Many RPGs assume that you can play the same character forever, whether that game lasts a few weeks or a few decades. The Carrington Event belongs to that group of games where each character has an end in sight right at the beginning. The campaign might continue, but your character’s story is told.
You have two separate advancement systems –
- By gaining XP, and using that XP to buy Advances, you can imporve your Ability Rank (usually just abbreviated to Rank).
- You also gain Dread, and at certain points, that rising Dread causes your Eldritch Rank to increase.
You have several different possible character ends.
If you advance your Ability Rank to Spectacular, and then advance one more rank, you must Retire you have become the best in the world at something, and there is nothing left for you to achieve. You leave your mark on the world, leaving it a better place than you found it.
If you advance both Ability Rank and Eldritch rank to Spectacular, then take one more Manifestation, you undergo Apotheosis, which is the best possible end for your character. You should be aiming for that.
If your Eldritch Rank equals your Ability Rank, and you trigger one more Manifestation (at any rank less than Spectacular), you become a Monster. This is the worst endgame for your character, and it will have ramifications on the game. (Among other things, you become an NPC Monster for the other players to defeat at some point.)
Those are the three main, desired outcomes – you can also be killed in your adventures.
Dread
You have a maximum Dread equal to 10, minus one per Eldritch rank above Poor. So you start out with 10 possible Dread, but at Fair Eldritch that drops to 9, and is 8 at Good Eldritch, and so on. There is a rising sense of Dread.
You gain 1 Dread at the end of every session. It is simplest to mark this when you do experience. The GM may track this for each player.
Whenever your Eldritch Power increases, the Dread track is cleared (and your maximum drops).
If your Dread is at maximum, you can no longer trigger manifestations. But th GM can trigger you Manifestation, and describes how that happens – usually in an inconvenient way in a place inconvenient for you.
The GM should be looking for ways to trigger the Manifestation, and you can make suggestions. There may be a way for you to bring it about early, to force it, but remember the GM describes the details.
If you end a session at maximum Dread, recover one point in your Eldritch Power Pool.
Dread Timeline
If you Manifest when Eldritch is at current maximum, your story is over. To gain maximum Dread 5 times can take 45 sessions, and the extra manifestations might take some more sessions. That is normally plenty of time to get enough experience to raise your Ability Rank to Spectacular (and pick up some knacks), but events might force you to Manifest early here and there.
So you have a potentially difficult balancing act: do I gain Power as fast as can, and possibly turn into a Monster, or try to manage my experience and undergo Apotheosis or Retirement. This is partly up to you, but game events play a significant part.
Roleplaying Dread
Dread is a real thing that your character feels. The power surging through your body, transforming, as you become more and monstrous. This is something you feel and are aware of.
The GM may create certain scenes where this is readily apparent and must be faced, and you can choose to incorporate it into your play. But there are no game-mechanical effects, so you are free to describe this in whatever way suits you.
Retirement, Apotheosis, and Becoming A Monster
These are outcomes that are covered by the GM rules. But the names give the basic idea.
