Arbiter's Guide

Advice

This page contains (what I think is) helpful advice for someone running a game of Worlds to Follow. Everything here is just my advice, not actual rules!

Skill Points

Player characters grow by gaining skill points. How exactly they get them, and how often, are an important question to answer for your world. If you want to give out skill points over time, use the following guidelines:

• Fast: 2 skill points per session, 1 bonus point per character.
• Medium: 1 skill point per session, 1 bonus point per 2 characters.
• Slow: 2 skill points per story arc, 1 bonus point per 4 characters.

If you don't want to tie character progression to real-life sessions, consider either only allowing characters to spend skill points when they rest, or just give skill points when you finish short story arcs in-game.

I suggest you also give out bonus skill points to players who make particularly interesting or characterful decisions (similar to Inspiration from D&D 5e). Choose an approximate number of skill points to give out per session (split between the whole party). I suggest:

• Fast: 1 bonus point per player per session.
• Medium: 1 bonus point per two players per session.
• Slow: 1 bonus point per player per story arc.

You could consider giving bonus points in specific skills, depending on what the character did to earn them.

The progression speed you use will depend on how many story arcs you want your characters to last, and how powerful you want them to end up being.

Character Re-Builds

As players become more familiar with the game, they might realise they aren't happy with earlier decisions they made about their character's build. Some people may think of this as a prime role-playing opportunity, but I would allow anyone unhappy with their choices to re-build their character at the end of a story arc.

This isn't intended to allow characters to routinely adapt to challenges they foresee, but rather make decision-making during normal advancement easier (it's easier to choose if you know your decision doesn't have to be final!)

Potion Brewing, and Money-Making

The potion brewing in this game is deliberately very unrestrictive; you can make as many potions as you like, and carry as many as you like. Given these rules, I intend for Arbiters to decide for their individual games whether potions need any limitations. I think any of the following would be appropriate:

• Characters can each hold only 6 (or 3, or more) potions (of any kind).
• Characters can only brew one potion per rest.
• Brewing potions costs money, or uses some other resource.

These restrictions will depend on your setting, your party, and your players. If your group only has one Alchemist who only agrees to share their potions with others in dire circumstances, and decides to only make two potions a day, these rules are likely unnecessary. I only include this section to get you thinking: if your group has so many potions that they don't feel fun, consider restricting them!

Regarding money-making, these rules deliberately don't include ways of making money (or ANY reference to money at all!) Currency, wealth, and the role of your characters in that system should be down to the world you're playing in. Don't start a game about being an interesting hero (or villain), and then immediately retire to start a potion shop — go and play a potion shop game.

Cosmosphere (Creating a New Spell)

In this game, spells can do ANYTHING thematically, so long as they hold to the statistics described in the rules (i.e. there's no point in creating a new spell with the exact same mechanics as an existing spell). The purpose of Cosmosphere is to allow the creation of spell effects either outside of what is possible with the rules, or to give spellcasting-focused characters one "signature" spell that pushes the limits of balance.

• Your new spell exists outside of the existing Arts; no spell modifiers apply to it, and it's not affected by abilities like Spirituality 7: Touch of Otherwhere.
• As it's not within an Art, you can't lose access to it with Arcane 9: Paradigm Shift.
• As it's not within an Art, Personal Reality 9: World Weaver does not affect it.

If you choose to base your new spell on an effect that can already be created with magic, use the following guidelines:

• Start with any base spell, including any applicable modifiers within the same Art (regardless of prerequisites).
• If it requires concentration, then it still does.
• If it has a fixed Mana cost, consider lowering the cost (by 1 or 2).
• If it has a variable Mana cost, consider increasing the base effect (e.g. 2 + Xm becomes 5 + Xm); increasing the scaling may start to break reality at high Mana utilisation.
• Any other sensible numerals within the spell should be increased by ~50%.

If you choose to create an entirely new spell, use the following guidelines:

• Make it cool.
• Your objective is to create a spell that's interesting enough that when you use it, people remember it; not to create a spell so powerful that you want to use it every turn (if you want power, use the other option!).
• Don't be afraid to come back later and change details if the spell you make isn't a good fit. Your other players are your guinea pigs (...in a good way).

I recommend, regardless of whatever you choose, that you stick to some basic rules regarding magic:

• Attacks should only do one damage.
• Persistent effects should require concentration.
• Affecting other creatures against their will should require a contested roll.

Skill Difficulty

The following tables show approximate probabilities for success for a character with +1, +5, or +9 in the relevant skill vs. some suggested passive difficulty values, and for contested rolls between different bonuses.

Passive Roll Odds

	Difficulty	% Chance (+1)	% Chance (+5)	% Chance (+9)
3	Trivial	100%	100%	100%
6	Easy	83%	100%	100%
9	Average	42%	92%	100%
12	Hard	8%	58%	97%
15	Challenging	0%	17%	72%
18	Impossible	0%	0%	28%

Contested Roll Odds

Rows show chance of success rolling on Offence against a character with the column's modifier to their Defence roll (e.g. a character with +5 in Energetics casting Black Arrow (with Plasma Theory) against a target with +7 in Reflexes can expect to hit 34% of the time).

note

The values for matched skill are slightly higher than 50%, as ties go to the offence.

		Defence
		+1	+3	+5	+7	+9
Offence	+1	56%	34%	16%	5%	1%
	+3	76%	56%	34%	16%	5%
	+5	90%	76%	56%	34%	16%
	+7	97%	90%	76%	56%	34%
	+9	99.6%	97%	90%	76%	56%