Running the game

You run the story. The app runs the bookkeeping — initiative, XP, levels, ammo, credits, reward payouts. If a number moved, a rule moved it, and you don't need to check its work.

Your controls live in the GM Console, the amber panel at the top of the sidebar. It's on every page, so you're never navigating away from a fight to award something.

Players get their own sidebar and their own Field Manual (the 📖 button). You don't have to teach them the interface — point them at it and it explains their side.

Each player needs an account and a character. Send them the site, they pick Create one on the sign-in screen, and after signing in they land straight on character creation.

• •They build their own — the usual path. Nothing for you to do; their character appears in the party as soon as they finish.
• •You build it for them — open Link Character → Account in the console. The account list shows each player's email and which characters they already own.

Linking is also the fix when someone signs up twice or you pre-built an NPC that becomes a player character. A character can only be linked to an account that doesn't already have an active one.

Worth knowing so you can answer questions at the table. Every new character gets:

• •Seven stats — STR, AWR, PER, PRS, TEC, REF, FOR. Each starts at 1, with 8 points to spend on top (so 9 is the creation cap in any one stat).
• •Three starter perks, always-on — their bonuses are baked into the stats permanently.
• •A starter weapon chosen from four, plus a pistol granted automatically in the secondary slot.
• •One light stim and 100 credits of personal money.
• •An avatar archetype — replaceable later with real art from the Studio.

None of this is a one-way door: you can adjust HP, hand out XP, weapons and credits from the console at any time.

• •Read the Quest Board in the console. Quests are Locked → Available → Active → Completed; you decide what's on offer and when.
• •Skim the quest beats. Each quest has beats with player-facing text, your own GM-only notes, and an optional image. You can read a beat privately and push it to the table separately — see *Beats & scene images*.
• •Check the Session Roster so benched characters match who's actually coming.
• •Make art ahead of time in the Studio if you want it. Generating mid-session works, but it isn't instant.

You do not need to prep encounter maths, initiative order, or reward tables. Those are all resolved for you.

Follow the group, not the quest list. The seeded content is there to keep the story moving — it isn't a track you're obliged to stay on. If the party fixates on something you invented on the spot, run it. A quest or an encounter you make up in the moment is often the best part of the night, and nothing in the app breaks when you go off-script.

The most common way to make extra work for yourself is to do something the app already did. It handles, without being asked:

• •Initiative — rolled for everyone when you begin combat, ordered players → companions → enemies.
• •Turn resolution — the decision itself (attack, defend, intimidate), then damage, crits and the ammo spent are all calculated into one outcome.
• •XP and levelling — awarded from combat, encounters and quest rewards. Crossing a threshold banks a perk pick the player claims when they like; they don't lose it by not levelling immediately.
• •Companion XP — damage a companion deals earns XP for its owner, and accumulates as the companion's own lifetime total.
• •Quest credits — distributing a quest's rewards deposits every present player's share at once. You never pay credits out manually.

What is yours to do: deciding what happens, pushing beats and scenes, staging fights, and calling when a quest is done.

Start Session at the top of the console opens session #N. The number is what lets the Journal collapse a night's events into a readable block instead of an endless scroll, so start one even on a short night.

Starting a session asks you to confirm the roster — who's active, who's benched. Benched characters are skipped by combat auto-pull, encounter difficulty, and reward distribution, so a roster left over from last week quietly skews the fight. Fix it there or in Session Roster any time.

End Session closes it out. There's no penalty for forgetting — the next start just rolls over — but the Journal reads better when the boundaries are real.

Everything is on the Quest Board, sorted active → available → locked → completed.

• •Activate — put a locked quest on offer.
• •Accept / Decline — record the party's answer. Declining leaves the quest available so you can offer it again later; the board shows a GM-only note that it was turned down.
• •Distribute rewards — the green button, once the job's actually done.

Distributing pays every present player's credit share immediately and gives each of them one personal pick — XP, ammo, healing, or a mystery item. The pick is theirs to make from their own sidebar, and it waits indefinitely.

Unclaimed Rewards in the console lists who still owes a pick and how long it's been sitting. Nothing is ever lost by waiting; the list just stops it being forgotten.

Expand a quest on the board to get its beats. Every beat has a preview / push split, and the distinction matters:

• •Previewing a beat is local to your screen — read the player text and your GM notes with the table watching, and nothing reaches them.
• •Push to Players is the one that writes it to everyone's journal.

Scene Images works the same way, and appears both as its own console section and under each quest's beats — because setting a scene and running a beat happen in the same breath. Preview to find the right image, push to put it on every screen.

Combat is two steps on purpose. Set Up Battle opens a staging phase: no clock, no turn order, nobody can act. You get the whole kit while the table is still talking.

• •+ Add Enemy — pull enemies from the roster. Add as many as you like, before or during.
• •Backdrop — set the scene. It's stored per fight, so it needs a fight to exist first.
• •Place the models — click to select, drag to move, scroll to resize.

▶ Begin Combat rolls initiative and opens the fight. It needs at least two living combatants.

During the fight: End Turn advances manually, but a turn also auto-ends 15 seconds after the acting player has acted — cancel that from their card if there's still talking to do. You can act for anyone.

When one side is finished the header offers 🏆 Fight Won or 💀 Fight Lost, which closes the fight and settles XP. End Combat stops one early without an outcome.

A character at 0 HP is down, not out — still on the field, revivable by a teammate spending a stim and their turn.

Trigger Encounter fires a random encounter at a tier you choose — Low, Medium, High or Boss — for everyone at once. It asks you to confirm, because it lands on every player's screen.

Encounters only fire outside combat, and only one can be live at a time.

The console's middle block is your fix-it kit. All of it is immediate and needs no quest attached:

• •Adjust HP — damage or heal any character by any amount.
• •Rest Party — restores every wounded character to full HP in one click.
• •Award XP / Credits — straight onto a character.
• •Grant Ammo — a stack for a chosen weapon slot.
• •Award Weapon / Attachment / Medication — anything in the catalog, with an image preview so you can see what you're giving before you give it.

Reward Reference shows the real XP / ammo / healing each tier pays, read from the same table the claims use — so it can't drift from what players actually get.

The Studio link opens in a new tab on purpose: you can generate art during a fight without leaving the combat screen, and a published portrait appears for everyone without a reload.

Type @ in a prompt to reference something that already exists — a character, vendor, or map location. The app feeds that subject's own art in as a reference, so a returning NPC looks like themselves instead of like a new stranger.

NPC Stats sits right below the Studio link: make the character there, tune its numbers here.

The shared record — the running session log, plus pages the party writes themselves.

• •Notes — anyone can add one; players can edit their own; you can remove any of them.
• •Companions — a page each. The owning player writes its origin and its battle lines, which fire at random during fights.
• •Enemies — what the party has actually fought, and what they've learned about it.

Notes take real formatting — headers render as banners, plus bold, italics, bullets and quotes.