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Character Advancement

End of Session

Improving Skills

If there is significant time passing, you may improve or acquire any skill. If little time passes, you may only improve a skill you have used, or acquire a new skill that clearly fits what you have been doing.

New skills are Terrible or Average, depending on the type of skill, at the Host’s discretion.

Significant Development

Personal Development

A personal development spread takes 5 cards.

The first card is the Significator. It represents you.

The second card is the House. It represents your situation at the beginning of the development.

The third card is the Environment. It represents what surrounds you during this change.

The fourth card is the Hopes and Fears. It represents both the promise and the potential danger of this development.

The fifth and last card is the Outcome. It represents your situation at the end of this change.

Write up this spread and show it to the Host for comment. At the beginning of the next session, lay out the spread and interpret every card so that everyone else knows what is happening.

You may not change your skills as a result of personal development.

Historical Change

Find out how many cards each player has, before any are discarded or skills are changed.

If hand-sizes are relatively similar, everyone draws the same number. The average should be about 10, in which case every player now draws 10 more cards. Alter the number drawn up or down depending on the average; if the average is 12 cards, every player should draw only 8.

If hand-sizes are disparate, some hands very large and others very small, everyone draws to make up a hand of 20. Players with more than 20 do not draw, but need not discard. Thus a player with 3 cards draws 17, a player with 12 draws 8, and a player with 23 draws nothing.

Now each player should spend time between sessions developing an elaborate 11-card spread (we have provided an explanation of the so-called Celtic Cross spread because it is very well known) to explain how her character and her character’s situation have changed in the intervening time.

Cards may be interpreted by book-meanings or in-game interpretations. Do not interpret cards by suit-meaning as in magical resolution.

Significator: This is the first card laid. Card 1 lies on top of the Significator. The Significator represents the character.

Card 1: Represents the situation as it is at the new time period.

Card 2: Represents what is crossing the situation, for good or bad.

Card 3: Represents the basis of the question.

Card 4: Represents the past. It could be either the distant past that is influencing the situation, or a situation that is currently passing away.

Card 5: Represents what could possibly come into being, i.e. an alternative course of action.

Card 6: Represents the near future. If Cards 5 and 6 are complementary, Card 5 does not represent an alternate path, but strengthens the probability of Card 6.

Card 7: Represents the character again, this time in either the situation before the development or the situation immediately after it (see below).

Card 8: Represents the influence of other people and forces upon the situation.

Card 9: Represents the character’s deepest hopes and fears about the situation.

Card 10: Represents the final outcome.

You may treat the final four cards as descriptive or predictive. This is entirely up to the player developing the spread. If the cards are descriptive, Card 7 represents the situation before the interval and Card 10 the situation at the beginning of the next session, i.e. the new current situation. If the cards are predictive, Card 7 represents the new current situation, colored and described by Cards 8 and 9, and Card 10 loosely indicates the direction in which the character is heading.

Confer with the Host about skills. Roughly, you can change skills at a rate of one change per Trump in the spread, and you can change as many as seems reasonable, but it really depends on what has happened and what seems appropriate. It may be that you only change one skill dramatically.

{Host Overruling <--> Running the Shadows}

-- ChrisLehrich^? - 24 Dec 2004

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