Unwritten: System Reference Document/Dramatic Time and Milestones

Sessions

A traditional way to measure game time is in sessions. When everyone sits down to play, that’s the beginning of a session. The session ends when you and your friends pack it up for the night and go home. For most people, a session is about 2 to 4 hours, but there is no theoretical limit.

Sessions do not necessarily reflect anything in the dramatic pacing of the story. However, it is a useful concept to use for pacing both player time and game time. At the end or the beginning of a session is a natural time for an interlude, either for wrapping up what has happened or preparing for the next round of the game.

At the Beginning of a Session

• Recap what happened the last session.
• Refill all of the characters’ fate points up to their maximum refresh. If they have more than their refresh, they keep the extra fate points.
• Remove any minor or  moderate consequences marked as recovering.

At the End of a Session

• Go around the table and ask each player “As of right now, what is your character most interested in finding out?”
• Each character gets a minor milestone.

Chapters

A chapter is usually 3 to 4 sessions and represents the shape of the story. Some plot point is resolved or significantly transformed in a chapter. Most of the time, a chapter will definitively resolve some kind of problem or dilemma presented by the GM, or wrap up a storyline. You can look at this like an episode of a television show.

At the Beginning of a Chapter

• When you start a new chapter, do the following:
• Each player explains what their character has been up to since the last chapter.
• Reset each character’s fate points to their refresh (extra fate points are lost).
• Remove any consequences marked as recovering.

At the End of a Chapter

When you end a chapter:

• Each character gets a significant milestone.

Story Arcs

A story arc is a long-term story made up of several chapters, usually between two and four. An arc typically culminates in an event that brings great change to the game world, building up from the resolution of the chapters. You can look at an arc like a season of a television show, where individual episodes lead to a tumultuous climax. You’re not always guaranteed to have a recognizable arc, just like not all TV shows have a plot line that carries through the whole season—it’s possible to bounce from situation to situation without having a defined plot structure.

This is the place where characters really evolve and where the directions of their stories can change. The trials of yesterday simply aren’t sufficient to challenge these characters anymore, and the threats of tomorrow will need to be more adept, organized, and determined to stand against them in the future.

At the End of an Arc

When you end an arc, do the following:

• Each character gets a major milestone.

Milestones on the Journey

A milestone is a moment during the game where you have the chance to change or advance your character. They are called milestones because they usually happen at significant “break points” in the action of a game—the end of a session, the end of a chapter, and the end of a story arc, respectively.

Usually, those break points immediately follow some significant event in the story that justifies your character changing in response to events. You might reveal a significant plot detail or have a cliffhanger at the end of a session. You might resolve a plotline at the end of a chapter. You might resolve a major storyline that shakes up the campaign world at the end of an arc.

Obviously, things won’t always line up that nicely, so GMs, you have some discretion in deciding when a certain level of milestone occurs. If it seems satisfying to give out a milestone in the middle of a session, go ahead, but stick to the guidelines here to keep from handing out too many advancement opportunities too often.

Milestones come in three levels of importance: minor, significant, and major.

Minor Milestone

Minor milestones usually occur at the end of a session of play, or when one piece of a story has been resolved. These kinds of milestones are more about changing your character rather than character growth, about adjusting in response to whatever’s going on in the story if you need to. Sometimes it won’t really make sense to take advantage of a minor milestone, but you always have the opportunity if you should need to.

In a minor milestone, each player can choose one of the following:

• Switch the rank value of any two skills.
• Replace an Adequate (+1) skill with a new skill.
• Swap out one stunt for another stunt.
• Rename a journey aspect.

This is a good way to make slight character adjustments, if it seems like something on your character isn’t quite right—you don’t end up using that stunt as often as you thought, or you resolved a journey aspect you had and thus it’s no longer appropriate, or any of those changes that keep your character consistent with the events of play.

In fact, you should almost always be able to justify the change you’re making in terms of the game’s story. GMs, you’re the final arbiter on this, but don’t be so much of a stickler that you sacrifice a player’s fun for consistency.

Significant Milestone

Significant milestones usually occur at the end of a chapter or the conclusion of a big plot event (when in doubt, at the end of every two or three sessions).

Unlike minor milestones, which are primarily about change, significant milestones are about learning new things—dealing with problems and challenges has made your character generally more capable at what they do.

During a significant milestone, a player can do everything that they could do during a minor one. In addition, each player can:

• ...gain one additional skill point, which you can spend to buy a new skill at Adequate (+1) or increase an existing skill by one rank.
• ...spend a refresh for a new stunt (you can never reduce your refresh to zero)
• ...attempt a journey roll (see below).

Balancing your skill set

During character creation, you organized your skills into a pyramid. You don’t have to stick to that for character advancement.

However, there’s still a limitation you have to deal with: skill columns. This means you can’t have more skills at a certain rank than you have at the rank below it. So if you have three Good (+3) skill, you must have at least three Adequate (+1) skills and at least three Fair (+2) skills to support them.

The pyramid from character creation follows this rule already, but when you’re adding skills, you need to make sure you don’t violate this limitation. It’s easy to forget that if you use a skill point to upgrade one of your own skills, you might suddenly not have enough skills to “support” it at the new rank.

So, let’s say you have one Good (+3), two Fair (+2), and three Adequate (+1) skills.

After a chapter, you want to upgrade a Fair (+2) skill to Good (+3). That’d give you two Good (+3), one Fair (+2), and three Adequate (+1).

That doesn’t work. You’re now missing the second Fair skill you’d need to be square with the rules.

