Running the Game

Think of yourself as the universe's advocate; you represent everything that isn't the player characters.

This section is for the Deus Machina (DM). It covers how to create scenes, manage opposition, and use your tools to create dramatic, engaging sessions.

You are not the players' opponent. Your job is to introduce obstacles, complicate situations, and make the world respond to player choices so that every action contributes to compelling stories.

Every roll moves the story forward. Failure doesn't mean "nothing happens." It means the situation changes in a way the players didn't want. New guards arrive. A system fails. An ally's loyalty wavers.

Escalate through consequences, not difficulty. Don't make rolls harder; make the stakes of failure more interesting. The third attempt to hack the terminal isn't harder; it's just that the countdown clock is closer to zero.

Spread the spotlight. Track which players have had recent spotlight moments. If someone's been quiet, create opportunities that play to their character's strengths.

Telegraph danger. Players should understand the risks before they commit to an action. "The corridor is filled with sparking electrical conduits" tells them a Vigor roll might be coming. Surprises should come from what happens, not from hidden mechanical consequences.

Use opposition as story. Every stat block represents something with motivations, even if those motivations are simple (the drones follow protocols; the beast is hungry; the environment is failing). Let opposition behavior reflect its nature, not just optimal tactics.

Relaxed Spotlight

When the spotlight player declares a trivial action, you can let other players join in. This isn't a separate mode; it's just flexibility within the existing spotlight turn.

Player 1 has the spotlight and wants to go talk to a shop owner. Trivial; it happens. Player 2 says "I'll come along." Normally only the spotlight player acts, but since no roll is involved, you can allow it. The players walk over, start a conversation, roleplay the interaction. Player 1 asks the owner about local rumors. Still trivial; it happens. Player 2 chimes in with a follow-up question. Fine.

All of this is still Player 1's spotlight turn. The guardrail is built in: eventually, Player 1 needs to either commit to an action roll or pass the spotlight. If Player 2 tries to do something that would require a roll, step in. It is still Player 1's turn. Ask Player 1 if they have an action they want to commit to. If not, Player 1 can pass the spotlight to Player 2, who then takes their turn normally.

This works well for exploration and social scenes. Pull back to strict turn order when stakes rise, opposition is active, or multiple players want to act independently.

Everything your obstacles, NPCs, and environments can do is printed on their stat blocks as moves. Moves never cost interruption tokens. What's printed is what happens.

Soft moves are small, steady pressure: light hits, movement, telegraphs. Hard moves are the heavy blows: hard hits, forced movement, clock shifts. The names rhyme with light hit and hard hit on purpose; soft moves generally deal light hits, hard moves deal hard hits.

When you get the spotlight, take one DM turn: 2 soft moves OR 1 hard move, drawn from any stat blocks in play.

If it touches game state, it's a move, and it must be printed. If it's pure fiction — description, dialogue, atmosphere, a revelation that changes nothing mechanical — it's free narration, and narration never costs a turn. Clock adjustment is a printed move: when you design a scene, state which moves advance which clocks. Clock-adjusting moves are hard moves by default (clocks are the stakes; moving them should compete with dealing damage), though you may deliberately print a small, telegraphed soft clock move.

If you need a move that isn't printed, write it down when you first use it — now it's printed. Improvisation is live authorship under the same constraints, not ambient rights.

After your turn, pass play back to the players, or spend 1 IT to keep the spotlight and take another turn. Hard cap: 3 consecutive DM turns.

Interruption tokens (IT) are your tempo currency. They never buy content — your moves are free — they buy when and how often you act. They are the mirror image of balance tokens: balance tokens manipulate dice, interruption tokens manipulate tempo. Neither buys content.

Spending Tokens

IT does exactly four things:

The biggest possible burst is steal + keep + keep: 3 IT for 3 consecutive DM turns.

Gaining Tokens

• +2 IT per player at the start of every scene — every scene, not just combat.
• +1 IT per player critical failure.

Tokens carry over between scenes and between sessions. The pool is capped at 18 (six maximum bursts).

The Pool Is Open Information

Keep your IT pool where the players can see it. They watch the menace they created — every critical failure, every quiet scene where you spent nothing — pile up toward the finale. Quiet scenes bank dread; finales spend it.

