Growth

on

Oh no, I've hit that time in my blog-life.
The time where I write variations on a theme.
I have become ouroboros, great circle-jerk who devours themselves.
Womp-womp.
Really - I just made this so I can look back and understand how growth functions in Miseries and Victories. Pure indulgence.

Still, the post deserves som explanation:

Growth is incredibly important to me in play...

Though..

Not linear advancement, one where numbers march ever upward as dreamt up by spread-sheet hallucinating CEO's and regurgitated by socially impaired e-conomics theories.

Not the pre-planned one where we fool ourselves into thinking we have "developed ourselves" by selecting the right feat-chain to make the market happy.

But also not the growth where the playworld (s)crawls itself onto you without reply - solely the outside leaking in in a deal with it manner from a grate FKR artiste...

... Or the prosaic play-the-world dryness of “now you are a little bit better at boat-building, nail-hammering specifically."

I yawn. It’s a straw man, I know, but you know the feeling of growth that feels like nothing. (Burning wheel, i am looking at you)

Victories and Miseries demands something else. Because the system is built around journeys of self-discovery, I want to make sure it is not measured by resource, rank, or 'arena' of action, but by what you choose to notice. 

Every system here is written to fuse player engagement with character engagement: where you, the player, looks—or is forced to look—, the character grows. But it is not your quick thinking, or your tactical cunning, that grants power. Player skill and character skill are deliberately divorced. You may not know how to forge iron or curse a liar, but if your character does, the procedures ensure the world meets them halfway. The system will demand a different player skill though - imagination, symbolic acumen, and a willingness to direct their character. Growth comes from playstyle, not dice rolls. From what you pick up, not from how clever you are. The world listens to what you engage—and answers with change.

I want the heroic and the weird - put the spear in the bag. Take a bold step.

Samira Ingold

Holding myself between those honeytraps has been harder than I’d like to admit.

With Victories & Miseries, I already fell into the first one. Effort was once a currency to be hoarded and spent. The Bad Doctor had to shake me until I remembered: no, no, no. Effort isn’t savings. It’s spark. It’s a momentary catalyst that flashes, burns, and is gone. It cannot be stored, only lived. Then and there. In That moment.

That is the core of growth in Victories & Miseries.

So, yes. Since then I’ve had to redesign and rethink what i mean with growth itself. Again.

But why? Why bother?

Because growth is the driver of interest. And interest, to me, must be Cottonmouth:

 “That game we would play when we were young enough to effortlessly change things without talking about it, and remember only what was important and joyful. Only now we are older, and years distant from ourselves and each other. and so we have to write down things about the games we want to play so that we remember them and why we are playing with each other.”

We have to write it down. not to calcify it, but to 'kid' ourselves be able to feel that it is it alive. (That is such a weird thing, it's like we must see the strings on a puppet to be able to invest it with empathy?!)

That’s the dilemma. I want to funnel the important moments into material: malleable, fragile, resistant. Something you can press against. But never crystallized into finished lists or perfect categories. What we write is a chosen refraction of the playworld. Later, when we play again, it refracts back at us. A feedback loop, pleasurable, never complete. You never reach the “full feat,” but everything you grow is real enough to use.

Which leaves me with three problems / principles-in-making:

  • How to avoid growth becoming just another tally or taxonomy. It should contrarily, actively resist it: The neat inclusion of something, and the rejection of another. This is a tree, this ain't.

  • How to design procedures that breathe — that leave holes open for players and GMs to push into with interest. The question should never be “can I do this craft?” (turn to page 44, paragraph 3, compare to stat Z, and see if your navel-picking attribute is high enough) or “does this resin count as thunder-aspect?” The only real questions are: How? Why? What?

  • That particular form of growth should be something that feels to the player material (malleable, with resistance and fragility, drawing them into engaging with the playworld materially), but not crytsallized (definite, complete, whole, impregnable to creativity approaches and to the vagaries of chance)

What we write down is a chosen refraction of the playworld, that then in the future can be used to refract it back. A pleasurable feedback loop that never completes. You never reach "The full-feat", but are also always at a point where whatever grew is "real" and "usable"

Those three sketched out a dilemma:

I want to drip feed the creation of this crystal - but i need to avoid (to the degree possible) that this results in numerical tracking. To make it worse, i should resist taxonomization. The creation of a definite list, realer than real, that must encapsulate reality. This I could not avoid because I wanted to define what modality of use does to the subject (see crafts below) and different ways of doing things need words attached to them for explanation. These can be listed, and the list can be counted, and from that a taxonomy or true list can arise - but even then, I don't suggest the list is complete. It describes actions i think are obvious that a craftsman would experiment with. They should never be seen as a "pick from these options." list. 

