Using Environments

Environments represent everything in a scene that is not the PCs or the adversaries, from the physical elements of the space to background characters and forces of nature. Much like adversaries, each environment has a stat block that provides a framework for influencing the PCs and the wider scene. These aren’t restricted to combat—you can use adversary stat blocks to enhance any scene, from festive galas to crumbling ruins.

Environments and adversaries are built to interact and support one another, both mechanically and narratively. Environments can represent creatures, such as supporting cast and groups, who are present in the background of a scene but don’t need specific adversary stat blocks. Environments can also represent other aspects of the world, such as a dangerous landscape, a damp dungeon, or a noble’s court.

This section describes how to use each environment’s stat block, while chapter 3 presents general rules on running combat and tying these scenes into the larger story. Finally, the “Environment Stat Blocks” section at the end of this chapter presents examples of environments, grouped by tier to represent their general threat level.

Environments can be used with or without the action tracker. When not using the action tracker, any Environment action can be activated with a GM move, regardless of the number of action tokens it costs.

The environment framework is meant to be inspiring and practical, rather than unchangeable and prescriptive. Feel free to customize the environments to ﬁt your game’s characters and events—perhaps changing the Baronial Court environment into a “Baron’s Birthday Feast,” or creating a stat block for a “Castle Siege” using environment features. These stat blocks provide a way of organizing and preparing ideas for important scenes, but perhaps you don’t want to use this adversary-like system for environments; in that case, you can ignore these stat blocks entirely, or adjust them to meet your needs. You might decide that your environments only require a couple sensory details, potential moves to improvise, and/or a default difficulty number.

Environment Breakdown

Each environment’s stat block presents its statistics in a simplified format, as described in the example below.

When the players visit the baron’s keep to expose a corrupt courtier, the Baronial Court itself is the environment. Expecting a big confrontation, Max prepares the following environment so they have options to easily draw from during the scene.

Baronial Court

Description: The bustling court of the baron, lavishly decorated with tapestries, crystal goblets, and attendees dressed in finery.

Tone & Feel: Playful yet tense; rich with the smell of food, perfume, and wine

Tier: 2

Type: Social

Difficulty: 12

Potential Adversaries:

Courtier, Merchant, Petty Noble, Bladed Guards

Features

You Scratch My Back — Passive

A PC may gain advantage on a Presence roll by offering or cashing in a favor. If the PC fails to deliver on repaying a favor from this feature, the GM takes 2 Fear.

What secrets are concealed within the favors requested? How long does the PC have to make good on their promise?

Gossip - Reaction

When a character fails a Presence roll with Fear, they must mark Stress as their failure becomes the hot gossip for the evening.

How is the story of what happened distorted in the process of becoming gossip? Who tries to take advantage of the PC’s social weakness?

We Meet Again - Action

An NPC (adversary or not) previously known to the party appears at court with an agenda.

What do they want from the PCs (assistance, companionship, revenge)?

Framed - Action

Spend a Fear to have a prominent member of the court frame a PC for a crime, real or imagined. Proving their innocence requires completing a Progress Countdown (6).

How do they sell the lie to make the court believe the PC is at fault? Who is really responsible for the crime? Did it even happen, is it a half-truth?

Each stat block contains the following elements:

Name: Each environment writeup has a unique name—in this case, a Baronial Court.

Type: The environment’s type appears immediately after its name, representing the type of scene it most easily supports. The Baronial Court is a Social environment, meaning that the most likely threats and obstacles there will be interpersonal in nature.

Tier: Each environment is designed to challenge PCs of a certain tier. You can use stat blocks from other tiers, but you may want to adjust their statistics.

Description: An evocative one-line summary of the environment.

Tone & Feel: Emotional notes the GM can highlight to enhance this environment’s impact, plus sensory details to share when describing the scene. The Baronial Court has a mood that is playful yet tense; it is rich with the smell of food, perfume, and wine.

Difficulty: Baronial Court is Difficulty 12, which provides a baseline for action rolls made to directly oppose the elements of this environment. Individual adversaries appearing in the environment may have other difficulties.

Potential Adversaries: Many environments suggest specific adversaries that commonly appear in scenes with that environment. Not every listed adversary needs to appear in an environment, and you’re free to use others instead.

