When you finish a respite, you regain all your Recoveries and Stamina, and your Victories convert to Experience. You can take as many respites as you like in a row to keep accomplishing respite activities. Just keep in mind that while you're resting, your enemies are still scheming and carrying out their dastardly plans.

It is best to take a respite in a safe place where you aren't in a hostile environment or at risk of being attacked. If your respite is interrupted by enemies attacking, an earth tremor, swarms of biting insects, and similar serious distractions, the respite ends early and you don't gain the benefits for finishing it.

The standard 8-or-so hours of sleep one gets at night doesn't count as a respite. The rules assume that all heroes take the time to sleep, eat, and take care of all the other functions necessary for life even if they aren't engaged in a respite.