I also need to blow holes into the procedure or process as part of the de-sign. The procedure should not resist either the player or the gm's interest. "No, this can't be a craft" or equally bad "Yes, this material works, it says right there.". Remember, instead, ask How, Why, What. Both ways. To World and to Player.

Shared Rules of Growth in Victories & Miseries

  • Catalyst, not accumulation — growth triggers at a single harrowing moment, not by tally or XP.

  • Precedent, not permission — once something has worked in play, it remains available as precedent.

  • Vocabulary, not numbers — growth adds words, scars, and moves to your sheet, not modifiers or bonuses. It's by finding them that the worlds relations are defined. It's by speaking these that the world becomes clear.

  • Past carried forward — every scar, mark, curse, or oath keeps history alive and demands response. Some forms of development "growing out", others "build on."

  • Choice under pressure — resist, disperse, or give in; bind, embrace, or let go. Growth is decided at the threshold.

  • The world always answers — every act of craft, curse, oath, or repetition leaves consequence; nothing is free or flavor-only.


Emily Caroll

Side-note: Growth is human. 

Basically, most ways to grow (without effort) is accessible only to humans in Victories & Miseries. Or more concretely, I've allowed transformed races (fae, thralls, all the means of ressurection) to have only the remnant studious expertises/crafts/oaths/combat styles from when they were human, which survived the process of change for that particular race/transformation. They can still grow afterwards through those reminders of humanity, or through Effort (gaining new normal expertises, traits and feats heroic)

On with the show

Scars, Transformation & Chimerism 

Scars come first, because you cannot play in Victories & Miseries without being changed. The world does not ask politely if you want to grow. It sears, it cuts, it binds, it blesses. You fall, you bleed, you love, you linger too long in a place that whispers—and something takes root in you. This is not advancement you sought. It is the ugly and the beautiful at once: the crack of horror, the bliss of metamorphosis, the marks of life, aging, and bodyliness.

Most rulebooks present wounds as setbacks, conditions, or hit-point deficits. Material condensed into numbers that come to contain the reality that they should just represent.
Heal them, clear the status, move on. But that flattens what injury means.
In Victories & Miseries, the scar itself becomes vocabulary. The burned hand is a mark that lightning once touched you. The limp is a rhythm the world now knows you by.
The scarred are not (just) lesser; how they are in the world is rewritten.
New potentials arise too. 
Only the marred seek a prosthesis.
We are all Cyborgs.
Some are out of necessity.

The world leaves marks. Some come from steel and fire. Others from hunger, obsession, ritual, or fae forfeits. Some cut flesh, others seep into marrow. But all press the same question: how do you deal with it?

In most games, wounds and mutations are treated as numbers. Lose hit points. Gain corruption points. Reach zero, reach three, and the chart tells you what happens. That is accountancy, not consequence. That makes scars ignorable until they add up. But scars are not ignorable. They are the most visible things in our lives. They are what we carry.

So in Victories & Miseries we do not count. We do not tally scars or marks until they trigger a level-up or a slap on the wrist. Each scar or mark is a catalyst moment—a single, harrowing threshold where you must decide: resist, heal, or give in.

Chimerism is the saturation of obsession, ritual, and encounter. When you repeat something long enough, it stops being a trick and starts being a truth in your body. Moth wings from calling moths. Brambles in your joints from kneeling in thorns. Salt in the blood from swearing too many oaths over the sea. These changes are not corruption. They are saturation. You have taken the world in, and it has colored you.

Transformation is the threshold moments: when scars and saturations tip over into Otherness. Three affects bloom into a new grammar of being. You gain a new expertise, a feat heroic, an instinct—but more than that, you gain a new self. Not one you necessarily chose, but one you must live with. Bliss and horror braided. You can resist it, swear it away, cut it out, or embrace it. But you cannot ignore it.

This is the core form of growth in Victories & Miseries: the one you don’t ask for. Before you craft, study, swear, or curse, the world marks you. The question is never will you change? It is always how will you deal with it?

With Scars and marks also take from theater: explicit naming of what happened and is invisible to the audience—that is the other players and the GM. You have to say "The sword split my side" for others to know. And in this system, to begin to heal. It must be invoked.

Scars and marks therefore always drag the past forward. They are not clean slates, not tally marks to be cleared away. Each one is a memory given body, a question the world asks again: how do you deal with this now? The limp recalls the fall, the moth-wings recall the nights of calling. They are growth because they keep the past alive in you — demanding response, again and again, until rejected or accepted in game. Made other or made you, actively.

I have no clue who made this. But damn if that ain't a wound and a mark, I don't know what is!

Scars and Marks - Play aid

When the world presses into you (wound, curse, obsession, ritual, fae forfeit, resurrection, etc.):

1. Name the Catalyst

  • Speak what has happened, whenever you want to deal with it. A wound, a curse, an obsession, a fae forfeit, a resurrection, a ritual gone too far.

