The Wyrd Abacus

The Wyrd Abacus underpins the stories told in the nexus of the weird and the horrible. This game system serves as the

The Wyrd Abacus underpins the stories told in the nexus of the weird and the horrible. This game system serves as the bones for your tale, supporting the narrative of your journey through the seething cauldron of both occult and merelyhuman nastiness that lies just beneath the setting’s placid, bucolic veneer.

The Wyrd Abacus uses attribute pools, dice, and a simple bidding mechanic to support the flow of the fiction as each story unfolds. As characters become more embroiled in blood, fear, and witchcraft, they risk being caught in the threads of the Wyrd itself. When faced with threats and challenges, characters draw upon the Wyrd to tilt the odds, but beware; the consequences of doing so will linger, risking outcomes both fair and foul.

To play through a story using the Wyrd Abacus, you will need:

• One or more players, who will take on the role of a particular character in the story.
• A narrator, who will be the stage manager for the story, taking on the roles of denizens.
• Six-sided dice. Players use the dice as their story progresses to overcome specific challenges or to find out how the Wyrd affects them.
• A means of recording your character’s traits, which will change during the game.

The Stories We Tell

The Wyrd Abacus is intended to run single stories, with the players generating their characters specifically for that tale. The story might play out in the course of a single sit-down session, or it could run across several sessions, but the game is aimed at specific, focused arcs rather than supporting a longer chronicle or campaign.

Terminology

Here follows a quick summary of terms used in the Wyrd Abacus system. You don’t need to learn these, but this list may help provide clarity as you read through the rules and encounter

Ability: Each character you play has three abilities: Body, Mind, and Soul. You assign a numerical value from 3-9 to each of these during character creation, which dictates the relevant ability pool and the size of your influence rolls with that ability.

Challenge: A scene consists of one or more challenges, specific obstacles or dangers that the characters attempt to overcome through challenge rolls or, in rare cases, Wyrd rolls.

Character: Each player controls a particular character through whom they will explore the story and attempt to overcome challenges. References to characters always indicate one of these player-controlled characters, not one of the denizens of the story.

Denizen: Any role that is not one of the players’ characters is called a denizen.

Narrator: The narrator is the games master and stage manager, overseeing the story and influencing its outcome.

Player: One to four players control characters through a story, roleplaying their characters’ actions in the unfolding scenes and narrating the outcome of the challenges they overcome.

Scene: The scene is the discrete playing unit of the game. During a scene, the characters face one or more challenges that must be overcome with their abilities. Characters move through scenes until the story ends.

Story: The story is a connected series of scenes following an overall narrative thread. A story doesn’t necessarily have a set number of scenes; some stories might even consist of only a single scene!

Stage Rule: The story, denizens, location, time of day, influence of the Wyrd, and other factors can all apply stage rules to a scene that override general rules. Stage rules are the additional mechanical elements applying to the particular scene in question, such as heightened challenges or triggers for specific events.

Challenge Roll: A challenge roll is a single die rolled to overcome a challenge. The players decide how many ability points they wish to spend on the roll, and add that total to the result on a single six-sided die.

Influence Roll: A influence roll is a dice roll used to determine various other minor interactions a character may have that are uncertain of outcome, the recovery of attribute points, and the influence of the Wyrd. A player making an influence roll takes a number of dice equal to the relevant value and rolls all of them at once. The result is the highest number rolled on any of the dice.

Wyrd Pool: There are two types of Wyrd pool: the characters’ and the scene’s. The scene’s Wyrd pool consists of several Wyrd points the players can draw upon to enhance their challenge rolls or introduce other effects. When a character takes a point from the scene pool, it adds to their personal Wyrd pool. This pool is used to determine the number of dice in any Wyrd roll the character must make, increasing the chances they will be caught up in the Wyrd’s fickle power.

Playing The Game

When telling a story with the Wyrd Abacus, you will:

• Pick a story to play through, and determine who will be the narrator and who will be the players.
• Create characters suitable for the story’s concept, or use pre-generated characters as appropriate.
• Lay out the opening scene for the story.
• Move from one scene to another as each concludes, bearing the consequences of success or failure as the story plays out.
• Conclude the story and discover the outcome.

