Aquila

A game of exploration and high-flying adventure. Create a world of fantastical creatures, bizarre magics, daring heroes, complex societies, secretive guilds, massive armies, glorious sky-fleets and piratical rivalries within a floating archipelago hanging in an endless sky.

Long ago the Eagle’s sorrow was such that it took to the sky, turned to stone and shattered, populating the clouds with inhabitable islands that wheel and dance to this day 

Overview
Create a series of Factions NPCs and PC in a non-linear story creation mode. The spine of the game is the timeline, represented by steps, each lasting about the length of a quarter of a person’s life. Think of a grid, where the X axis is segmented into columns we will call Seasons.  When you create a faction, you first place a single card upon the timeline within a single season, and that creates a row which represents about 20 years of time. At that point, we don’t know how long that faction lasts or when it began, you can add more cards behind and after it.  We, at that point, only know that it existed then and there-- we play the game to see how long it will go, or how long it has been around. 

Each column of the timeline also has a set value of power, of 11 cubes of power.  And six blocking cubes.  There is only so much power to go around. We represent that power with cubes, and we represent harm to a faction in a season with blocking cubes, showing how it will not get quite that much power. 

Each Row would represent an added Faction or an Added PC. 
Added NPCs will piggyback on the associated faction. 

Best practices probably have Factions on the Top and PC’s listed below. I imagine a grid of 20 columns long and 20 columns high. So make room on that table. 
Then have the Power Cubes on the top of the columns

Remember, PC never get Power Cubes placed on them. They only earn traits per season. 

When we first place a faction we don’t know exactly how much it was actually a mover-and-a-shaker in the world’s and dynamics. The power cube level represents how much it controlled the fate and impact on history during that season. Through faction moves you add power cubes. 

PC have four seasons - spring, summer, fall and winter. 
When you start a PC, you pick which season of their life you want to go with and place that, then you have a fixed space where other seasons might be. If you place winter, we know that PC cannot die in the spring, summer and fall. But, if you place a summer season, that PC might not make it to fall and winter, and there are mechanical benefits for making an open ended PC, and other mechanical benefits for starting in different seasons. 

On each player's turn, they have a wide selection of various moves they are allows. Moves allow them to expand their Factions stamp in the timeline, increase a faction’s power in a particular timeline, create NPCs from that faction, Create PC’s, have a scene with a PC. 

Within all this is a driving coin economy, metagame. It costs coins to create factions and PC, and these are limited. When you request a scene within a faction, you play a different type of coin, an Impact coin. When one of your NPCs is invited to a scene you also earn impact coins. Failed Obstacle checks also generate impact coins. 

There are some quasi-competitive qualities of the game. Each player receives a secret objective, to manipulate the timeline in various ways. Also there are public objectives. That people can score points, perhaps earn a different type of coin. 

Lastly, the randomizer will be a deck of cards that have various special events, and that is where death comes into the game. Pulling from the deck there is always the possibility that the scene will ultimately result in the demise of a faction or PC. 

Materials
3-5 players
Stacks of tokens, at least 2 distinct types (colors, shapes etc..)
Stacks of little cubes (at least 2 colors)
3x5 cards (two colors)
Post-it type notes (lots of colors, smaller packets)
4x6 Cards (3 colors)
A very long table. 
 
Set Up
Contents
Starting Tokens: Large
Power Cubes (all the same color, and you will need many of them)
Blocking Cubes (all the same color- but different from power cubes-- and you will need many of them but not as many as power cubes).
Impact Tokens: slightly smaller and you will need quite a few of them but not as many as power cubes. 

Give each player seven (7) Starting Tokens -- all the same color. 
Create a map of the Archipelago. Draw it on a sheet of paper. 
Make three stacks of the 4x6 cards, each stack a different color. 
Assign one color to Characters, it should have # of players +2. 
Assign another color Factions, it should have 4x#Players. 
For each season place 14 Power Cubes and 7 Blocking Cubes. 

Go the map briefly. Discuss vaguely possibilities of Geography and politics. 
Reveal 2 public objectives (e.g., a faction of 4 contiguous seasons, a PC with 4 traits, etc . . .)

Factions
A faction should have bounds and scope, some identity to it-- and some way to describe how it applies influence and power. 

When you make a faction answer all or some of these questions, and add additional information that will help clarify what your faction is, its nature and its impulses. 

When the faction directly attacks another faction it generally ….
When your faction grows it looks like . . . 
When your faction tries to ply pressure it generally . . . . 
Is your faction geographically bound? 
Is your faction based on some ideology? 

A faction has narrative and simulated power in proportion to the power cubes stacked on it. 

On your Turn you can:
1.	Create a Faction.
2.	Add a season to an Existing Faction  
3.	Create a Player Character (PC)
4.	Create an NPC (Faction Controlled Character)
5.	Assign Power Cubes within a Season
6.	Shift Power in an unsettled Season
7.	Play a scene for a PC. 

After everyone has had a Turn
1.	Claim one objective
2.	Reveal new Public objective. 