  • Example (wound): “The sword split my side.”

  • Example (mark): “The moths nested in my breath.”

2. Choose Your Response

Here is where you decide how to carry it forward:

  • Resisting will Stave Off

    • You pay with the present to stave off the future badness.

    • Wounds: Bind the wound. Stuff your innards back in your gullet and crawl slowly to safety until help arrives. Suffer for now so you can survive. Make sure it does not settle.

    • Marks: swear an oath, choke it down with ritual, bind it in symbol. Be creative.

    • Result: you take the time now to make sure it does not settle, or worsen.

  • Curing will Disperse

    • Seek healing, medicine, cursework, alchemy, or ritual before it settles.

    • Always hard, rare, costly, or slow. Often requires outside help.

    • Result: The wound or mark does not remain.

    • Example: curseworker’s ritual untying a noose of silence; a holy bath that draws poison into salt, a surgeons tender hand and bitter medicine to heal your side. Bite down on the gag so you dont bite your tongue. Pray that others are near to hold you.

  • Giving In will Scar, change

    • Let it have you fully. Let it settle. The GM must state clearly what it will progress into should you choose this.

    • This is paying with the future to seize the present. It is passing a treshold.

    • Wounds: cauterize the limp-stump: improvise a fix that lets you keeps you as able as you can, but it worsens. Into being maimed. Into death even, if it allows you to take that final swing.

    • Marks: they begin to warp you. A small affect takes on a worse aspect. Something already affecting mind and body blossoms into fully present Otherness (new Expertise, Feat Heroic, Instinct).

    • Result: You are free of the consequences effects for now - but you change as a result: Either by passing through it or dying. 

    • Example: not staunching the vampire’s bite, but drinking deep — and waking kin to night. With your side split, commit to that last sword-swing and let your own inanrds cover the floor just the same.

3. Record the Consequence

  • Scars and Marks must always be named. If it isn’t worth a name, it isn’t worth writing.

    • Examples: “One-eyed,”, “Breath smells of myrrh,” “Joints brambled.”

  • Transformation (Read: Giving fully in) must always upheave self and re-write the sheet . Not a modifier, but a new self. Rewrite something dear, sprout something new, remove something that no longer seems to fit. Words change, are added, or removed to fit the new fictional reality. Ask how and why it affects them. Let them revel and writhe in the changes.

    • Examples: new Expertise (Corpse-Kin), a Feat Heroic (She Took the Dying Into Her Arms), or an Instinct (What Is Lost Must Be Witnessed).

Best Practices

For Scars

  • Never track ignorable injuries.

  • resisting doesn’t erase scars. It rather creates new   You need a prosthetic for your lost arm. 

  • Scars are not -2 modifiers, BY JOVE THEY ARE NOT, they are truths the world can recognize and invoke.

For Marks

  • Always sensory, bodily, or symbolic: what do others see, smell, hear of your change?

  • Remember: not every mark is to be fought. Some are blessings, growths, ecstatic transformations. Finding out if they are for you is up to you though.

  • Resisting costs you future strength; embracing gives you Otherness now.

For GMs

  • Never say “take 1 mark.” Always words. Create catalyst: something harrowing that demands choice. Spring that choice on them.

  • Telegraph and Clarify consequences before they arrive. Especially when a wound is lethal if ignored. Do not ambush players with hidden death.

  • When narrating marks, keep them vivid and poetic, not abstract.

  • Transformation can also be forced: fae forfeits, thralldom, demon-naming, resurrection. If the consequence is already an effect, don't add in a second choice as a safety buffer. It washes out consequentiality. Don't try to make everything fit the procedure and be neat. Dare be messy instead.


Craft

Craft in Victories & Miseries is not a catalogue. It is not a shopping list where oils differ from tinctures because someone typed it that way in a rulebook. That approach kills exploration before it begins. It makes every choice a lookup rather than a declaration. It disallows the player from asking the only question that matters: what do you make of it?

In this world, craft is a conversation between intention, material, and method. If you have antecedent matter and a place to work, you can attempt the thing. What defines your potion or your forging is not its category on a chart, but the verbs you choose: smear, drink, fume, poison, bathe, seed, brand. Each verb creates a different truth with the same substance. One broth may be poison, remedy, or sacrament depending on whether it is drunk, smeared, or buried.

Scarcity is not micro-tracked. If a thing is not rare, assume you can restock it at the next lull—when the caravan returns, when the season turns, when you find respite. The interesting part is not acquisition, but interpretation. Rare materials, yes, require expedition, bargain, or sacrifice. But the common vocabulary of things should be generous: if you care enough to note it, it is yours to use again.

Every act of craft lays down precedent. If you mix gold pine resin and smear it on a blade, because we established that the gold pines are lightning rods, you (the craftsman player) reasons that you want the blade to crackle with lightning. Next time, the storm waits there again, unless you or the world change something meaningfully. Each brew or forge is an experiment recorded in the world’s body and is an expression of your creativity.