Picking The Story

Each micro-setting indicates the key locations, denizens, and agendas involved in the particular game at hand. A story may provide a set of specific scenes to play through, or could offer a more freeform approach as to how it unfolds within the setting’s community. Stories come with suggested character concepts or origins that will best match the narrative at work.

Each story also has a set of overarching stage rules affecting it — the distinct mechanical elements that may recur across several scenes, play a key role in how the game unfolds, or otherwise are core to its concept or theme. These rules set the stage, so to speak. They combine with any stage rules for locations, denizens, or other effects at work to create the challenges in each scene.

Some examples of possible stage rules might be:

Bloody: Whenever a character suffers loss of ability points due to failing against a Threat challenge, an additional character also suffers the same.

Close The Shutters: Characters cannot even attempt a Pressure challenge without first taking a point from the scene’s Wyrd pool. This point does not offer any of the other usual benefits.

Devil’s Due: A cult of demon-worshippers conduct black sacraments in the woods. Once three 6s in total have been rolled on Wyrd rolls throughout the game, the ritual is complete and a twisted fiend is summoned.

Only One Of Us Is Getting Out: A character can only escape the situation if every other character has suffered at least one ability being scratched out.

Prowling Beast: An adversary prowls nearby, looking for prey. The first time anyone rolls a 6 on a Wyrd roll, the Creature immediately appears on the scene if it was not already present or dealt with, and targets the character who has the highest number of 6s on the Wyrd roll.

Rolling Fog: Mists are creeping in. The mists present a Foreboding challenge that rises by one point each scene; failing to overcome it results in fear, confusion, or characters going astray in the fog.

Creating Characters

When using the Wyrd Abacus, each player takes control of a single character, roleplaying their personality and choices. The player decides how the character tries to make their way through the unfolding horror of the situation they are in.

To build a character, you decide on the concept, assign abilities, and choose facets for each ability.

Concept

The concept is the heart of the character. It’s who they are, what they want, and why they’re in the story at all. It’s that most terrible of choices, the character’s name. The concept underpins how the character will act in the narrative of the story.

It’s important to pick a concept with the story in mind. A tale of hapless hitch-hikers stumbling upon a remote town as a pounding rain begins to fall will need a different cast than a story of backstabbing, envy, and occult transgression among the local parish flock.

Player Advice & Optional Rule: Group Cohesion

It’s a good idea to create characters who have pre-existing connections to one another. Even if your characters come from disparate backgrounds, the story will probably be more compelling if they have good reason to interact at a deeper level than just-met acquaintances. It’ll also make things easier when it comes to figuring out why your characters are all willing to work together rather than go their own ways — and making that happen is your responsibility as a player, not the narrator’s.

Even if you’re playing in a story that pits the characters directly against one another, personal connections will make the resulting conflict a much richer tale.

Abilities

Each character has three abilities: Body, Mind, and Soul. Each has an initial value of 3, and players may assign 6 more points to round them out. Note that having a high value does not necessarily mean the character is strong, brave, smart, or the like, although that may be the case. Rather, a high value means that, narratively speaking, the character possesses a great deal of capacity for overcoming challenges of that kind, even if in nontraditional ways.

• Body deals with the physical challenges of Obstruction, Pursuit, and Threat. Body is likely to be needed for grappling with a furious denizen, shoving a heavy barrier out of the way in a hurry, or running like buggery from an angry bull in a field.

• Mind deals with the mental challenges of Logic, Pressure, and Wits. Mind is likely to be needed for puzzling through a devious cipher, convincing an obstinate denizen to help, or quickly spotting a clue in the environment.

• Soul deals with the spiritual and occult challenges of Foreboding, Invocation, and Taint. Soul is likely to be needed for gathering the courage to overcome fear, grappling with the occult forces of a spell, and resisting corruption.

