PLAYTEST v0.3.2 · “THE HONEST CORRECTION” · FREE · PHOTOCOPY THIS
OURANOVANE
A tabletop RPG about a crew, a ship, and a sky that never ends. There is no ground. There are islands riding the fragments of a broken god, and the crews who carry water between them.
“That's the game. Somebody has to carry the water. The sky does not care who, and the crew — only ever the crew — does.”
From First, This, the cold open.
Four principles run underneath everything
Enough rules to make every roll matter. Small at session one, loud by session six.
Dice and Power
Roll a d8 for each relevant Tag you have in play. Every 5 or higher is Power. Power buys outcomes: harm, help, information, a thing that now exists.
A deck, not a sheet
You are six cards: your Blood, your Craft, and four of anything you like. Four are face-up at any moment, and which four is a real decision.
The cards shape the story
What you can do right now depends on what you have in play. Walk into a customs office with a boarding-action loadout and you will pay for the guess.
Three currencies
Ballast, Light and Darkness move between the players and the Facilitator, and the tension they build runs across whole campaigns.
Count the 5s and up. Subtract the 1s.
That's your Power. Nothing else on the die matters. A 2, 3 or 4 isn't a failure; it's a die that didn't speak. Two or more 8s in one roll is a Double Dawn: the party gains Light and the Tag marks growth.
Three currencies, three dishes on the table
Ballast
Earned by invoking your own flaws. You take on weight to gain lift: Ballast is what your problems are worth.
- Switch a card mid-scene 1
- Nudge a die by 1 1
- Evolve a card 2
Light
Rare. Gained on a Double Dawn. Anyone can spend it, and the table should feel slightly reluctant every time.
- Team Action 1
- Squalling roll 1
- Crossfield or Crossbond an ally 1
- Extra Harbour Days activity 1
Darkness
Earned from your failures. It never resets. It sits in a visible pile, all campaign, and one day it gets spent.
- Roll 0 Power +1
- Roll negative Power +2
- The situation inverts 3
It is long. Nobody at your first session should have read all of it.
A player with twenty minutes
- Before You Begin: the one page, the Lexicon, the worked scene
- Part III: the roll, Tags, Meters, the three currencies
- Part IV: your deck and how to make one
- Your Blood and your Craft in Peoples & Crafts
- Three questions each from the questionnaires
The Facilitator
- All of the player list, properly
- Part IX: Action Templates, learn them cold
- Part XII: your job, the Darkness Agenda, enemies
- The Harrow Shoals and The Lantern Run, ready to run
- The first session, beat by beat
A table already sitting down
- Part XVI, Reference: one spread, everything mid-scene. Print it twice.
- Leave the Ship Duel and the Journey until session three
- Nobody Evolves in session one. Nobody should.
A sky with no ground in it
Islands do not scatter evenly. Their Hearts keep company, and so islands cluster into vast wandering archipelagos called Grandes, charted and laned and policed. Between one Grande and the next lie the Wilderness Skies, where a chart is a suggestion decaying into fiction a little more each week.
Underneath all the adventure, the sky runs on the hauls: water above all, flown on a schedule to islands that make none of their own. It is boring. It pays badly. When it stops, an island dies quietly and in order.
- Aetherheart
- The fragment of god-heart that keeps an island or a ship aloft. You do not name yours to strangers.
- Pandaemonium
- Under the cloud. The dark floor of the world. Things that fall go there.
- The Sending
- The rites for the dead. The dead never go down. This is not negotiable in any harbour in the sky.
- Band
- How high you are: Grounded, Aloft, High, Open Sky. Every scene has one.
- Post
- Your job aboard. Master, Mate, Gunner, Heartwright, Lookout, Ship's Boy, and the rest.