Token Strategy

Carryover changes how you spend. You no longer need to drain the pool before a scene ends; a token unspent is a token banked. Let social scenes, investigations, and travel feed the pool while you barely touch it, then bring the full weight down in the climax. Income is guaranteed every scene, so you can afford to be patient — and the 18 cap means hoarding past six bursts gains you nothing.

Be disciplined with bursts. A full 3-IT burst of hard moves focused on one character's weak capacity is close to a threat from the Fates themselves — vary which capacities you target, just as the scaling guidelines advise, and spread the pressure across the party. The open pool does your telegraphing for you: when players see a fat pool, they know the storm is coming and play accordingly. That tension is the point. Don't waste it on a lone straggler in a transitional scene.

Build scenes in seven steps. Not every scene needs all seven; a quick social encounter might only need Steps 1, 6, and 7, while a major setpiece uses them all.

Step 1: Define the Core Concept

Start with the big picture: what can players accomplish here that moves the story forward? Think in terms of 2-3 concrete outcomes that could emerge from player choices.

Good scene concepts are specific: "Rescue the trapped research team while preventing a reactor meltdown" rather than "explore the facility."

Step 2: Sketch the Location

Break the location into zones and edges. Each zone should represent a functional area: a place where specific types of actions make sense.

Zone types to consider:

• Encounter zones (where conflicts happen)
• Transit zones (corridors and passages)
• Resource zones (useful equipment or information)
• Sanctuary zones (safe areas for regrouping)
• Objective zones (where scene goals are completed)

Edge types:

• Open (normal movement)
• Difficult (require effort to traverse)
• Hazardous (deal harm during crossing)
• Conditional (accessibility changes based on circumstances)

A quick sketch of circles and lines is all you need. Focus on functional relationships and meaningful separations, not architectural precision.

Step 3: Create Opposition

Opposition provides the mechanical framework for dramatic tension. Progeny uses three types.

Attacking without a talent. A player can turn any action roll into an attack, not only one built for it. Clash is the usual choice, but Overwhelm, Assert, or another action can fit the fiction just as well. When nothing written covers the result, default to 1 light hit on a success and 1 hard hit on a critical success, the same shape every weapon talent already uses. It's a fallback for when nothing specific comes to mind, not a rule that overrides a talent that applies.

Minions

Individual threats, each tracked with their own small progress clock (2-4 segments). Multiple minions can share the same stat block.

• Light hits advance 1 segment; hard hits advance 2.
• All minions of the same type share one soft move per DM turn.

Use minions for guards, drones, individual hazards (anything the players can eliminate through focused effort).

Example: Security Drones (Tier 0)

Soft Moves:
  Patrol Route: Move one drone to an adjacent zone
  Stun Blast: 1 light hit (Vigor) to a foe in the zone

Hard Moves:
  Focused Volley: 1 hard hit (Vigor) to a foe in the zone
  Alert Network: Advance Reinforcements countdown by 1

Clock: 4 segments per drone

Hordes

Coordinated groups sharing a single stat block and progress clock (4-8 segments). Each segment represents one unit. When designing a horde, decide whether segments are removed by light hits, hard hits, or both.

• May split into smaller groups at half segments.

Use hordes for swarms, security teams, waves of lesser threats.

Example: Void Pirates (Tier 1-2)

Soft Moves:
  Coordinated Fire: Deal light hits equal to half remaining segments
    (rounded down), distributed among foes in the zone
  Tactical Movement: Move up to 3 units to adjacent zones

Hard Moves:
  Boarding Action (1/scene): 1 hard hit (Vigor) to each foe in the zone
  Covering Fire: Target zone becomes hazardous until next DM turn

Clock: 8 segments (hard hits only remove segments)

Champions

Major threats with multiple progress clocks, complex abilities, and dramatic weight. They define the conflict's stakes and require sustained, coordinated effort to overcome.

Baseline clock structure (vary it deliberately, but start here):

• Armor clock: advanced only by hard hits, 1 segment per hit. Light hits advance it 0 segments. Must fill completely before Health can be touched: players have to get through the armor first.
• Health clock: once Armor is full, light hits advance 1 segment and hard hits advance 2 (the same convention as minions).
• The Light-Hit Clock: a single global scene clock. While a champion's Armor stands, light hits against it advance this clock instead of being wasted. Size it like any other clock. What happens when it fills is the DM's choice, decided in advance: it usually helps the players (a stagger, an opening, an exposed weakness) but can hurt them (the champion's desperation ability triggers).
• Additional clocks (special conditions) as the design demands.

