Revision as of 03:43, 4 April 2009

Here, we'll attempt to cover the basics of Journey. For learning the game, this is the best place to start.

At the end of the section, there will be a glossary, where all bolded terms will be defined. If you need to look up a term, that's the place to do it.

The Core Mechanic

Before we can really get into the basics of the game, we have to discuss what is known as the core mechanic. The core mechanic is the method you use as the basis for attempting actions in-game; it is used for a wide variety of things, and thus an understanding of how it works is essential.

The core mechanic is to use a dice pool, add up all the dice and any modifiers, and compare it to a target number (TN), which may or may not be known.

The primary manner in which you advance your character is by improving the dice pools for specific aspects of your character. If you want a hardy warrior, you may improve your character's dice pools for Strength, Vitality, and his combat skills; if you want an enigmatic noble, you may improve her dice pools for Charisma, Wisdom, and her social skills.

All dice pools in Journey follow the same progression of advancement, as per Table 1-1: Dice Pools.

If you have any amount of ability or training with a skill, your base dice pool with that skill is 1d2. If you decide to focus on that skill or attribute, or train or study to improve it, it improves one step at a time, following the progression above.

Some skills or other abilities may allow you to call upon other skills or attributes, either to add their dice pool to the skill's dice pool, or to even allow it to replace the skill's dice pool entirely. Something called upon to add its dice pool to what is being rolled, or to replace what is being rolled entirely, is called a root. Individual skill or ability descriptions explain whether or not you can add to or replace the skill's dice pool with the root's dice pool.

In general, all rolls made for actions involve the relevant feature's dice pool and it's root's dice pool. In some instances, you will be asked to roll only the feature's dice pool, without the root; this is called a base dice pool.

The Three Rules

There are three basic guidelines that shape the rest of Journey's mechanics and gameplay.

Always Round Down

Whenever performing a mathematical calculation, always round down at every step. Some games use guidelines that vary when or why you round up or down, but Journey is complex enough without that particular headache thrown into the mix. If you ever wind up with a number that requires rounding - whether it's the result of a calculation, or the middle of one - round it down.

Tie Goes to the Initiator

Journey is all about opposed dice rolls, which can make some amount of headache for determining who wins in a tie. The resolution to this is simple: whoever initiated the opposed roll wins on a tie. If you perform a skill check against a static TN, you are the initiator, so you win on a tie; if you try to make an attack, your Sword skill is opposed by your target's Dodge skill, and you win on a tie. The best way to envision this is to say that the target is setting the TN for your roll, and to remember that you only need to roll equal to a TN to succeed at a task.

You Can Always Take Average

No matter what the situation, whenever a roll is called for, you can choose to take the average result. This takes no extra time and can be done under stress. Rolling dice is an indication that your character is trying something new, putting a new twist on an old trick, or otherwise somehow extending beyond his intuitive understanding of the skill in question; taking average means that your character is relying on previous knowledge and experience, doing things the way he or she has done them in the past.

Creating a Character

The first step is to create a character. For sake of the writer's sanity, we'll avoid going over such things as "what is roleplaying" or "how to come up with a character concept" for the time being; we'll get right into the thick of things.

Race

First and foremost, you need to select a race. Race here is not meant in the same way as it is used in normal conversation; here, perhaps a better word would be species. Races include humans, but also include fantasy races such as the lynae, the sidhe, the thran, the isci, the dwarves, the nephilim, and the faerie.

Race determines a good deal about your character. It modifies your starting attributes, which we'll get to in a moment; it also determines some basic things about your character's personality. Your race may also give you access to special abilities, grant you bonuses to skills, or perhaps other benefits.

Culture

Once you have selected a race, you should choose a culture. Culture grants you benefits and drawbacks, such as additional skills, access to culture-specific abilities, and possibly also drawbacks. Some races have cultures specific to them (faeries, for instance, must choose to be seelie or unseelie in addition to another culture).

Attributes

Once you have selected a race and culture, you can determine your character's attributes. Attributes are the core of your character; they determine your basic ability in several different areas.

There are nine attributes, each divided into three aspects and three facets. The three aspects are Physical, Mental, and Spiritual; the three facets are Power, Skill, and Endurance.

These parts of your character are described in more detail on the Attributes page.

Personality

Either before or after you determine your attributes, you can determine your personality.

Optional: Background

If you would like, you can also determine your character's background. This can be as simple or as complex a step as you like, and is not entirely necessary.

Your LM can also opt to implement the optional Backstory system, which generates a backstory for a character: the events that happened prior to the start of the game. Your character's Backstory may give you benefits that you wouldn't otherwise have gotten, but may also result in a character winding up not exactly how you expected - such is life. If you opt to use the Backstory subsystem, you do not create your character with standard starting experience; intead, your background grants you XP.

Features

All other aspects of your character are known collectively as features. Features are divided into several categories, each with its own general rules.

Features are where you make your character stand out; they are what define your character's abilities.

• Skills are the major feature of a character. A skill allows you to do things above and beyond what other people in the world may be able to do. While some skills can be attempted with no training or experience, there are some things you must be taught before you can even attempt to get them right. Skills suffer from decay, a concept which is important later on in your character's life.
• Talents are not as numerous as skills, but they give more definition to your character. You either have a talent or you do not; having a talent often gives you several benefits, or has wide-reaching effects.
• Feats are similar to talents, in that you either possess them or not. Feats, however, represent specific actions or abilities your character possesses that are above and beyond what other people are capable of. Feats are different from talents in that they are tied to a skill; to improve your ability with a feat, you must improve the skill it is tied to.
• Traits are similar to skills, but do not suffer from decay. Traits represent aspects of your character that he does not necessarily actively improve, but which improve with time or simply experience.
• Specials are somewhere between traits and skills in terms of how they function. Specials tend to have a limiting factor, usually a skill, that sets a cap to how high their rank can be; in addition, specials do not suffer from decay directly, but if the skill they are tied to decays, any specials higher than that rank are treated as that rank until the skill is restored to its former rank. The term "specials" is used to refer to any class of features that isn't one of the others; things like spells and maneuvers fall into this category.