Castle Falkenstein Rules Summary Whenever a player wants to do something that would require a Challenge, his character’s appropriate Ability is compared to the difficulty of the Challenge. In addition, the player may add the value of one playing card to his character’s Ability for the purpose of resolving that Challenge. The numerical values for the Abilities are as follows: Poor (3), Average (6), Good (9), Great (12), Exceptional (15), and Extraordinary (18). Every Ability has a suit associated with it, and cards of that suit are worth face value when added to the character’s Ability. (Jacks are worth eleven, queens are worth twelve, kings are worth thirteen, and aces are always worth negative five.) Cards of the wrong suit are always worth only one point (excepting aces.) The red joker is worth twenty points. The black joker is worth negative ten points. (You don't need to memorize these values; they will be written on the cards used at the game.) Each player is dealt four Fortune cards at the beginning of the night. When engaging in a Challenge, the player may play one or more of his Fortune cards, or he may select one random card off the top of a deck (decks will be left in convenient places around the gaming area.) A player’s Fortune cards may not be replenished during the game session, nor may they be given to other players. Fortune cards left over at the end of the game session are discarded. If a Challenge is not opposed by another character (for example, picking a lock, or leaping a chasm), then the difficulty is determined by a gamemaster. This difficulty will not be revealed to a player. If a Challenge is opposed by another character, the difficulty of the Challenge is determined by the other character’s relevant Ability. For example, if one character attempts to pick another’s pockets, the first character uses his Stealth, and the difficulty is determined by the second character’s Perception. In this case, the other player may also draw a random card from the deck or play any number of Fortune cards from his hand to add to his Ability. In a contested Challenge, the player initiating the action must choose what kind of card or cards to play before the defender does (the type of card being used will be obvious; different backings will be used for the Fortune cards and for the random decks.) Both characters’ totals should be revealed at the same time. (Neither player needs to reveal the value of their Ability or card separately, merely the total.)
If the player’s total exceeds the difficulty of the Challenge, he is successful; if the total is equal to or less than the difficulty, he fails. If the player’s total is less than half of the difficulty of the Challenge, the result is a Fumble. Conversely, if the player’s total is more than twice the difficulty of the Challenge, the result is an Overwhelming Success. In either case, contact a Gamemaster for adjudication. If the player’s total is precisely equal to the difficulty of the Challenge, the result is a Push. The character and his opponent are at stalemate. They may either drop the matter, with nothing resolved, or may continue to struggle, in which case a Gamemaster should adjudicate what secondary Ability is to be used in a follow-up Challenge. Out-of-Game Actions After each game, each player may submit a list of actions that he wishes to have his character perform during the period of time before the next game. Obviously, this could become rather cumbersome; thus, we are forced to ask the players to limit themselves to twenty lines of e-mail (of eighty characters each) per session. The more specific the description of an action, the more care your character will take, and the more likely it is to succeed. For example, suppose you wish to seduce the daughter of Count Nymphenburg. If all you put in your OOGA is "I seduce Count Nymphenburg's daughter", then obviously your character is not putting much effort into it; as such, your Charm will probably be counted as a couple of ranks lower for this purpose. On the other hand, if you spend twenty lines explaining exactly how you woo the young lady, using all the proper forms, ingratiating yourself with her father, sending bouquets of her favorite kind of flowers, and having your mutual friends mention your good breeding and character to her, your Charm will probably be considered to be a rank or so higher than usual. Obviously, this means that there is only so much you can effectively accomplish between game sessions. At the end of each session, if you have a particular activity in mind that you wish to make part of your Out-of-Game Action, you may select an appropriate card from your Fortune deck and give it to a gamemaster. You must then specify, in your Out-of-Game Action message, exactly how you wish your Fortune card to be applied. Only one card may be used in this way per player per session. Random Events
It is our experience that anything unusual that happens to a character between games is instantly assumed to be the action of another player. For this reason and others, we will be generating random events for each character between sessions. We will draw a card for each character between game sessions. Low cards (ace - six) will indicate bad events; the lower the card, the nastier the occurrence. High cards (nine king) will indicate fortunate events; the higher the card, the luckier it is. Sevens and eights will be discarded, and two new cards will be drawn for that character instead. The suit of the card will indicate the nature of the event, in much the same way that certain suits correspond to certain Abilities. It will naturally be up to the discretion of the gamemasters to determine the exact nature of the occurrences.
