Wands in the Aether

This is a game of arcane heists and wizard criminals in an aetherpunk city. Magic is commonplace here, used to ease and enrich the lives of those with the privilege of living in aether powered mansions guarded by sparkwrought automatons.

Outside this upper echelons of society, magic is harder to come by. A charm here, a wand there. Not luxury, but a utility nonetheless.

And on the edges, in the greasy fringes of the city live those without the means to study magic. They are left to build mundane artifacts of steam and coal and earthly lightning.

Whatever your background, magic controls your life. Maybe you taught yourself, or maybe you grew up with a tutor, but whatever the case, you’re competent and courageous. There’s wealth to be found in this city still; more than enough to go around if it weren’t so well guarded.

Well, let’s see just how well well guarded it is, hmm?

How To Play

This is a decentralized roleplaying game. That means there’s no Game Master pulling strings or setting scenes. It’s up to the entire group to tell the story they want to tell, together. This can be liberating, but also frightening or intimidating if you are accustomed to a more formal and organized game.

Together, each player creates a daring and competent criminal defined by their skills of crime and spellcraft. These thieves, killers, and other such vagabonds then set out together on a heist or similar mission.

The game proceeds as a freeform conversation, as characters narrate their actions and their reactions to the world around them.

Sometimes, two players say things at the same time, or that contradict each other. Sometimes, they say something dramatic or dangerous. In all these circumstances, we consult the oracles of play to find a path for the story to move forward. These oracles are the dice, the narrative context, and other factors in play when we make adjudications about the story being told.

Rolling the Dice

Wands in the Aether uses six-sided dice. You roll one or more at once and read the single highest result. This collection of dice is referred to as your dice pool for that action. If you ever need to roll but have zero (or negative) dice in your pool, roll two dice and take the single lowest result.

Most dice pools are made using your Actions and Attributes. They have ratings, which tell you how many dice you roll when using them. Your rating in each Action ranges from 0-4, representing the ambiguous mixture of talent, skill, training, passion, and luck that makes you a capable thief. If you have a rating of at least 1 in an Action, it is called a Proficient Action. Your rating in each Attribute is equal to the number of Proficient Actions you have in its category.

Interpreting the Dice

This game uses a framework called Facade Dice (named from the system’s source, Facade: Transvampiric Roleplay) to interpret rolls and drive the narrative. When you attempt to do something brave, foolish, risky, or scary, you will roll dice to see what happens. Remember: even if you fail, something good may happen. Even if you succeed, something may go wrong.

Your final result is the highest die rolled. If it’s a…

1, you fail at a cost.
2, you fail with an advantage.
3, you fail with an advantage.
4, you succeed at a cost.
5, you succeed at a cost.
6, you succeed with an advantage.

Success, Failure, & Consequences

Success means you accomplish what you were attempting; you overcame an obstacle, you created an opening, etc. It will usually follow smoothly from the fiction; you will probably know what success looks like before you roll. Failure, on the other hand, is more complicated. When you fail a roll, another player will choose a Consequence for you to face.

The possible Consequences are:

Stress. When this Consequence is chosen, the character marks one point of Stress.
Entanglement. When this Consequence is chosen, another character in the scene will make the character’s life harder; this might be an unexpected request or interference with something they’re trying to accomplish.
Loss. When this Consequence is chosen, the character loses something. This can be physical, like a resource or possession; it can also be less literal, such as an opportunity or relationship.

Costs & Advantages

When you roll, you will always trigger either a cost or an advantage. Usually they will be opposite of your main result (a cost with a success or an advantage with a failure), but in extreme circumstances you might succeed and gain an advantage or fail and face a cost.

Costs are setbacks, threats, and complications. Advantages are benefits, coincidences, and stray bits of good luck. Keep in mind that the core question of the roll is about getting what you want; a cost should never take your success away. Likewise, an advantage should never just give you the thing that you were rolling for in the first place.

Always discuss the nature of the costs and advantages you receive with the group, and come to a consensus together.

Attributes & Actions

There are two Attributes in Wands in the Aether. They are what keep you alive as you throw yourself headlong into danger. Each Attribute holds three Actions, which are the ways you throw yourself into the danger in the first place.