Optional: Facets

Finally, Narrators may decide that each ability needs 2 facets, brief descriptions that add depth and detail to a character. A facet doesn’t have to be positive in nature. A character might be athletic or quick-witted, but being clumsy or aloof can add just as much to the story.

In any scene where a character truly demonstrated a facet, they may regain 1 spent point of its related ability.

Player Advice: Winning and Losing

Role-playing is a game where the story matters most. You’ll likely be cheering your particular character on through the horror that unfolds, and that’s great! However, the game isn’t really about winning on a personal level — it’s about seeing how events unfold and what fates befall the characters.

This means terrible things may happen to your character. They may be injured, their soul be tainted, or become ensnared by the Wyrd. If your character suffers in this way, it’s not a failing on your part. Rather, it’s an opportunity to explore the role of the character as they struggle through such calamity. Setbacks and disasters help bring the story alive and provide everyone at the table with a fulfilling experience, even if some of the characters involved don’t make it to the end of the tale!

Scenes

A story begins with an opening scene and, as it progresses, the characters will move from one scene to the next until the story concludes. The narrator keeps oversight of the story’s progression and how the denizens and environs the world change as the game continues, but the players also participate heavily in detailing how the narrative unfolds.

A scene occurs when something narratively important is happening in the story, and will often feature one or more challenges to overcome. The game assumes that when one scene is resolved, the narrator and players will move the action onto a new scene; see Between Scenes, below, for situations where that is not the case.

Setting the Scene

To set the scene, the players first decide which characters are present. The narrator then assembles the scene’s Wyrd pool, and lets the players know of any relevant and evident stage rules at play within the scene.

A scene usually involves one or more challenges, and a given element of the scene might contribute several challenges at once. Each challenge has a value assigned to it, indicating the numerical value that a challenge roll must equal or beat to overcome it. Challenges are divided between nine types of obstacle, each associated with one of the three abilities.

Challenges can be described as follows:

BODY

• Obstruction: Physical barriers, impediments, or laborious tasks.
• Pursuit: Pursuing, fleeing, running, hiding, and hurrying under pressure.
• Threat: Direct physical danger, such as using or avoiding attacks.

MIND

• Logic: Puzzles, codes, investigations and other challenges of intellect.
• Pressure: Manipulation, charm, intimidate and other social challenges.
• Wits: Mental alertness and acuity, reaction time and reading others.

SOUL

• Foreboding: Fending off fear, paranoia and cowardice in the face of horror.
• Invocation: Using or resisting the power of the occult.
• Taint: Simply resisting occult corruption, whether actively or passively.

As the events within the scene unfold, the narrator will place down various challenges on the abacus and indicate their value, as well as any immediately relevant stage rules associated with them. A scene might begin with no evident challenges, could involve tackling several challenges at once, or require the characters to overcome a series of challenges in turn.

Narrator Advice: Setting Challenge Values

Challenge 2-3: Relatively trivial. A single character will overcome this challenge with little effort. (E.g. Evading a drunkard.)

Challenge 4-6: Genuine obstacle for one character, and a challenge for several. (E.g. Evading a mob of denizens.)

Challenge 7+: A notable challenge for several characters, likely requiring the expenditure of ability points to succeed. (E.g. Evading a mob of cultists bent on finding the characters.)

Challenge 10+: The most potent (and perhaps deadly) challenges. (E.g. Evading a supernatural horror.)

Note that, no matter how high a challenge’s value, if the characters have enough ability points, they will certainly overcome it. You’re not setting challenge values to watch the characters fail, but to give the players meaningful choices over just how much they’re willing to pay for success.

Managing Challenges in the Abacus

While the narrator can present a single challenge to the players just by announcing the challenge and its value, a scene can get quite complex with several denizens, elements, and stage rules in play. In these circumstances, trying to keep track of everything verbally might become confusing and difficult. Use the abacus or another visual tool to keep track of active challenges and their values.

Resolving Challenges

To resolve a challenge, one of the players attempts a challenge roll, rolling one die with the aim of matching or exceeding the value of the challenge in question, regardless of how many players are attempting to solve the challenge.

