“Ab-“ prefix, a formal element occurring in loanwords from Latin, where it meant “away from”, “absent”, “separate from”, or “departure”. 

“Nature“ noun, the material world, especially as surrounding humankind and existing independently of human activities. 

“Abnatural“ adjective, unexplicable, uncanny, unreal, the result of unknown forces, laws, or intent beyond human understanding.

“Arcane“ adjective, understood by few; mysterious or secret.

Arcane Engines

 Our solar system is passing through an invisible storm of snarls in the fabric of reality: attracted to consciousness like gravity, these anomalies grant abnatural power to the minds they impact and orbit. Minds like yours.
 
 You have a priceless secret tearing its way around and through your mind, granting glimpses of dizzying insights and impossible creations, the power to make your deepest desires reality dancing at the edges of your thoughts. If you can channel this, use it, you could do *anything*. But you're not alone.
 
 There are others, grappling as you are with what to do next; none of you have time to waste. Corporate R&D departments, religious fanatics, cold-eyed moguls, bright-eyed ideologues, and a whole Scrabble-set's worth of acronymed government agencies will do anything to chain you to their purposes, and shape you into tools fit for use.

 You are a living arcane engine. What will you make of your world?

Arcane Engines is a tabletop roleplaying game blending fantasy and science fiction for three or more players. The players share responsibility for portraying ordinary people suddenly infected with the power to bend and break the laws of reality, organizations and individuals determined to capture and control them, and the inhuman visceral intentions of the anomalies themselves.

To begin the game, each player will create an Engine, a character infected by an anomaly (who they will portray), and one or more organizations who want to capture and control Engines (who can be used by anyone). 

 Engines

While they come from all over the world, all ages, and all walks of life, Engines all have a few required elements that describe them. 

3 Goals: whether short term or long term, these are the fundamental wants and needs of the character. Goals drive the plot: if your character doesn’t face an immediate challenge, they should default to pursuing one of their goals until the world around them pushes back. Write these in pencil! They should grow and shift over the course of the game, change them when it feels appropriate, and let the other players know what’s changed and why.

3 Facets: Three memorable things about their personality or physical form, things that other people will distinctly remember about them, and things the other players can target to encourage character development. At least one facet should be very obvious, visible or discoverable without getting to know the character very well, such as a nasty scar or a short temper. The other two can be a little more cryptic or personal, but be something that anyone who’s close to them or known them for a year or more would know.

3 Skills: knowledge, areas of expertise, practice, training, talent or experience, what the character was especially good at before they were infected. Divide 10 points between these skills: when they’re relevant to a conflict, add the skill’s value to your roll. When you use a skill but still lose a conflict by ten or more, your opponent can permanently reduce the skill by one. If you ever run out of skill points, you die.

3 Connections: people or objects that the character cares about. These can definitely be tied into the goals, facets, or goals of the character, and do not have to be something the character loves, just something they feel immensely strongly about. Their father’s watch, the woman who murdered their sibling, another Engine or a representative of an opposing organization, anything you want to ensure is included in the story.

and 3 Anomaly Aspects (next page)

Anomaly Aspects

Every Engine gets the following core aspect:

Engine: you can twist reality, instinctively manipulating the laws of space, time, and physics, just by narrating how you do so.

And two of the following:

Fast: your physical movement and mental processes are sped up by the anomaly: choose two things you would like to do each roll, and roll twice, and assign the two rolls to the two goals however you would like. You can trade in skill points, one for one, for additional actions and rolls after everyone else has said what they want to do.

Inventive: you can create devices or rituals that operate on alien principles of physics, at the cost of losing touch with reality. When you do, permanently reduce one of your skills, and add two points to your creation per point of skill you give up. You can add the device’s value to your roll whenever you rely on it in a conflict. If you lose by 10 or more in a conflict, your opponent can destroy or disable your creation in addition to their other narration.

Tireless: physical activity and strenuous action up to the very limits of your body’s strength doesn’t tire you at all; you can go without sleep for days without penalty.

Tough: kinetic impacts barely effect you anymore: a bullet feels like a slap, a punch like a tap, and a car crash like a 5 foot drop; new senses are replacing your sense of touch.

Willful: when you would otherwise lose a conflict, you can trade in skill points to increase your total, +3 per skill point traded in, or +5 per if you used the skill this roll. 

Organizations

Organizations vary, but they all have one thing in common: they want to use Engines for their own ends. There are three core elements of an organization: write them down on a notecard, and place them in the center of the table for anyone to pick up and use during play.

Domain: the source of the organization’s authority, resources, territory, and influence. Are they a global corporate conglomerate? Religious sect? Governmental agency? Political movement? Where are they powerful, and why?

Expertise: what they do best, their core competency, measured in points from one to ten depending on how dangerous you think they are. Feel free to be broad. Add the organization’s expertise to your roll whenever you roll for them, and reduce it by one if you lose. If reduced to zero, the organization is destroyed: narrate how!

Face: a representative of the organization who Engines are likely to come into conflict with, and who shows the best and worst the organization is capable of. Feel free to add more faces in play if necessary.

Starting Play

Take turns quickly describing where your Engine is at the start of the story, and what they are trying to do. Once everyone’s described where they are and what they’re trying to do, someone should pick up an organization and describe generally how they’re going after one or more of the engines. Anyone not playing a targeted Engine can choose to either pick up another organization and describe how they are also involved in the conflict, or sit out (and optionally roll on behalf of the anomalies later).

Once the conflict reaches a natural stopping point (or it’s more narratively interesting to cut away to a different conflict for now), play rotates, with a different Engine or group of Engines as the focus of Organizational attack, and a new corresponding conflict.

Once every Engine has been targeted, take another round describing where each Engine is, how they are feeling, and what they want to do next. This can involve attacking other Engines, trying to change the world or the Engine’s situation, or going after the Organizations themselves.

Go through rounds of Engine-driven conflicts, quick check-ins on where the Engines are and how they’re feeling, rounds of Organization-driven conflicts until each Engine has been targeted, another check-in, and back to Engine-driven conflicts. Repeat until everyone’s satisfied with the end of the story, or until all Engines or Organizations are dead or destroyed.

Conflict

You need a single twenty-sided die per player. When an Engine comes into conflict with an Organization or another Engine, say what you’re trying to do, and they’ll do the same. If anyone in the conflict is relying on an anomaly, an uninvolved player should also participate in the roll, representing the visceral, abnatural, and uncanny effects of anomalies on everyone involved and the world around them.

Everyone involved rolls a die and adds any appropriate modifiers, then compare totals. The difference between the totals decides the outcome between each pair of players. While there are degrees of success and degrees of failure, there are few total victories or complete disasters. Avoid the urge to go for the throat every time: the precedent you set can come back to bite you!

Difference vs Opponent	Effect	
10 or more under their total	You don’t get what you want and they do, and they say what you get instead.	
5 to 9 under their total	You don’t get what you want and they do; what does losing cost you?	
1 to 4 under their total	You don’t get what you want and they do, but you get to say what winning costs them.	
An exact tie	Both get what they want; discuss what that looks like. Other players decide if you can’t agree.	
1 to 4 over their total	You get what you want and they don’t, but they get to say what winning costs you.	
5 to 9 over their total	You get what you want and they don’t, but they say what losing costs them.	
10 or more over their total	You get what you want and they don’t, tell them what they got instead of their goal.