Toil is a measure of ingenuity and willpower. You will need it to avoid or overcome immediate, physical dangers to your person. Toil actions include:

Fight, when you seek to hurt or kill someone.
Flee, when you attempt to escape a charged situation.
Flirt, when you apply charm to fluster, arouse, or distract.

Trouble is a measure of guile and charm. You will need it to avoid or overcome legal, financial, or social threats. Trouble actions include:

Sneak, when you move quietly or hide yourself from sight, mundane or otherwise.
Steal, when you open locks and manipulate devices.
Summon, when you call on great and terrible spirits to do your bidding (for a price).

Stress

Along the course of your heists, you will gain Stress. Stress is recorded on your sheet with tally marks. Any time you gain or heal Stress, it is a single point.

Take Stress when you…

Get hurt
Overexert yourself
Endure misfortune

You may voluntarily mark Stress to…

Roll an extra die
Give someone else an extra die for one roll
Use a flashback to explain how you prepared something helpful in advance

You can heal Stress by…

Taking a moment to breathe
Accepting comfort from a friend
Indulging an unhealthy habit

When you reach five Stress, clear all your Stress and choose one:

Lose control of your magic in a messy or dangerous way
Blurt out what you’re really thinking
Lash out and hurt someone
Ignore, avoid, or bail on someone

Character Creation

Use these details to describe your character:

You have a name and some pronouns.

Names are powerful things, and very important. What is your character’s relationship to them? Do you use a different name for criminal activities than you do day to day? Do you have multiple sets of pronouns that you swap between based on mood or gender?

You have a wand.

Or similar instrument. Magic is dangerous without the proper tools, and for the arcanist on the move there’s no beating a simple wand. Some prefer staves or rings or the occasional orb, but the threatening gesture of pointing a wand in someone’s face simply never gets old.

You have a look.

What’s your style? Shadow-clad and inconspicuous, or blending in with the crowd? Do you have a criminal persona and outfit, or do you try to keep things quiet? Presentation is a valuable asset, especially as it intersects with the other details above.

You have 5 points to distribute between the six Actions, with a maximum of 2 in any one Action.

Crew Creation

Once all the characters have been built and introduced, decide on the following together:

You have a crew name.

Again, it all comes down to presentation. Maybe you have a theme between characters, or maybe you see yourselves as deliberately eclectic. Regardless sooner or later people will know you. They’ll name you if you don’t do it yourself, so you might as well make it a good one.

You have a hideout.

Where do you plot your schemes? Where do you pore over maps and compile spell components? Where do you retreat to when the heat gets too intense? Describe your safe haven together. Decide why it’s safe, and give it a single, secret vulnerability.

You have an ally.

This might be a wealthy patron who you do jobs for, a guard on the take, a fence, or even another criminal out there in the city. Someone’s in your corner. Who are they? Decide how they help you and what they want in return.

You have a rival crew.

Maybe they used to be part of your crew, or maybe you ran afoul of them on a job and never forgave each other. Whatever the case, these folks mean trouble. Decide how they differ from you and why you’re enemies.

Factors

Factors are elements of the story that are external to the viewpoint characters. They are things the main characters must confront, interact with, or overcome in some way to accomplish their goals. The four Factors are:

The Client who hired you.
The Target of the operation.
The Loot you’re after.
The Twist that shakes things up.

Give each player a Factor to be in charge of. When the Factors complicate the adventure, the player who chose the Factor in question can, if they’d like, take authorship of its actions and details during the scene. Feel free to pass Factors around; don’t feel bound to controlling one just because you defined it before play.

Anyone may take up a Factor to control if they wish. You can also take up a Factor before it is present in a scene and decide that it will now enter and complicate the current situation in some way. Use the tables below to randomly determine the Factors of your heist, or just pick and choose from the lists. If you have a better idea, by all means plan your own caper!