Example: Corrupted Oracle (Tier 3-4)

Soft Moves:
  Prophetic Vision: Move any foe to adjacent zone
  Whisper: 1 light hit (Zeal) to a foe in the zone

Hard Moves:
  Fractured Insight: 1 hard hit (Wit) to a foe in the zone
  Reality Fracture (1/scene): 1 hard hit (Wit) to all foes in the zone
  Temporal Loop (Re-arm, 1 IT): Advance or reduce any scene clock by 2 segments

Clocks: Armor 4 segments (hard hits only, 1 per hit; must fill before Health),
  Health 6 segments (light 1 / hard 2). While Armor stands, light hits feed
  the scene's global Light-Hit Clock (full = the Oracle's prophecies
  fracture: players gain an opening)

Step 4: Design Environmental Challenges

Environments can be active participants in scenes: changing conditions, responding to actions, creating ongoing pressure. Use environmental stat blocks when the location itself is a source of danger or opportunity.

Environmental stat blocks use the same framework as opposition but serve different purposes:

Progress clocks track conditions like structural integrity, system stability, contamination levels, or security status.

Soft moves represent natural environmental progression: gradual degradation, random hazard activation, system changes.

Hard moves represent dramatic responses: emergency protocols, cascading failures, major structural changes.

Unlike opposition, environments often respond to specific player actions. A successful Craft roll might stabilize a failing system; environmental knowledge might reveal how to work with conditions rather than against them.

Example: Failing Life Support

Clock: Atmospheric Integrity (6 segments)

Soft Moves:
  Pressure Drop: One random zone becomes difficult terrain until next DM turn
  System Warning: Advance clock by 1 if no player attempted repairs this round

Hard Moves:
  Emergency Lockdown: Seal one edge until systems restored
  Cascade Failure (1/scene): Advance clock by 2; all zones become hazardous
  Complete Failure (Clock-gated: when Atmospheric Integrity empties):
    All players take 1 hard hit (Vigor) each turn

Player Interaction:
  Successful Craft actions can remove 1 segment
  Technical knowledge predicts which zones will be affected next

System Warning is a printed soft clock move — a deliberate exception to the default that clock-adjusting moves are hard: it advances the clock by only 1 and only when the players ignore the problem, so it is small and fully telegraphed.

Limiter Tags

Big effects — zone-wide hard hits, direct wounds, Break Armor or Break Weapon, scene-reshaping — are hard moves that carry exactly one of three limiter tags:

• 1/scene: usable once per scene. The default for big effects.
• Clock-gated: usable when a named clock hits a stated trigger ("when Reinforcements is half full"). Maximum 2 clock-gated moves per scene, total, across all stat blocks. Prefer clocks the players can see and influence — the gate becomes a sub-objective.
• Re-arm (1 IT): the move turns off after use; spend 1 IT to switch it back on. The first use is always free. Re-arm is always flat 1 IT — if an effect feels like it needs a higher price, it should be 1/scene instead.

Two hard rules:

• Restorative moves always carry a limiter tag. Any move that heals, repairs, restores segments, or removes player progress can never be an untagged soft or hard move. Damage ends fights; free unlimited healing un-ends them.
• Moves have no riders. No conditional amplifiers, no tracked flags, no "if X is also true, add damage." The three tags are the only prerequisite machinery that exists. Positional logic lives only in target lines ("Target: a zone containing both an ally and a foe").

See the Obstacle Move Scaling section for tier-specific guidelines on what moves are appropriate at each power level.

Step 5: Design Scene Clocks

Scene clocks track overarching obstacles: the big-picture challenges that span the whole scene. Focus on the obstacle itself, not how players might solve it.

Progress Clocks: Obstacles that weaken as players chip away at them. Advance when players damage, bypass, or undermine the obstacle.

Examples: "Corporate Security" (weakened by stealth, combat, or corruption), "Sealed Vault" (weakened by hacking, explosives, or social manipulation).