When this happens, you have one of two options. You can buy a new skill at the lowest possible rank—in this case, Adequate (+1)—and then upgrade it in subsequent chapters until you’re in a position to bump the skill you want to the appropriate level. Or you can “bank” the skill point, not spend it now, and wait until you’ve accumulated enough to buy a skill at whatever rank you need to support the move.

So in the case above, you could buy an Adequate (+1) skill, promote one of your Adequate skills to a Fair (+2), then bump the original skill up to Good (+3). That would take three significant or major milestones to do. Or, you could wait, bank up three skill points, buy a new skill at Fair (+2), then bump the original skill up to Good (+3). It just depends on whether you want to put new stuff on your sheet or not in the interim.

Journey Rolls

Characters are often in the middle of all sorts of projects that they do in their spare time. This is where big things are done: scientific discoveries made or edifices built. Unwritten assumes that characters are in the midst of various projects. The actual projects themselves rarely intrude on the on-stage story until they are complete.

The player should look to their character’s history and actions to inform this process. Aspects should especially be looked at as a source for things they might accomplish. However, this shouldn’t be a straitjacket, merely a guideline. As long as the player can reasonably rationalize their choice, that should be close enough.

Journey rolls reflect the fruits of the character’s labor. A successful roll will have the intended effects, while a fumble may result in some particularly sour fruits. The effects will vary depending on what character is attempting to accomplish.

Explore

A character may go back to someplace they have been, or that is otherwise available to them, and explore. Through exploration, a character can reveal details of the area, modify existing details, or even declare that certain details exist.

Because exploration can be such a detailed and laborious process, doing that in the middle of active play can end up being awkward. This is especially the case when the process would take a long time. However, journey rolls are perfect for such efforts.

Gather Information

The primary activity in exploring is to gather information about the place in question. Run the journey roll as a discover action. Questions and answers from such an invoke should be wider in scope than would happen in a scene. The character has spent a lot more time and effort, so they should be able to ask more complex questions and get more thorough answers.

Declare a Detail

There is always a lot unsaid about any location, and players can fill in these unknowns. A journey roll spent on exploration gives the player a chance to add to the background. The player may add something that fills in one of the blanks, or expands on an existing detail or aspect.

Usually, declaring a detail in this way is handled similar to an advantage action:

• Fumble - The detail or aspect is not created, or one is created that is definitely not what the character wanted. The player has success at a serious cost as an option; this choice should become a major plot point in the game.
• Tie - The detail is created or expanded, but with some minor unexpected quirks or differences. The GM should devise something sufficiently annoying to be noticeable but not severe.
• Succeed - The detail or aspect is created as the player described, or an existing aspect is changed to fit.
• Excel - The detail or aspect is created as the player described, or an existing aspect is changed to fit. In addition, the player gets a situation aspect for use in the next chapter. The aspect should reflect something they learned while ‘discovering’ the declared detail.

Practicing the Art

Writing is a long and complicated process, one that can only be done using journey rolls. See the Writing Systems section of the Art chapter for exactly how that is done.

Creating a Resource

A player can attempt to create the resource using a journey roll. This is in addition to the regular stunt gain in a significant milestone—a resource can be created with a successful journey roll and a player can gain another stunt (including another resource) in the same significant milestone.

The roll is run as an overcome action. Character and campaign aspects, consequences, as well as reserved situation aspects, can be invoked to help on this roll.

If the milestone is happening at the end of a chapter, fate points spent are still spent at of the beginning of the first scene of the next chapter.

Here are the outcomes:

• Fumble - The resource is not created.
• Tie - The resource needs just a little bit more: possibly special materials, equipment, or knowledge. Maybe the character needs to garner the help or approval of particular people. The details depend on the project and the game, but it has to be something that requires effort. (Think of it as a side quest.) Once that requirement is met, the resource goes into effect immediately, even during regular play.
• Succeed - The resource is created as expected.
• Excel - The player has access to an appropriate situation aspect for use at the beginning of the next chapter (no free invokes are granted, however).

Complete a Project

Completing a project is an umbrella option for endeavors that would take a good deal of time and effort but, in the interest of drama, happen off-stage.  If the GM feels that there should be an effort behind something the character was attempting and that failure has interesting dramatic implications, they can fall back on this mechanism.

• Fumble - It didn’t work at all. The player may choose success at a serious cost. The cost should become a continuing thorn in the character’s side.
• Tie - The project is a success... sort of. It is basically what you wanted, but there should be unwanted quirks or unexpected consequences. The GM should devise something sufficiently annoying to be noticeable but not severe.
• Succeed - The project was completed just as the player had hoped.
• Excel - The project exceeded expectations. The character should get an extra benefit out of the project. The result is particularly good quality, or useful in some additional way. Alternatively, the player can get an appropriate situation aspect in reserve for use in the next chapter.

Major Milestone

A major milestone should only occur when something happens in the campaign that shakes it up a lot—the end of a story arc (or around three chapters) or any other large-scale change that reverberates around your game world.

On a major milestone, each player performs all of the actions that happen in a significant milestone. In addition, each player can:

...rename their character’s High Concept, if they want.

...increase their refresh by one.

...get the benefits of a journey roll as if they succeeded at the roll (this is in addition to the roll they get from the significant milestone).

A major milestone is a pretty big deal. It should signal that lots of things in the world of your game have changed. Some of that will probably be reflected in world itself, but given the number of chances the PCs have had to revise their aspects in response to the story, you could be looking at a group with a much different set of priorities and concerns than they had when they started.