The Client

A nervous noble
A shifty scholar
A gloomy guard
A merciless merchant
A rowdy rebel
A sinister saint

The Loot

A possessive mask of amber and wool
The soul of an archfey preserved in a deck of cards
A magic ring
A wizard’s dream
Forbidden spell components
The mantle of death

The Mark

The arcane authority with an overreaching hand
The religious leader beloved by many
The monarchs who share a throne
The bandit captain known for cruelty
The scholar in a tower of traps
The artist whose influence swells daily

The Twist

The job was a setup!
There’s a dragon involved, somehow!
There’s another crew up to no good!
Enchantment and wards protect the loot!
A convergence of the planes makes one type of magic stronger and another weaker!
An unexpected holiday brings in bystanders!

Wrapping Up The Heist

There are four outcomes to any heist: success, failure, capture, or death. When you succeed, split the loot amongst yourselves and describe how you relax. When you fail, describe how you lay low and who tries to kick you while you’re down. When you are captured, describe how your team will break you out or how you escape alone. When you are killed, describe your undead form and announce the target of your revenge.

The Life of Crime

While Wands excels at telling the story of a specific heist, you may choose to continue your story beyond the scope of a single job. If you intend to keep playing Wands beyond a single session, you can use Heat, Downtime, and Long-term Projects to create a connective tissue binding your heists together.

Heat

When you mark your fifth Stress, you trigger a repercussion as usual, but you don’t erase your Stress; you keep marking it. When you reach 5 Stress and choose a repercussion, mark a point of Heat as well.

When you reach 50 Stress, your character grows too weary and retires from the life. When you reach 10 Heat, they must skip town or be brought to “justice”. Either way, their story ends.

Downtime

Between jobs, everyone in the crew describes the ways their character decompresses after a job, spends their loot, or prepares for their next endeavor.

This is a great time to explore the relationships between party members as well; if you have any scenes you want to see that don’t happen during a heist, talk about setting them here.

Downtime is fluid; if you don’t have ideas for interesting things to do between two jobs, feel free to skim over it in a montage. Each character may take two Downtime Actions per heist from the following list:

Research a location, object, or person.
- When you Research, gain 1 point of Intel. Spend it during a job to make a declarative statement about the thing you researched. It becomes true.
Acquire equipment, contraband, or weaponry.
- When you Acquire, you gain 1 point of Gear. Spend it during a job to overcome an obstacle without needing to make a roll if you can narratively justify it.
Indulge in something that makes you happy.
- When you Indulge, you clear 1d6 Stress. If this would bring you below zero Stress, you gain 1 Heat as you overindulge and your antics draw attention.
Lay low to avoid prying eyes.
- When you lay low, you reduce your Heat by 1. If you lay low, you may not perform any other Downtime Action.

Long-term Projects

You can research lore and acquire materials to learn rituals or to craft spells or weapons. Here are some examples:

Summoning (2 Intel, 2 Gear). Spend a downtime action to gain a demonic companion who will inhabit your body alongside you and give you an extra die in any one Action any time taking that action furthers their desires.

Vessel (3 Intel, 6 Gear). Spend two downtime actions to craft an sparkwrought vessel for your soul. Upon death, you will inhabit this artificial shell rather than become undead.

Managing Spotlight

When your character is offscreen, take up a Factor or step into the role of adjudicator for whoever is in the spotlight. Offer guidance or suggest rolls to keep things interesting.

Remember, however, that when you do you are not “running” the game. You have no more authority by default than anyone else, and any authority you gain is freely given by the other players. Always respect their consent.

Setting Scenes & Roleplaying

Begin scenes in the moments just before things get messy, and cut away right before they get boring. If things are lagging, or you don’t know what to do or say next, ask another player!

Don’t be afraid to narrate out of character. Not everyone enjoys improvising dialogue completely in character, and some players may not be comfortable doing so. Announcing your character’s internality and describing their intent can be a powerful way to convey story without dialogue.

Attribution

This work is based on Blades in the Dark (found at http://www.bladesinthedark.com/), product of One Seven Design, developed and authored by John Harper, and licensed for our use under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/).

Support

If you like this game, it would mean a lot to me if you supported my other design work. You can do so on patreon, ko-fi, and itch. You can also follow me on Twitter @NeitherNora.