What about the mixologists joy - experimentation, not knowing what will come from the action? Let the world decide. It is what they wanted, after all. 

What about methods of crafting that are inherently risky or volatile: Let the result be volatile too. 

What about investigation of the effects, or of the qualities of the material? The drop test—a sip, a sniff, a skin-prickle—always reveals a truthful clue. Otherwise, you risk. Let us go back to the gold pine resin example. When the player demands a lightning-crackle crisscrossing the blade, they may not know side-effects unless they tested it upon themselves.

But do not let caution be the only way: Caution takes time and metered responses. Testing. If the characters have the luxury of time, assume caution. If they don't, let it be a choice and be important. Same as with scarcity.

Craft grows because the player keeps notebooks of what works, where it was found, what symbols bind to what results. Growth is not a ladder but a vocabulary: a storm lexicon, a bestiary of saps, a grammar of metals. And in time, the craftsman themselves changes: lungs smoked with fume, tongue tinged with quicksilver, joints stiff with pine. The world does not care about your feat list. It cares how long you stir, how deep you breathe, how much of it you write down.

A character who is already a craftsperson already knows a set of materials for their craft - but i would argue it is most fun if explored in play. Your choice.

Be really creative with what is considered craft. A barbarian that takes trophies from their travels and consecrates them at burial sites of their tribe is crafting as much as an alchemist is; the only difference is that the barbarians method of using the "Horn of the high-deer, shed in flight" is blowing it, not drinking it.

Lastly, what is crafted is also material. One potion can be used to brew the next. The shoulderplate attaches to the gasket. 


Kostas Pantoulas


Craft - Play Aid

Remember a drop-test reveals true clues. A sip, a smell, a touch = hint of effect.

  1. Name antecedent Material + site OR name intention

    • List materials and/or ritual site. Example: gold pine resin from thunder trees, serpent’s shed, drowned shrine at low tide.

      • If not rare: Assume it is replenished once per lull (season, caravan, respite). If there are no lulls, then acquisition should be made focal - it sounds like a scarcity focussed world then.

      • If rare: Requires specific place, person, or price.

      • If you care, write it down. Precedent = permission.

      • If you want to experiment, test the effect

  2. Name Intention

    • Speak of the effect you want:

  3. GM determines if acquisition or cratting has costs:

    • Arduous (time/exposure)

    • Costly (coin/favor)

    • Dangerous (site/guardian)

    • Chimeric (fumes bite, dreams speak, body stains)

  4. Choose Form

    • Concentrated/overworked: short, strong, dangerous if not well made (both poisons and potions are this)

    • Diluted/tempered: long, gentle, lingering, metered.

  5. Write a cogent description of the crafted:
    "Thunder-infused oil-paper. Crafted hastily in a giant thunderstorm with the pine resin of the gold trees.

    • Always: precedent (similar recipe = similar outcome, unless something changes).

    • Sometimes: side-effects (especially from strong or intimate methods).

  6. Choose Method of use (this defines effect, not charts - and think of it as incomplete and symbolic as the materials themselves) Also, again, GM determines if the method of use is chimeric, dangerous, arduous, or needs expert help.

    • NOT EXHAUSTIVE

    • Smear/Work in. Imbues surface/object

    • Drink. Internalizes, risks chimerism.

    • Fume. Suffuses space.

    • Bathe. Soak/temper/stain.

    • Brand. Scar matter or flesh.

    • Seed. Bury to let place/time finish it.

    • Kintsugi. Repair it, the fragility remains but a new quality is added 

    • AGAIN, NOT EXHAUSTIVE

Best Practices

  • Assume competence: If a sheet implies alchemy/forgecraft, they can do it. If the sheet does not imply it, but it makes sense to the world or the character, they can do it. The sheet is descriptive, not prescriptive. I should not have to say this, especially not to myself, but girl do i get lost in the sauce.

  • Never collapse verbs into categories (“oil vs. poison vs. potion”). The method defines the outcome.

  • Encourage notebooks: The player who writes down their storm resin or serpent bone builds their own grimoire of craft.

  • Costs should bite symbolically—time, risk, sacrifice—never  “roll to succeed.”. If it seems nonsensical to bite, it should not.

  • Growth = vocabulary built in play, not a feat unlocked.


Studious Expertise

Studious expertise is not a feat list. At this point I am repeating myself par excellance. Sorry not sorry.

It is not “+2 to sword” or “Arcana proficiency.” That is just math in a new coat. Studious expertise is word-magic born of long obsession, ritual repetition, and deliberate grammar. It is the slow way of carving language into the body until the world itself learns to answer back.