Countdown Clocks: Threats that grow over time regardless of player approach. Advance based on time, escalation, or failures.

Examples: "Approaching Reinforcements" (overwhelming when full), "Rising Flood" (eliminates options as it advances).

Tug-of-War Clocks: Elements that could help or hinder. Start partially filled; shift based on player actions.

Examples: "Factional Loyalty" (could become ally or enemy), "Crowd Mood" (could offer protection or turn hostile).

Design tip: Name clocks after obstacles, not methods. "Guard Patrols" (obstacle) rather than "Sneak Past Guards" (method). Players can approach any obstacle through multiple methods.

Step 6: Populate with Investigation Opportunities

Distribute investigation opportunities across the scene's zones using two layers: landmarks and secrets.

Landmarks are immediately obvious features, visible without effort: a thing, a person, a detail in the environment. A landmark draws attention and gives players a starting point. When a player goes to look closer, that is a trivial action. It happens for free, with no roll, and you tell them what a careful look reveals. "Papers scattered on a table" becomes "a revised contract that extends the service agreement fifteen years." "Two people whispering in a corner" becomes "you catch fragments of their conversation before they notice you." The closer look is the natural reward of paying attention. Keep it generous; it is not the gated part. Write each closer look as a short line you can read aloud the moment a player investigates, kept separate from your DM-facing notes so prep never leaks into the read.

Secrets are the deeper truth a landmark can yield, beyond what a closer look gives. Not every landmark has one. Prepare a secret only where there is a hidden truth worth digging for. A secret comes out when a player commits an action roll to uncover it. Let them choose their approach: which action fits (Augur to perceive, Judge to analyze, Craft to take it apart, Cultivate or Seduce a witness) and whether to go safe or risky. If the chosen action is narratively absurd (usually a player reaching for their best action), ask for a more fitting one, or name a set of acceptable actions (any Wit action, say).

Prepare the secret and four outcome tiers before play: critical success, success, failure, critical failure. Even failure should move things along with partial information or a new lead. Because this is an ordinary action roll, failure gives you the spotlight, and a critical failure is where the fictional consequence bites: a light hit, a hard hit, a shifted clock, an alerted enemy, or the secret slipping away.

Simple example:

• Landmark: "A small golden locket on a stand." A closer look (free): it holds a pre-Collapse image of a man and a woman from Gaia before the fall, meticulously cared for, and carries the faint buzz of a psychoserai.
• Secret, read the psychoserai: the originator is on Gaia, at Heritage Station.
  • Critical success: A clear emotional imprint. You see Heritage Station, a name (Ellara Voss), and the feeling of someone waiting. She is still alive.
  • Success: A flash of Gaia. Heritage Station. Someone there is connected to this locket.
  • Failure: The imprint is too faded to read clearly. Warmth and loss, but nothing specific.
  • Critical failure: The imprint hits harder than expected, decades of grief in a single moment. 1 light hit (Zeal).

Hazard example, where the digging itself is dangerous:

• Landmark: "A glass vial on a stand, emitting faint orange vapors." A closer look (free, from a careful distance): the liquid shifts between orange and deep red, and faint symbols are etched into the glass. Reading the symbols means braving the vapors.
• Secret, identify the vial: it comes from Hyalos, and the compound is a powerful sedative.
  • Critical success: You recognize the Hyalos workshop signature and the compound, a sedative potent enough to drop someone mid-sentence. Whoever left this has restricted temple supply lines.
  • Success: You recognize either the symbols or the compound, but cannot connect both.
  • Failure: Neither means anything to you, but the vial is distinctive; you would know another if you saw it.
  • Critical failure: The vapors overcome you. You knock the vial off its stand and it shatters. Everyone in the zone takes 1 light hit (Vigor), and the spilled compound takes the secret with it.

Plan roughly 10 secrets per session across all scenes. Not every landmark needs a secret, but important story threads should offer more than one path to what they hide.

Area Integration: Connect investigation rewards to your scene's mechanical elements:

• Landmarks should hint at the nature of scene obstacles.
• A closer look can reveal methods for overcoming opposition or environmental challenges.
• Secrets might grant direct advantages against specific obstacles or reveal how scene clocks can be influenced.

