Eldritch Sigils

The Second Millennium is Ending. Either the world or itself. Nobody can be sure. The people grow restless. Nobody can be trusted. Drug lords run the streets as the cops are more interested whitening their own nose. Even the government is about to get us.

All around you people are living the end of days in bright neon lights. If you look really close you see it; punk rockers feeding on the feelings of their fans, strange lights on the night sky, new kind of drugs that will open your mind for unseen vistas.

The very fabric of reality unraveling. The Veil is being ripped apart.

What lies Beyond the Veil?  Another dimension like ours? Hell? Purgatory? Something slightly twisted or constant chaos?

Those that reach to the Beyond are ever changed by it. And something is trying to break through...

Eldritch Sigils is a game about a cell of agents working against to prevent the Beyond from Bleeding into their world. It is an investigation game set in the 90s in the style of X-Files, The Fringe and Stranger Things. Other major influences include XCOM, Half Life as well as Conspiracy X and Delta Green.

Most important influence as an Apocalypse World hack have been the Regiment by John Harper & Paul Riddle, Dungeon World by Sage LaTorra & Adam Koebel and tremulus by Sean Preston.

After a few years of development and playtesting I believe this beast is finally ready to be released. It has evolved quite a few (some might say too many) times. It uses a dice pool and skill mechanics - mainly because our gaming group felt more comfortable with them. This meant changes in other aspects of the game as well but all in all I'm extremely happy with how they have worked in our games.

Rules can be found HERE (link to pdf in Google Drive)
Playbooks HERE (link to pdf in Google Drive)
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(And to prevent threadamancy, here is the original thread at this forum.)

Okay, first off, awesome. I like it. I want to run it. But there still are some rough edges, some more rough than others.

This still needs editing right? There seems to be a bunch of places where the game terms doesn't match up (for instance on the Operational HQ sheet under Surplus it says you need [datalink] for data. But there doesn't seem to be a [datalink] tag. There is a [data] tag though). I've run into a bunch of those.

I feel that there need to be a bit of a description of the Beyond, if only conceptually. I kinda feel like I need a bit of guidance on the outer limits of the concept. I'm aware that it is probably meant to depend on the game, like the Maelstrom in AW, but the game also seems to make a large amount of assumptions about the Beyond, without actually saying what those assumptions are based on; Bleeds, Opening Portals, Sigil Magic, various Beyond Studies, etc.

Is there a rule way to add additional crews to the base beyond the one from Staffed? I feel like I'd want a staff crew, hanging out at the base, researching and stuff, and a spec-ops crew to take with me to take down bad guys.

Resist Damage (p. 12)

I don't really understand this move. It seems on a solid success you suffer harm as established, and otherwise you suffer more misfortune. Where does it actually say how you reduce the harm?

Using Sigils (p. 18)

Should maybe be renamed "Using Sigil Tokens". I spent a minute or two confused about how the sigils of "Sigil Magic" would result in a permanent legacy or turning point. There is a bit of the same problem under strain (p. 20) "Eldritch Sigils uses two different types of damage". I caught on pretty quick, but it could still be confused with magical sigils, instead of the game name.

Character Death and New Characters (p. 20) paragraph 3

"Each player who resolved Strings to that player’s dead character may now mark a new Strings for the new character." Is that "a new String" or same number of strings as the old character?

Suffering Harm (p. 20)

"The most common way to character to suffer harm is attacking an opponent in close combat or shooting them from afar." should probably be "The most common way for a character to suffer harm is by being attacked by an opponent in close combat or being shoot at from afar."

Straing Scales (p. 21)

The harm scale seems very.. pirate focused.

Debilities (p. 21)

Could you squeeze the modifiers into the character sheets. It would be useful so you don't have to look up/remember the effects of the debilities in the heat of combat.

Healing Characters (p. 22)

"Any character may may try to help with Harm". One "may" may be enough.

"Whenever a you is treat". Drop the "a".

"If you are in a hurry or want to try to heal more lost Strain, the GM may require a skill roll. Usually each success should heal one lost Strain." Probably rephrase somehow. Unless first aid is supposed to grant more healing when you are in a hurry.

Long-term Care: The rules for removal of debilities between the text here, and the Downtime sheet doesn't match.

Curing Tells (p. 23)

The Downtime sheet specifically mentions the Purification Ritual for removal of taint. Maybe make that more clear in this section.

Facilities (p. 25)

I'd consider removing this entire section, or at least all duplicate information with the Operational HQ/Facilities sheets. I feel the list is less intuitive than the sheets, and just add a chance for information to become out of sync (so the rulebook and sheet rules are different).

If you want to go in depth about a facility, by all means do so. But avoid the duplicate rules.

Example Front Progress Tracker (p. 37)

Is the progress tracker usually connected to clues? Is it only affected by clues about the cult?

When making moves remember: (p.38)

Looks like it should be Moves, plural, rather than Move

Thank you so much for your input! Yes, it definitely needs editing and I'm extremely glad to have an outside view since doing projects like these leaves you blindsighted for things you need to make clearer. That and English not being my first language are some of the major issues here. :D

 - There are bound to be some conflicts with terminology since it has changed during our playtest and my working files are a total mess. That doesn't mean they should be there so thanks for  pointing out the data conflict. It should read just "data" since "datalink" is a remnant of wip files for the game to be set in 2099.
- The concept of Beyond and Veil will definitely be more fleshed out as well as the "state of the world" and other background material. It will be suggestive only though as this game is not about strict world guide.
- Crews were initially a permanent part of the HQ but we are currently thinking about restraining their use. Most likely it will be handled with different Associations have different starting crews.
- Resist Damage was originally left out and we haven't played with it in a while but one playtesting group insisted that PCs should not die via single roll. I added it as a late edit and I might have overlooked the wording on it since its format comes from an earlier draft.
- Using Sigils & Suffering Harm: you are right once again. Thanks!
- Straining Scales: :D Now this is what I meant. Having used different eras for the game is bound to leave problems I just didn't bother to double check...
- Healing Characters & Curing Tells: Thanks, I'll make sure to fix these.
- Facilities are currently a kind of placeholder. The idea here is that each Facility gets a separate page giving narrative information about them. I'm currently thinking about including three different descriptions for each Facility that the players could choose from.
- Progress Tracker is/was an earlier version of the Tech Trees but I felt like it should still be included for a different kind of "adventure map". Once again I might have overlooked fixing it for the current state of Gather Clues and the thematics of the game.

I'd like to include you in the thanks-sections, so which name should I use?

My real name is Thorbjørn Steen, so I'd just go with that :)

For facilities, I'd consider not giving it any detail at all, and leave it up to the group to define. It is kinda obvious from the HQ sheet what they do/are, with the possible exception of the Beyond-focused ones. But especially with the Beyond-focused ones, it would make sense to leave it vague, since you are leaving the Beyond itself up to the individual group.

Went through fixing the things you noticed and found a other errors as well. I'll update the document once I have written something about the Beyond.

Right now I'm considering including only questions about the Beyond.

This idea of the game sparked to me while reading the Chariot of the Gods? by Erich von Däniken (after watching Ancient Aliens). I got intrigued by all the question marks in it. You might say this game was our way to answer those questions.