In most games, skills are flattened to dice and bonuses—every butcher cuts the same, every scholar recalls the same, every midwife delivers the same. But in Victories & Miseries if you sharpen your knives to a fae lullaby, your cuts sing. If you call moths your sisters for a decade, your breath grows paper-thin wings. If you dance without repeating a step, time itself begins to falter. These are not flavor-text—they are magic, because they are true in the grammar of the world.

Each expertise begins as description: the verbs of your practice. A midwife: catch, name, cut, bind, soothe, live. A shadowblade: step, veil, strike, echo, fold. A loner: drift, refuse, vanish, harden, peer. At first, these are just actions you narrate. But over time, they congeal—combinations become reliable, then inevitable. Still-Live means holding someone between life and death. Or still a life into death. Echo-Turn means stepping back through your own shadow. The sheet records what you have repeated—a map of possibilities, a grammar you can explore—not a receipt of how many times you did it. (Unless you want to track it. I am not your mother.)

This is hard for players and GMs raised on the rulebook’s assumption that skill = number. Numbers pretend mastery is abstract and transportable. But real mastery is particular. It is your verbs and more specifically how you work them - not anyone’s. It’s praxis and use even more than the tool itself.

That’s the loop: see - study - use. And a how for each. How do you see it as part of your expertise? How do you draw a word from your study of this? How do you use the word?

Seeing - how do we make that different from symbol recognition? In my world - a key inside the player. Their past, or a symbol they carry: you are branded by Ghylak snake goddess, and therefore when worms crawl from the ground, you can sit and meditate upon their writhing to learn “coil

And it always comes with consequence. The midwife who stills life may come to smell of linen and myrrh. The shadowblade’s veins may darken with shadow. You cannot repeat a word until it changes the world without letting it change you back.

Growth here is vocabulary, not progression. The more you repeat, the deeper the grooves in the world’s grammar. You are not “levelling up” into sorcerer; you are learning to speak the syntax of fire, shadow, or birth. And once you can speak even a little of that language, the world cannot help but answer.

This is not exclusively the magic of mages. A practitioner of the blade is stydying the blade.

In Victories & Miseries, it also feeds directly into transformation if a human by way of Chimerism. Obsession saturates you. Repetition leaves scars. Words you carry reshape your flesh. This is equal parts cosmic bliss and horror. Learning is to take on a living grammar—and like all languages, it leaves its accents, its scars, its age, written into the body and the mind that thinks through it.

I Want a Snuggle-pillar too! Sara Kipin (I guess?)


Studious Expertise (Procedure)

  1. Define or Collect Verbs

    • At start (you define the start with the world. On character creation, On finishing the study at the crystal academy of Elynn-Heiss, after training a year with a truesteel blade, on breaking off the finger of a statue of the darkmouth god and taking it as a foci for your piety, list the verbs of your practice (by description or through play).

    • Examples:

      • Midwife → catch, name, bind, cut, soothe, live

      • Shadowblade → step, veil, strike, echo, fold

      • Loner → drift, refuse, vanish, harden, peer

    • Collect verbs: Name the connection, the symbolic, unique moment, and the word you take - i Take the word "consumption" from the worms that eat themselves. My connection is that. I take it by stuffing my fingers into their midst until they bite. Now your warlocks and wizards will truly be weird - because they will gather vocabulary by really pondering that orb. Reward risk and danger, reward creativity. Offer more or different words for different situations.

  2. Act with Repetition

    • When you perform the same action or combination with intent over and over (sessions, downtime, obsession), mark it.

  3. Grammar Emerges

    • Verbs can be combined into different interpretations, even with the same two verbs

    • Examples:

      • Still-Live (midwife) = hold someone on the threshold (or still a life into death).

      • Echo-Turn (shadowblade) = step back through your own shadow (or make a sound choose another path)

      • Refuse-Peer (loner) = deny closeness by cutting eye contact. (or make another seem lesser than you in the eyes of those present)

    • The sheet records your vocabulary map (the words, plus If you want the combinations you can explore), not the tally of repetitions.

  4. Growth = Vocabulary

    • The more words/combinations you prove, the richer your expertise.

    • Not +bonus, but a lexicon of actions the world now accepts as true.

  5. Calling: Assume an expertise uses gestures, your voice, and material. Thats generally the method. Assume that casting something uses gestures, your voice, and material. It has these three adjectives spoken and gestural. magic that is natural (ie, making flowers grow) are not lasting, while unnatural magics are short-lived ie, making the dead rise. Cutting straight through armour takes your sword, a scream, and a specific type of swing. Think beyond magic, please.

  6. If you want to replace-with-a-related or add an adjective, that takes some form of cost on you. To make spoken into silent, or to add Spectacular or Subtle - Then that would also incur costs.
    • Use lifeblood: it requires wounding the self or another. That feeds the magic. (see scars, above)

    • Use a foci: it requires channeling through a related object. Less then perfect objects are damaged. Foci always flavour the spells. If you can see where this is going, you are probably already thinking about crafting.