Step 7: Bring It to Life

With all mechanical elements in place, focus on the atmospheric details that transform functional zones into memorable, immersive locations. This step shifts from mechanics to mood, producing the read-aloud the players hear the moment they enter a zone.

The zone block. For each zone, write a tight entry read-aloud — two or three sentences, no more — that hits these beats and then turns the players' attention to what stands out:

1. Visual elements: One or two specific, evocative details that go beyond the generic.
2. Sensory layers: A non-visual sense — sound, smell, touch, temperature — that makes the space feel lived-in.
3. Signs of life: A hint of recent activity or an ongoing process, so the space feels dynamic.
4. The landmark callout: End the block by naming the zone's landmarks (Step 6) so players know what they can engage. Mark the list with a bold Landmarks: cue for your eye — never read that word aloud — then a natural lead-in that flows into it, varied to fit the zone ("Pushing into the crowd, you pick out…", "Two figures hold the room…"), never one stock phrase. With the cue skipped, atmosphere, lead-in, and items read as one flowing paragraph. A single landmark bakes into a closing sentence rather than a list; a zone with none (common in fights and transit zones) skips the callout and just telegraphs terrain and threats.

Keep it short on purpose: this block is read every time someone enters the zone, so the fuller material (closer looks, secrets) waits until a player reaches for it. See Running a Zone at the Table, below.

Connect your descriptions to your mechanical elements. Let atmospheric details hint at opposition positioning, environmental hazards, and investigation opportunities without stating them outright.

These foundations are starting points. As player actions change the scene, your descriptions should evolve to reflect the new reality.

Running a Zone at the Table

Steps 6 and 7 produce more material than the table needs at once. Reveal it in the order play asks for it:

1. On entry, read the zone block. Two or three sentences of atmosphere, then the landmark callout. Skip the bold Landmarks: cue and it reads as one paragraph; one read sets the mood and lays out the options.
2. On approach, read the closer look. When a player goes to a landmark — a free, trivial action — read its short closer-look line. This is the generous reward for paying attention; it is never gated.
3. On an action roll, resolve the secret. When a player commits an action to dig deeper, run the secret's four outcome tiers.

Keep the layers physically separate in your notes so you only ever read the one in play — and never read a DM note aloud by accident:

### [Zone name]

> [Two or three sentences of atmosphere, read aloud.]
>
> **Landmarks:** [natural lead-in that flows into the list]
>
> - perceivable glance of **landmark one**
> - perceivable glance of **landmark two**

#### Landmarks

##### [Perceivable name] ([real name, if the players haven't earned it])

> *Closer look:* [short read-aloud, given freely when a player goes to look]

- **DM Note:** [context for you; never read aloud]
- **Secret** ([action]): [four tiers — critical success, success, failure, critical failure]

The bold Landmarks: is your cue, not theirs — don't read it. The bolded glances are what the players hear; their perceivable names map to the fuller entries below, with the real name in parentheses where the players haven't earned it yet.

Each complete breakthrough cycle (2 talents + 1 capacity increase) represents a tier of character growth. Use tiers to plan campaign length, start campaigns with more experienced characters, or bring late-joining players up to speed.

To create a higher-tier starting character, apply the cumulative gains from the table above during character creation. The player chooses which talents and capacities to take as normal. Standard talents (Life Line, Capacity Floor Raise, Expertise) count toward the talent total. Capacity maximums can never exceed 7, so capacity raises must go to capacities below 7.

For longer campaigns or campaigns with shorter scenes, change breakthroughs to once per act instead of once per scene. An act is a narrative arc spanning multiple scenes, typically 3-5.

Use this reference when designing stat blocks. Each tier assumes the party has completed the corresponding number of breakthrough cycles. Soft and hard moves fire freely on your turn; limited moves are hard moves carrying one of the three limiter tags.

The DM's harm toolkit

Everything you do to a player's defenses resolves as one of three things. Which capacity a hit involves is yours to set from the fiction; it is flavor, not a separate mechanic.

• Light hit: automatic, no roll. It reduces the target's Resolve by 1, or, if they have no Resolve left, reduces one of their capacity scores by 1 (you name which). Light hits are pressure. They wear defenses down and set up bigger blows, but they never cause wounds. Light hits ride on soft moves.
• Hard hit: the target makes a capacity roll against the capacity you name (1d12 under that capacity's current score, plus their Reflex). On a failure they mark a wound; on a success, nothing. Because the roll is the player's chance to avoid it, hard hits ride on hard moves — and at high tiers, a single hard hit can ride on a soft move.
• Direct wound: the target marks a wound with no roll. Your most dangerous tool, always a limited move and reserved for high tiers.