Before throwing the die, all players involved in the challenge can choose to assign ability points to the roll and boost the outcome. Every ability point assigned increases the result on the die by 1. Some challenges may have a high enough value as to require the spending of ability points for any chance of succeeding at all.

Players can only assign points from the ability associated with the challenge type in question. For example, a brawl requires points of Body but not Mind or Soul. However, a player can take a single point from the scene Wyrd pool, adding it to their own, to allow their character to spend points from a different ability on a single challenge, as long as it makes narrative sense. Faced with a complex puzzle-lock posing a Logic challenge, perhaps one strong character decides to try and brute-force the mechanism, taking a Wyrd point and spending points from Body rather than Mind.

The Wyrd also offers a means to influence the attempt even if a character is not present at all. A player can take a single point from the scene Wyrd pool to allow their character to assign points from a relevant ability into the effort despite being elsewhere. As with using an alternate ability, this needs to make narrative sense and be justified by the player. For example, in a momentary flashback to a discussion before the scene, one character may give the other some advice or a specific tool for the job.

It is even possible to use both of these options together, taking two points from the Wyrd pool to allow a character who is not present in the scene to contribute via a different ability than the challenge would normally require.

Once points are assigned, make the roll. If the sum of the value rolled and the points assigned is equal to or greater than the challenge rating, players overcome it. Players can then narrate how their characters overcome the challenge in question, with details added or adjustments made by the narrator as appropriate.

If the roll fails, players may draw upon the Wyrd again. For every additional point of Wyrd that any involved character takes from the scene’s Wyrd pool, add 1 to the result on the die after it has already been rolled.

If the roll failed and the players choose not to draw on the Wyrd, or if too little Wyrd remains in the scene’s pool, the challenge has not been overcome. The narrator details the consequences of failing the challenge.

Any ability points spent on a challenge roll are lost, whether the roll is successful or not. It is possible to regain points later, and players will need to keep track of characters’ current and maximum ability points as the game progresses.

Depending on the scene, the stage rules, and the narrator’s decision, the players may face complications as to how they approach challenges. Some may be sequential, where one challenge must be overcome before another can be tackled. Some may require several challenges to be completed before opening the final scenes. Finally, other challenges may be triggered even if they haven’t been addressed, such as the old mine’s main entrance collapsing before any character’s Wyrd roll comes up with a 6.

The Wyrd Pool

At the beginning of each scene, the narrator assembles a Wyrd pool equal to the number of characters plus one. It’s a good idea to represent this pool as something the players can see and interact with, such as beads in a bowl that everyone can reach.

At the end of the scene, all remaining Wyrd points in the pool are lost, and it is refreshed when the next scene begins. Characters’ personal Wyrd pools remain, however, and will likely rise throughout the game as the players draw on the Wyrd pool further.

Narrator Advice: Challenge Resolution, Not Action Resolution

When adding a challenge into a scene, you’re presenting the players with an obstacle that they must attempt to overcome and then narrate the consequences thereof. A challenge represents the entirety of that particular obstacle; the Wyrd Abacus isn’t attempting to simulate a round-by-round, blow-by-blow conflict. Fighting an angry villager (or several) with a knife might be a Threat challenge to deal with in its entirety; the players won’t be rolling to dodge or beat him down several times in a scene. The particulars of the fight come out in the descriptions and the roleplay, rather than through specific actions being given mechanical heft within the system.

Consequences

Failing to beat or even attempt a challenge can unleash consequences on the characters. The flow of the narrative and the guidance of the narrator will suggest when and how a particular challenge should inflict consequences.

Failure and consequences can take several forms, and significant failures may incur several of these at once.