Create a Faction
Spend 2 Starting Tokens 
Write the name of the faction, describe it and answer a few questions above. 
Mark the upper left corner with your symbol to signify that you own the faction. 
Place it anywhere on the timeline.
 If it is adjacent to a column wherein another faction has 7 or more power cubes, it starts with 0 power tokens. 
Otherwise, place 1 power cubes on that season for that faction. 

Add a Season to an Existing Faction
Spend 1 Starting Token, OR spend 3 Playing Tokens. Pick a Faction that you own. 
If it is next to a previous season of that same faction with 6 or more power tokens, add 1 power token. 

Create a Player Character
Spend 3 Starting Tokens 
Place a season. Mark in the upper left corner your symbol to show you own the PC. Mark in the upper right corner the season. (Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter)

If spring:
 6 Impact Cubes
If Summer
 4 Impact Cubes
 Place Spring
if Fall: 
2 Impact Cubes
Place Summer and Spring
If winter: 
1 Impact Cube
Place , Spring, summer and Fall. 

Create a Faction Controlled Character (NPC or FCC)
Place a single season of that FCC. Spent 1 Impact Token (put in the bank). Give them traits and impulse.

Assign Power Cubes within a Season
Obstacle level is 2* # of tokens. 
Play a card. Describe the scene. Add Impact power of card to a 1d6. The difference is the number of Power Tokens added to the season, of a maximum of 7. 
+1 to roll for any adjacent season with 5 or more power tokens. 
-1 to roll for adjacent season with another faction with 6+ more power tokens. 
+1 for any PC impact plays. 

Shift Power in unsettled Season. 
If the previous season contains another faction with 6+ power cubes, and the current season has less than 6 power cubes available, you must show how this current faction wrest control from that other faction by placing blocking tokens. 

Obstacle level is 12. 
Play a card, describe the scene. Add impact power of card and 1d6. 
+1 for any PC impact plays. 
+1 if acting faction had 5+ or more Power Cubes from previous season. 

Split the difference equally in blocking cubes and power cubes. . 

Play a scene for a PC
This is is the go to move. 
Select a current season. State an obstacle and a mechanical advantage (earn a token, earn a power cube, earn a blocking cube). 
Play the scene using opposition from other Factions and FCC(NPC). Pay the owner of the faction that sets the opposition for your PC in Impact Cubes. 2 cubes for each scene.  
Role play until a conflict or uncertainty. 
Then ask what skill or ability would that character turn to. 
Then ask where did they learn that skill or ability. 
Various owners of factions can offer suggestions on how their factions (those that are in current season or past seasons) would have given that PC the ability or chance to overcome.
Pay the faction you decide. Write on that character that trait. 
Then draw a card and add that to the score to see if you over come. 
+1 for each applicable trait to a max of +4. 
Basic move (Strong hit, weak hit, miss). 
If the Deck had a Death symbol on it, tick that on the character season. 
Take bonus from the Death if not in the Winter season, otherwise. 
On a Miss collect 2 Impact Tokens. 

Example. 
Player A has a character that has Spring, Summer and Fall seasons already placed for it. 
She tags the Summer season, and then requests a scene involving a faction that exists in that season. She picks the Order of the Silver Bloom, an esoteric quasi-religious group that hunts down demons hiding amongst the people.  She is opting for a Power Token for another faction, the Demonchildren in her scene. 

She describes the scene loosely where she is confronting some knights of the silver bloom. How she catches them in a vulnerable position and shakes their hold in the city. THe owner of the faction puts the setting in the dim streets of Waymont City.  

They roll play until a good conflict. 

The DECK
Each card will have a result, flavor text, and a special event,( think Combat Commander) 
Some cards will have a death marker. 
The result is essentially a Dice roll. 
Statistically you want the 14 OP impossible to make with just cards, so the total will always be less than 7. To increase a faction to 7 is hard, and they need to have PC impact tokens to make that happen, the PC are the big movers and shakers, and can lift factions to hights. 

Objectives
The objective deck should contain 14 cards, with various combinations of objectives to drive play. 
After each rounds claim objectives and earn Impact Tokens or Starting Tokens. Objective cards might describe other rewards (free NPC, Free faction seasons). 

Secret Objectives
Big in scope, they take PC’s and factions into epic lengths. Have a string of seasons of an Faction. 
Have a PC with a crazy number of traits. 

Each Secret Objective, when revealed should have different rewards. Possibly even end the game!

End Game
Play until you run out of Starting Tokens and all Seasons are filled with Power Cubes. 

Expectation of Play. 
Depending on how players spend their Starting Tokens they will become primarily faction owners or character owners. The traditional role of the GM/DM/MC lands on the various faction holders - when factions and npcs are invited to a scene they take the reins to control the scene and drive things to conflict. 

History of the character is created through play and then defines the traits that they have available to them. 

Faction play revolves around those Power Tokens. Once all the Power Tokens of a particular season have been placed they are locked in, you never remove a power token. You only discover history, you never change it.  Mechanically it should be relatively easy to place 2-4 power cubes, and near impossible to place that 7th power cube.  But objectives should drive toward that. It shows how holding onto power is tough. 

Blocking Cubes, can, however be removed. They are the mechanical object that drives intra-faction conflict. 

Optional Play. 
Public and Secret objectives can also tally in an objective chart, and you can play to some set Victory Point level.