    • Channel through yourself: you are marked. Keep casting, and the mark grows. (see scars, above)

  1. Consequences & Chimerism

    • Obsession saturates... Change follows.

    • Examples: Smells faintly of linen and old myrrh; right arm pulses near corpses; half face sloughs away.

    • If you do not want change, swear an Oath (see below) to contain it.

  2. GM Best Practices

    • Do not pre-write lists of expertises. Let verbs emerge in play.

    • Reward repetition + intent with grammar, not numbers.

    • Side-effects are mandatory: the world always answers.

    • Keep growth slow (1–2 true moves per arc) unless obsession accelerates it.

Best Practices

  • Skills are verbs, not bonuses. Write verbs, not +2.

  • Magic emerges from repetition, not points spent.

  • Record precedents: If a verb worked as magic once, it can again.

  • Chimerism is its own growth: Let scars and transformations bloom naturally.

  • No two expertises named the same, are the same. Each player builds a personal grammar, or atleast a personal usage.


Curses 

A curse is language turned sharp. It is a wound made of words, born when strong emotion strikes a target with enough force that the world listens.

I've described curses here in depth, but it has come to serve a very specific role as growth via incarnating the past negatively on another.

Most games treat curses as spell effects: cast Bestow Curse, roll a saving throw, suffer a penalty. In Victories & Miseries, a curse is not a spell slot. It is a wound on essence, spoken in anger, grief, obsession, or love. It can be deliberate, or it can spill out unbidden. “I hate you and your outbursts. I wish you would leave me, keel over, and die.” Hate is the hammer. Outburst is the target. Leave → keel over → die is the progression. That is a curse.

The cursed may be scarred by silence, struck by obsession, drowned by drowsiness, carried off by love. The curser is not changed — it is the target who suffers. Curses are relational, born of ties that already bind. They spread like cracks in glass: sharp, ugly, and true.

Why write them as growth, then? Because they are direct manifestations of the past. They drag history forward, just like scars, refusing to let it stay buried. A curse is negative past given teeth, memory turned consequence. When someone curses you, they do not invent malice from thin air — they weaponize what already connects you.

That is why one of the surest ways to detect a curse is reason. A player does not need to wax Shakespearean for their sermon or outburst to count. If their character has reason — a past wound, a broken bond, a shared betrayal — then the words are already charged. The proof is in the past.


Tobias Kwan


Curses - Play Aid

1. Detecting a Curse

A curse arises whenever:

  • Strong emotion is spoken aloud (or ritualized), or it can be argued that the past proves the emotion exists. What do I mean with that? That the player does not need to be a thespian actor, but aruge that "It's a curse because i really hate the priest, as he burned down my village." Be a lover first, and let the players reasoning be true.

  • A target is clearly named (explicit or implied).

  • A progression can be inferred (leave → sleep → die).

Players and GM should listen for these seeds. You don’t need to name it immediately — let it bloom.

2. Recording

When you know it is a curse:

  • Write it as Emotion / Target / Progression.

  • Note how it resonates with traits, bonds, or scars. Those make it bite deeper.

3. Progression

A curse worsens when:

  • You avoid confronting it. (That is, you avoid its trigger deliberately. It suffuses you because its like trying to "not think about an elephant".)

  • You feed its emotion.

  • You encounter its trigger and do nothing (read, Give in, in wound/mark language)

Progression should be vivid, symbolic, painful:

  • Silence → Muteness → Words heard but not spoken → Forgotten by all not in sight.

  • Sleep → Drowsy hallucinations → Nightmares → Dream-prison.

4. Using Curses

  • A curse can be tapped for power — but always worsens. Wild Lycanthropic madness may be doven into to drink deeply on the bloodthirst.

  • GM may demand that if you do so, there is a side-effect: “Yes, but only if it’s worse.”

  • Feeding a curse always deepens it.

5. Lifting / Digesting

At daily or meaningful intervals:

  • Act opposite the emotion.

  • Refute the command.

Success: Step back progression, or change effects.

  • Die could become Sleep.

  • Leave could become Linger.

6. Sharing / Taking On

  • Another may eat or share the curse.

  • Both are now cursed; progression halts or reverses one step.

  • Always dangerous.

Best Practices

For Players

  • Listen for emotions spoken in play — they may birth curses.

  • Treat curses as stories, not punishments. Refuting or embracing them is play.

For GMs

  • Never hand-wave a curse. If the emotion was true, it sticks.

  • Keep progression symbolic and harrowing, not mechanical.

  • Use curses to tie characters tighter together, not to shut them down.