• Narrative: The characters have failed in an attempt to achieve something with a purely narrative outcome. For example, failing to stop a ritual means the cult moves to the next stage of their plans.
• Damage: The results of failure inflict further damage on the characters. The failure imposes a penalty in the form of ability points that must be spent, with the value defined by the story or the narrator’s decision. A knife wound may require a point of Body to be spent from a fighter, while a witch’s curse may drain one Soul from all characters. If a character runs out of points in a particular ability due to paying for damage, that ability becomes scratched out. In general, damage should be equal to about half the value of the challenge in question, but scale it appropriately to reflect particularly dangerous challenges.
• Trauma: In severe circumstances, failure may skip damage entirely and go straight to scratching out a character’s ability. This reflects terrible assailants, powerful magic, or catastrophic events.
• Wyrd: Failing a challenge might expose the characters to the vagaries of the Wyrd. The challenge could raise or lower the current personal Wyrd pools of all characters, or trigger a Wyrd roll.
• Stage Rules: Particular stage rules may interact with consequences. For example, if the characters fail to stop a bloody-handed murderer from killing again, her Kill Count ticks up by 1; and whenever the result of a Wyrd roll is equal to or less than her Kill Count, another denizen is injured, killed, or turned away from the characters.
• Death: A character who has a single ability scratched out twice is maimed or dead (Body), corrupted by evil (Soul), or reduced to a gibbering wreck (Mind).

Between Scenes

The action and story in a good narrative focuses within scenes rather than between, but characters may need a slow moment to discuss their next moves, plan ahead, or perform some minor and unchallenging actions to get more information or figure out where to go next.

Characters never face challenges or experience consequences between scenes; if such a situation arises in the narrative where they would face a challenge, it becomes a new scene. Characters cannot access a scene Wyrd pool between scenes.

If the need arises to determine an outcome between scenes, it always uses an influence roll as detailed below, whether an ability roll or a Wyrd roll.

Influence Rolls

The narrator may want to determine which character is affected by a particular twist of the narrative, or to pose a minor contest which doesn’t warrant a challenge but could shape the outcome of the current scene. This is done via influence rolls, based on either abilities or the Wyrd.

When the narrator calls for an influence roll, characters assemble as many dice as the chosen value’s starting score (not current score). Roll the dice and note the highest value on any single die as the result. If a tiebreaker between players with the same result is necessary, use the number of times the highest value came up in the pool.

The narrator might use influence rolls in the following circumstances:

• To determine which character is affected by a challenge’s consequence.
• To determine an outcome which isn’t a challenge but which might shape the narrative in some way, or which will set up the next scene.
• To reflect the influence of the Wyrd. Wyrd rolls use a number of dice equal to a character’s current personal Wyrd pool. See The Wyrd below.

If an influence roll would be made with a trait that is at 0 or scratched out, treat the result as a 1.

Wyrd Rolls

Wyrd rolls are always influence rolls, and will occur frequently throughout most stories. They are a very important part of the game and serve a key role in affecting the players’ decisions in drawing from the Wyrd Pool.

Wyrd rolls are used to determine how the Wyrd influences the characters and the story. Wyrd rolls determine which characters are targeted by dark powers or caught by narrative twists and give the narrator guidance into how the denizens and environment reacts to the tale unfolding in its midst.

Otherwise, a final Wyrd roll influences the postscript of the story. A character whose final Wyrd roll is a 6 is truly caught in the influence of the tale, while a lower result frees them from its grip. Whether this is good or bad depends on how the outcome is narrated; a character could become trapped in the madness left after the story’s conclusion, or she might manage to seize power over a cult. Another character might be free to escape back to the safety and sanity beyond the tale’s borders—but then again, without the protection of the Wyrd’s fickle influence, they may meet an entirely mundane fate with various murders or crimes pegged on them by police investigators who resolutely refuse to accept their stories of chants in dead tongues or blood in the old woods.

Narrator Advice: How To Use Wyrd Rolls

We recommend that Wyrd rolls happen regularly because it makes the choice to draw on the Wyrd pool into a meaningful decision that shapes the game’s outcome. However, when creating your own story, or when faced with twists in the narrative that go outside any existing suggestions for Wyrd rolls in a premade story, it may not be immediately evident when you might specifically call for a Wyrd roll.

