We use a mixture of Milestone and Experience advancement. At the end of each adventure (aka Chapter), you gain one advance automatically, and each 5 XP can be used to buy another Advance. Adventures have an inbuilt pacing system, and should last 1-2 sessions, or longer if sessions are short.
You can rise in level in the Skill Track, Trait Track, or Extra Track, and each follows the same scheme. After spending one Advance, you get level one. After spending two more advances, you get level two. And so on.
| Level | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 |
| Level Name | Fair | Good | Great | Superb | Spectacular |
| Advance Cost | ▭ | ▭▭ | ▭▭▭ | ▭▭▭▭ | ▭▭▭▭▭ |
| Skill Benefit | + Fair | + Good | + Great | + Superb | + Spectacular |
| Trait Benefit | +1 | +1 | +1 | +1 | +1 |
| Extra Benefit | +1 | +1 | +1 | +1 | +1 |
When you get an advance, you can spend it on one of three advance tracks, Skill Advances, Trait Advances, and Extra Advances. Because the systems work differently, advancement for each is slightly different too.
Skill Advances
The Concept of Skill Slots
Think of each skill as occupying a box of its rank. So a skill might be in a Fair box, and another skill might be in a Great box. When increasing skills, you gain extra boxes. They start out empty, but you can immediately fill them with a skill from one rank lower, if you so choose.
Then move skills up one at time, in order from high to low.
So you start with a Fair, Good, and Great skill. Then you get a Fair skill, and move any Poor skill up to it. Then you get a Good skill, and move one of your Fair skills up to occupy it. That leaves a Fair slot, so you move another Poor skill up to Fair. And so it goes.
Another way to think of this: You get an extra skill of th4e new Skill Advancement Rank, and every rank below it. These are skill slots, and you can only move skills of one rank below into these boxes. If you vacate any existing boxes, you can move a skill from one rank below up into that box.
A skill can increase by only 1 rank at a time..
Trait and Extra Advances
When you get a +1 advantage, you get both of these:
- Add 1 to Luck (Traits only)
- Add one new Trait
Traits have a number of Boxes equal to the number of advances. Say you start with 5 Traits and have gained this to Good, you now have 7 Traits and also 7 boxes (called Luck boxes).
When you use a Trait, check it off and mark one Luck box. At the end of each Scene, clear all used Traits, but do not touch Luck boxes. Once all Luck boxes are filled, you can’t use any Traits. At the end of each Adventure, clear all used Luck boxes.
In other words, your Traits can each be used 1/Scene, and the total number of Traits you can use n An adventure, is the number of Traits.
Extras might or might not have boxes; if so they can be used each Scene or each Adventure – they are very configurable.
Universal Advance Benefits
Whenever you add an advance of any type, you can do any of the following. You don’t need to do any of them – they are options.
- Redefine or Change a Trait – you aren’t stuck with what you chose at beginning of play. Some changes may require game play, or description of what happened during downtime.
- Swap the ranks of two skills with adjacent rank. So you could swap the ranks of a Fair and Good skill, or a Good and Great skill, but you cannot swap a Fair and a Great skill. (In this process, skills can go down, and we represent character development, not just advancement.)
- Retire a Character and Introduce A New One – retirement is covered in more detail elsewhere.
Using Experience as well as Milestones
Each time you accepts a Miss on a Decision roll, you get 1 XP. Also at any point during the chapter, you can mark up to five XP questions. Each grants 1 XP at the end of a Chapter (adventure).
Here are the questions:
- Heroism: Did my actions help save someone from death or even worse?
- Relationship: Did we learn something new and important about any PC?
- Revelations: Did we learn something new and important about the world?
- Setback: Did I take a Compel, Sacrifice, or Concession this session, or suffer some other story-based setback imposed by the GM? This is something other than the 1 XP award you get for accepting Misses.
- Mysteries: Was I exposed to forbidden knowledge (for example, my Uncanny or Eldritch ranks increased)?
Remember, you can qualify for these at any point during the chapter. The questions are mneant to encourage th3e kind of play we want to see.
Achievements
As a special bonus for learning the rules, when using the experience system you can gain 1 XP for each of these, only once. No achievement can be gained twice.
- Contact+er: Create a new NPC during play.
- Creator: Create a situation aspect (Discover)
- Imaginator: Declare a Story Detail
- Inspirer: Help an ally by invoking their aspect
- Introverter: Change or Define an Aspect
- Magician: Use a Power without a roll.
- Manifestor: Use your first Manifestation
- Sacrificer: Use a Sacrifice.
- Teamworker: Help another PC with their roll
- Troublemaker: Compel an aspect of your own
Beyond Spectacular
You can fill each experience track with 15 advances, and there’s a special “The End” track which is a continuation of the Skills track – so it has 6 more boxes.
Once you have filled all tracks, you must retire the character if they are still alive, and start a new character. It is intended that characters finish their adventuring life during the campaign.
When you introduce a new character, it must have a lower level in both tracks, but you can choose any level up to that point.