Fighting Styles

A blade is not just swung — it is proved. In Victories & Miseries, combat growth does not come from feat trees or level tables, but from Trials: dangerous acts that etch themselves into you. A Trial is the moment you risk everything to see if your way of fighting holds. Kill a demon with only a knife. Disarm a knight barehanded. Break your oath in the middle of battle to land the blow. These are not checkboxes; they are scars earned in motion.

From each Trial comes a Technique, not bought or granted, but wrested from the world. Strikes sharpen intent, Combos braid multiple aims, Finishers guarantee the killing blow if you can meet their impossible price. A Fighting Style is simply a summary of how these Trials and Techniques cohere. The Way of the Golden Palm. Dirty Roadside Tricks. Let the World Burn. It does not have to sound like wushu, wuxia, or a cinematic martial-arts fantasy. It can be sacred or profane, mystical or gutter-born. What matters is that the style colors what is possible, not that it imitates any tradition of choreography.

Because of the human rule — variations on a theme — no fighting style belongs to one person alone. Anyone who practices a style will meet others who practice it too, always differently. Styles spread through training, contests, and scars. Moves are shared, stolen, or twisted in duels and lessons. Each style refracts into many hands, many lives. In this way, fighting styles color the world itself: leaving schools, scars, rivalries, and legends behind them.

Growth here is not abstract; it is visceral. Your style becomes a grammar written in blood and repetition, shared with others who walk the same path but bend it differently. Combat growth is never theory. It is always a result of risk takebn beforehand.

Lastly. This is taken nearly directly from Pyrrhic Weaselry

Mizushyne


But first, an interlude!

Basic Combat Resolution

Oh, by the way, I changed how combat functions in Victories & Miseries. Anwyays, Clarity in combat is anyways more important.

Deal with it:

When a character strikes, the GM listens as to the players description - forcing additional tests if there are multiple intents.

  • Location / Consequence implied with the intent

    • “I stab him in the eye.”

    • On a compromise, the defender gets to lessen both consequence and the others position

  • Adjective / Tone implied

    • “I strike wildly at him.”, "I take deep breaths, knock an arrow, and wait till he is fully visible I exhale i let my arrow fly "

    • hit location is rolled or otherwise decided (shoulder, thigh, gut, helm-glance). I mean, use this if you need a hit location table.

This keeps combat shared — one side defines the how, the other defines the what happens. Then engage the impact table if you need it.

Defender response:

After hearing the consquences, the defender describes what they do to defend. It will fall under one of the following categories.

  • Take the Hit - Compromise

    • Accept the blow, but soften or redirect it according to armor, shield, or fictional positioning. Taking the hit should "normally" (whatever that is to your table) Halve the consequences. There are many axis to do so: suffer them later, take less severe harm, give the sufferer time to counteract, cause worse positioning instead of a lasting harm. For less discussions, I would argue that the player argues for their position, but only the GM can say what it should lead to. If your table is less able to differentiate between resources and affects, i would say it is solely the GM's duty.

    • Example: the helm glances the blow, the shield absorbs some force, the shoulder turns so the cut is shallow.

  • Avoid the Hit - Test

    • Attempt to evade, block, or counter entirely.

    • Requires a test — risk, contest, or breaking of something (The shield breaks, the helmet dents) depending on means of evasion.

    • Success means full avoidance.

    • Failure means it is even worse than the original full consequence.

Trials & Fighting Styles - Play Aid

To create new Techniques—or improve old ones—a character must undergo the Trials of their Fighting Style.

A Fighting Style is a poetic summary that colors what moves can be learned from it.

  • The Way of the Golden Palm hints at unarmed combat, transmutation, spiritual trials.

  • Dirty Roadside Tricks is brawling, cheap shots, opportunism.

  • Let the World Burn is magical pyromantic atrocities and creative warcrimes.

A Trial is a difficult or dangerous task that carries real risk. Most likely of injury, incapacitation, or death... But a Drunken Master may instead have a month long trial of soberness. Trials should be tied to the fighting style.

  • A Trial must be broad enough to not require specific, unique individuals or events, but specific enough to feel distinct.

    • Bad Trial: “Behead Zargath, high commander of the red angels.” (too specific, one-and-done.)

    • Good Trial: “Kill an angel with using their own wingbones.” (broad, repeatable, distinct).

  • Trials can be named retroactively, once the deed has been done: Anything that ends combat is for sure a deed, if it fits the Fighting Style.

Once a character has undertaken a trial succesfully, they cannot learn from it again.

Because of the human rule (variations on a theme), any human who practices a style will encounter others who practice it too—always differently. Moves can be shared:

  • Train with them (takes time), or

  • Contest them (both can learn; loser is dishonored, or scarred if it’s a deadly match).

Every completed Trial unlocks one new Technique.

Well-versed fighters start with techniques, trials completed and in this way also fame to their name (or infamy, or adoring fans, Master-teacher-sensei's, or scars. Ask How, Why and What to How they learned to fight how they did.