Ideally, you want a Wyrd roll at least once per scene. Use Wyrd to:

• Pick a Target: The Wyrd indicates who shall receive the ire of a denizen when no other trait suffices.
• Boost the Narrative: Wyrd results of 6 indicate the emergence of a new threat, an eerie twist in the tale or a personal tie to the mystery for characters rolling a 6.
• Anchor Characters to the Mundane: Low results (1 or 2) may guide characters towards friendly denizens or offer reprieve from some horror, as characters find some anchor to reality.
• Countdown to Doom: Set a target number of 6s. As characters roll Wyrd, keep track of how many are rolled. When your target is reached, the countdown is finished—the Beast has found the characters, the cult’s ritual is complete or some other danger has arrived.

Character Against Character

Characters may clash during the course of a Wyrd Abacus story, but players should generally be working together to move through the narrative of horror the characters are caught within. Sometimes it may still be necessary to determine who comes out on top, particularly for stories that intentionally support some level of player-versus-player competition as part of their arc.

As a general rule, use an influence roll on a relevant ability for the characters involved with whoever rolls the highest value winning. The results of this kind of conflict should generally be narrative rather than damaging. If a character is deliberately attempting to render a challenge more dangerous — by betraying their friends and aiding an enemy, or attempting to slow down their rival investigators by putting more obstacles in the way of the goal — increase the challenge’s value by the number of 6s the character achieved on the influence roll.

In some circumstances, a character is defeated and becomes an antagonistic denizen of the tale. In such circumstances, the narrator can quickly determine the appropriate value of a challenge by simply matching its value to one of the character’s former ability scores.

Recovering Ability Points

Characters can regain spent ability points over time. At the end of each scene where a character has faced at least one challenge, pick a single ability and restore one of the character’s spent points in that ability. Narrators may decide that characters who capitalize on an especially strong bond with each other recover an additional point.

If a character has an opportunity to properly rest and recuperate, make an influence roll in the relevant ability and regain an additional ability point for every 6 on the dice. A character cannot regain spent points for an ability that has been scratched out, except by narrative means (scratched out Body requires a hospital, while scratched out Soul requires a witch’s aid, for instance).

Defeated Characters

If a character would have an ability scratched out when it is already in that state, the character is defeated. They are no longer under the control of a player, although they may still play a part in the story depending on the nature of their defeat. The player rolls the defeated character’s Wyrd pool; if the result is 6 or more, the character will become a significant impediment for the survivors in some way. It might be that the character joins the enemy, obliviously spreads clues as to the remainder of the group’s activities, or their bloody body parts keep mysteriously turning up in decidedly compromising situations. Perhaps they haunt the nightmares of their former comrades, or loudly declaim them as frauds in the local bar.

Players whose characters are defeated may, with Narrator approval, create a new character, adopt one from the cast of denizens in the story, or simply act with the Wyrd for the remainder of the story. Should a player take this third option, they gain two Wyrd points in each scene that they may spend normally or on other players’ behalf (with that player’s approval).

Credits

Published By: Dirty Vortex LLC
Creative Director: Mark Kelly
System Design: Christopher Allen, Matthew Dawkins & Mark Kelly
Writing By: Christopher Allen

The Wyrd Abacus – Version 1.0

The Wyrd Abacus rules were origially developed as the system for Solemn Vale™

Solemn Vale Kickstarter
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/mk-dirtyvortex/solemn-vale

Solemn Vale Pre-Order
https://solemn-vale.backerkit.com/hosted_preorders

Summer of Strange Pre-Order
Summer of Strange is a Micro Setting within the SIGMA WORLD, the same universe as Solemn Vale, The Sigma Syndrome and Meridian.

Wyrd Noir Issue #1
Wyrd Noir is an ongoing anthology series of stand alone stories set within the SIGMA WORLD
https://dirtyvortex.backerkit.com/hosted_preorders

Tools & Links

PDF Version of The Wyrd Abacus rules via itch.io > LINK

The Wyrd Abacus Copyright 2018-2021 Dirty Vortex LLC. All rights reserved.