Soak and breaking armor. Soak absorbs wounds before they land, and nothing bypasses it. When you need to threaten a well-armored target, break their armor: a limited move that renders a piece Broken, stripping its Soak, Reflex, or Resolve until the wearer repairs it during an intermission. Breaking a weapon stops it from working and from granting its talent bonuses. (Traditional armor also breaks on its own once its Soak is spent.)

General rules at every tier:

• Light hits are automatic. Name the capacity for flavor.
• Hard hits give the player a capacity roll, so they may appear on soft moves once a tier unlocks them there.
• Direct wounds and Break Armor or Break Weapon are always limited moves at the tiers where they unlock.
• Vary which capacities your hits involve across a scene, so no single capacity is always the one in danger and no one player is singled out.
• Soft rule (Tiers 0-3): at most one enemy in a scene should carry a devastating limited move. Every other enemy should run on soft and hard moves only. This keeps the scene simple to run.

Tier 0

Starting characters: capacities roughly 1-7, 2-segment wound clocks, minimal armor. Scenes should feel threatening but survivable with basic caution.

• Soft moves: light hit; movement; telegraph an incoming threat.
• Hard moves: 1 hard hit; force a move to an adjacent zone; advance or reduce a scene clock by 1 segment.
• Limited moves: none at this tier.

Tier 1

Characters have a few more talents and capacity points and can absorb more pressure.

• Soft moves: as Tier 0.
• Hard moves: as Tier 0, plus a multi-hit on one target (for example, a light hit then a hard hit).
• Limited moves: 2 hard hits on one target, or 1 hard hit to each of two targets.

Tier 2

• Soft moves: as Tier 1, plus a double light hit on one target.
• Hard moves: as Tier 1; zone-wide light hit.
• Limited moves: as Tier 1; create a persistent zone condition (hazardous or difficult terrain); Break Armor or Break Weapon on one target.

Tier 3

Characters have Soak, expertise, and a deep talent bench. Scenes should force hard resource decisions.

• Soft moves: as Tier 2, plus a single hard hit on one target.
• Hard moves: as Tier 2; 2 hard hits on one target.
• Limited moves: as Tier 2; zone-wide hard hit.

Tier 4

• Soft moves: as Tier 3.
• Hard moves: as Tier 3.
• Limited moves: as Tier 3; direct wound (1 wound, no roll) on one target.

Tier 5

Peak power. Tier 5 scenes should feel like genuine existential threats where every DM turn creates a dilemma.

• Soft moves: as Tier 4, plus a multi-hit that includes hard hits on one target (for example, a light hit then a hard hit, or two hard hits).
• Hard moves: as Tier 4; direct wound (no longer needs a limiter tag).
• Limited moves: zone-wide hard hit to all foes; a multi-wound on one target (2 wounds, the most devastating champion moves only); scene-reshaping effects (seal or open edges, collapse a zone, reset a clock).

Scaling Summary

When a player rolls a critical failure, you gain 1 IT and determine a complication. The standard complication is capacity loss: the player loses 1 point from a capacity of your choice. This is the default. Use it unless you have a specific narrative complication that is more interesting and roughly equivalent in mechanical weight.

Narrative complications are the alternative, not the baseline. "The alarm triggers," "the NPC notices you," or "the bridge starts to collapse" are all valid if they create meaningful fictional consequences. But if nothing specific comes to mind, capacity loss is always correct. Do not skip the mechanical bite of a critical failure in favor of a soft narrative beat.

If you choose capacity loss, pick the capacity that creates the most interesting pressure. A Vigor loss when the character is already low pushes toward Exhausted. A Wit loss when they need safe rolls creates a painful squeeze. A Zeal loss when they are spending balance tokens threatens Demoralized. Read the table state and choose what makes the next few turns more dramatic.

You may also choose to gain an additional IT instead of inflicting capacity loss. This is a valid alternative when you want to bank tempo for a later burst of DM turns.