Techniques

Techniques come in three types: Strikes, Combos, Finishers
(Or better: describe what you want, and discover which it is.)

Strikes

The basic form: one Intent, but with sharpened authorship. Strikes extend this:

  • Players may add multiple adjectives (“Wild and burning”).

  • Each adjective increases the attacks bite, reach, or cost.

Combos

Again, the basic form is extended through its other vector, the intents.

Combos = multiple intents as one action.

  • At first, a Combo may combine two Intents.

    • Example: “Slash eyes” + “Stab gut.”

  • More Intents can be added by completing more Trials.

Resolution:

  • If an enemy compromises against a Combo:

    • They can fully mitigate one Intent.

    • Or partially mitigate all Intents.

  • If they test against a Combo:

    • They can only test to avoid a single Intent, unless especially apt at countering them all.

Finishers

Finishers = Intents that can be Guaranteed if conditions are met.

  • A Finisher must have multiple, taxing conditions.

    • Bad: “Be wielding a blade.”

    • Serviceable: “Be wielding a longsword.”

    • Better-er-er: “Opponent is pinned + sword is blooded + moon is full.”

  • The more taxing or specific the conditions, the more Intents the Finisher can guarantee. Talk about it

Resolution:

  • If all Conditions are fulfilled, the Finisher is Guaranteed.

  • When attempted:

    • If roll succeeds, defender cannot act to avoid; takes full effect.

    • If roll fails, defender must Take the Hit (full or partial, GM adjudicates).

Best Practices

  • Trials: Frame them so they tempt repetition, but never grow rote. Broad, risky, distinct.

  • Fighting Styles: Treat them as summaries, not straitjackets. They suggest what’s possible; don’t prescribe. Let them be bent to the situation.

  • Techniques: Always emerge from play. Strikes, Combos, and Finishers are proved at the table, not pre-selected.

  • Growth: Each Trial completed is growth through danger. Techniques are scars you chose to carry forward.


Oaths 

Words are heavier than blades. An oath is not a feat, not a morale bonus, not a little checkbox that says advantage when protecting your sister. An oath is a scar you choose for yourself — a weight you bind willingly, a truth spoken so hard that the world cannot ignore it.

Most games treat promises as flavor. Maybe you roleplay them, maybe you don’t. But in Victories & Miseries, oaths are a form of growth. They change what you can do and how the world treats you. To swear is to risk, because oaths do not only bind you — they ripple outward. A vow sworn aloud is felt by all who hear it. A vow marked in blood, ink, or scar is sensed by the world itself.

Humans wield oaths with singular power. The fae twist words, demons enforce names, thralls embody purpose — but humans? Humans forge meaning. A human oath can move armies, curse a lover, or chain your own chimerism until you are ready to bear it. An oath is both shield and trap. It can steady you, or strangle you. And once marked, it resists erasure.

So

Oaths are not about bonuses. They are about truth. You are different the moment you say “I will.”. And you make the world much less effective at moving you away from that path, and more effective at punishing you should you stray.

Become the cruise missile. Reach heaven through violence, or grind yourself to dust against the grit of the world.

Donox

Oaths - Play aid

1. Swearing an Oath

  • An oath must begin: “I will…”

  • Tie it to something on your sheet: Trait, Bond, Expertise, or Scar.

  • Choose how it is made visible:

    • To yourself → internal, steadying.

    • To another → relational, they hold leverage.

    • With a mark → carved, scarred, painted, drunk. Others know that the oath is sworn by your difference. It is itself Chimeric but dormant. (See Wounds at the top). The Mark carries direct power: Can be invoked for external effects, steels and absorbs other chimerisms. It grows when followed. It is a curse if you squint really hard.

      The more depriving a mark is, the stronger the oath is at the start.: a sense removed, a likeness altered, a past surrendered.

2. What an Oath Does

  • Functions like a Trait: can be invoked, resisted, or strained.

  • Always true until relinquished.

  • Strengthens when followed, bites when broken.

3. Breaking an Oath

  • To yourself: Your baseline emotional condition shifts (shame, grief, anger).

  • To another: They may invoke your shame until you make amends.

  • With a mark:  The mark shatters, and you take on an Otherness inverse to the oath.

4. Relinquishing an Oath

  • Never free. Always costs something: memory, bond, trait, or flesh.

5. Best Practices

  • An oath should be clear enough to test, but open enough to invite dilemmas.

  • Oaths steady against outside transformation (a sworn vow can hold back chimerism).

  • Oaths can be weaponized in play: invoked by allies, exploited by rivals, twisted by foes.



And with that, I realize that Victories & Miseries is a system about ugly, personal, ecstatic growth, for players and the world.

Now, take flight.


Antonio Reinhard Wisesa


Comments

Post a Comment