Features: Features provide you inspiration for GM moves that represent the dynamic environment. Features are denoted as either an action, which means you must spend a token on the action tracker to use it if using the action tracker (any GM move can activate it if the action tracker is not out), a passive, which means it always applies and doesn’t require a token or GM move to activate, or a reaction, which means you can respond to the specified trigger without requiring a GM move or action token. Many environment features are unique to that stat block, but others are common across multiple stat blocks.

Environment Types

An environment’s type represents the style of scene they most readily support. But any kind of interaction can happen in any environment. Unexpected environments can provide exciting contrast or round out a scene, so don’t be afraid to plan a social encounter in a dangerous Traversal environment, or a duel to the death in a Social environment. Environment types include the following:

Exploration: Wondrous location with mysteries and marvels to discover.

Social: Location that primarily presents interpersonal challenges.

Traversal: Dangerous location where moving around the space itself is a challenge.

Event: A situation that offers certain parameters on the ﬁction for a limited amount of time.

Environment Features

The right side of each stat block lists that environment’s features.

Feature Questions

Below each feature, you’ll find an italicized question. If you wish, you can use these to inspire hooks to connect the scene to other story elements, prompts to fuel the scene, and more.

For example, the Baronial Court feature “We Meet Again” asks, “What do they want from the PCs (assistance, companionship, revenge)?” This question invites you to consider the NPC’s motive and how their appearance in the scene might reincorporate past events, develop relationships, or connect to other plot elements.

Using Features

Environmental features generally follow the same rules as adversary features. See “Adversary Features” for these full rules, but in summary: Whenever you make a GM move, you can activate environment features like you would adversaries. Environment features can take the form of actions (which require one or more action tokens if you’re using the action tracker), reactions (which happen freely in response to a trigger), and passives (which automatically apply). Like adversary features, some environment features also require marking Stress, spending additional action tokens, or spending Fear.

You can find a complete list of environment features in [section pending] of chapter 6.

Fear Features

Like adversaries, environments can have Fear Features—powerful, scene-defining effects that require spending Fear to activate. Not every environment has a fear move, and most environment Fear Features take the form of actions. For example:

Frame - Action - Fear

Spend a Fear to have a prominent member of the court frame a PC for a crime, real or imagined. Proving their innocence requires completing a Progress Countdown (6).

Patient Hunter - Action - Fear

Spend a Fear to summon an Acid Burrower, who bursts up from the ground where they have been waiting for prey. The Acid Burrower immediately takes the Earth Eruption action without spending action tokens.

What treasures do they have in their burrow? What travelers have already fallen victim to this beast?

Adapting Environments

When planning your session (or even in the middle of one), you can adjust an existing environment’s stat block to ﬁt the needs of your scene or just improvise any elements as needed—the environments framework is there to help organize ideas, not to stiﬂe a GM’s creativity.

Sometimes you want to use an environment but it’s not at the right Tier for your party. Or you might want to replace a feature or two, then present it as an entirely different environment.

Chapter 5 presents in-depth information on environment balance and how to scale existing environments or create new ones (section under construction), but especially if you’re mid-session when you realize you need a new environment, you don’t want to make lots of decisions. Don’t sweat the details; you can roughly adjust a stat block to a different tier by simply replacing its existing statistics with those listed on the Improvised Statistics by Tier table, using the column that corresponds to your party’s tier.

Environment Statistics by Tier

Damage Dice	2d4+5	2d6+3	2d10+5	2d6+15
Difficulty	11	14	17	20

If you feel comfortable coming up with an environment’s features on the ﬂy, you can even use the above table to improvise a completely new environment using these statistics—see “Adding or Changing Features” below.

Using the above guidance won’t always make the environment a perfect match for the PCs, but it’ll reduce the chances of a drastic mismatch throwing off your scene.

Adding or Changing Features

When scaling an environment to a higher tier, consider adding a Fear action if there isn’t already one. Similarly, if scaling down to a lower tier, consider removing one of the most powerful or impactful features.

Scaling Environments

Environments are easier to scale than adversaries, since they don’t have Hit Point Thresholds, HP, or Stress. Mainly, you’ll want to adjust the default difﬁculty, any difﬁculties listed in features, and damage dealt by features. If the environment has a feature that involves summoning an adversary, you might replace the listed adversaries with ones appropriate to the party’s tier or you might scale down the listed adversaries.

Environment Stat Blocks

This section contains a list of environments by tier, followed by all environment stat blocks. (See “Using Environments” for environment rules.)

Environments by Tier

This chapter contains the following stat blocks.

[More to come!]

You can check the full list of environments here.