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Front Matter - Abilities

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Passive Abilities

Endure (V) The character’s capability for enduring physical pain and fatigue, whether caused by climate, injury or great exertion. Poisons are a particularly serious example in Near. React (I) The character’s ability to think and act quickly and clearly, as useful for seizing initiative as noticing hidden things or lies. Avoiding traps and ambushes is a typical fantasy convention that falls here as well. Resist (R) The character’s strength of will and resolve in the face of adversity, stress or social pressure alike. Many magics common to Near can be opposed by Resist.

Abilities are the “venues of conflict” in Solar System, being the means by which heroes channel their will. In TSoY we have a pretty large swath of common Abilities available to all characters – for example, a character might choose to approach convincing another by the means of CHARM (I), DECEIT (I) or SPEAKING (R), and that doesn’t even cover the less generic culture-specific options or newly created Abilities. The purpose of this rich texture is to pay homage to traditional fantasy adventuring sensibilities: players are encouraged to pick up lots of different Abilities for their characters, and it’s easier to encounter situations where a character’s Ability is just MEDIOCRE (0) when there are lots of different Abilities floating about in the headspace of the group.

This is not to say that the Story Guide should use the large number of Abilities to punish characters; as always, an Ability is only as relevant as the group allows it to be. Regardless, the slightly grim environment of Near benefits from the fact that players are encouraged to show character vulnerabilities, not just strengths. I’ve even been considering a character sheet with the common Abilities preset, just so the players don’t forget that they can have their character be weak once in a while as well.

Dealing with the list

You won’t go too far wrong if you consider the list of Abilities a list of examples only, but there is some hidden wisdom in what I choose to include in it. Here’s some advice on handling situations that might be unusual compared to how you might expect one to handle the fantasy genre in the SOLAR SYSTEM.

The Common Abilities following are shared by practically all societies in Near. All but the most sheltered characters will know them all at MEDIOCRE (0) rank.

Abilities - Universal

Animal Ken (I)
Use ANIMAL KEN as the general social Ability for interacting with animals. Domesticated animals may follow orders; wild ones will just understand to go away. Most cultures in Near have domesticated animals that are handled with this Ability. Those cultures that train riding animals either expand this Ability with a Secret or train the rider in a specialized Ability.
Barter (I)
Most of Near has devolved into a barter economy, so the rarity of money complicates trade. Experience with trade also allows the character to evaluate the value of things to others. Use BARTER to find out whether a character’s wealth of the moment is enough to make a purchase, or what he might have to sacrifice to make the price.
Brawl (V)
Natural propensity for violence, uninformed by any finer discipline. Generally speaking a brawler will fight in a rage and limited in technique, which makes the use of sophisticated weapons inefficient and special technique all but impossible.
Charm (I)
Giving good impressions and making friends. Useful in delivering compliments and convincing others by subtle and personal means. The primary Ability for romantic conquest, should an Ability be required.
Craftwork (I)
Most cultures have traditions of creating elaborate art from wood, bone or other materials. While HOUSEWORK (R) is enough to create simple tools, this Ability is used when mere function is not enough, but beauty is desired as well. Items created with craftwork may reflect meaning and are reasonable as individual Effects that can influence people in different ways.
Deceit (I)
Delivering lies with a straight face, pretty much. Opposed by RESIST (R) when a character tries to perceive the lie for what it is. DECEIT and SPEAKING (R) overlap and support each other naturally when lies are delivered by a glib tongue. I’m not entirely consistent with DECEIT myself all the time; sometimes I allow characters to lie and mislead with CHARM (I). Caveat emptor.
Hard Work (V)
Most direct production in Near happens with human labor. Farming and related work is first and foremost about patience, measured use of force and experience. HARD WORK is used whenever characters want to support others with grunt work, or when they end up on the bottom ladder of a working group, or when they want to make their way honestly.
Housework (R)
Only the most well preserved or newly advanced communities in Near feature large degrees of specialized labor. Most of what makes people happy and comfortable from day to day is made in the home with this Ability, such as cooking, craftwork, folk medicine and so on. Essential for the functional household. HOUSEWORK may be used to treat simple injuries and illnesses.
Music (I)
A character’s skill with instruments and song. Music is beautiful and universal to life in Near, but its usefulness is a subtle thing. Choosing this Ability as a major facet for a character is to choose to chase mirages that only occasionally perform truly. In other words, it takes some work to maneuver the game into a situation where music will be useful in conflict.
Pray (V)
This Ability is used to conduct rituals and focus the mind towards a higher power in meditation. Sometimes faith can move mountains, or at least support other Abilities at critical moments.
Speak (R)
The skill of explaining yourself well. Useful for arguing a point or delivering a rousing speech. Speaking usually requires some sort of valid point to work from, though. Use SPEAK for any social conflicts where substantial issues decided with reason are at stake.
Sports (V)
Sports are an important status practice, especially for men who use them to establish prominence. The same Ability is used to resolve general athletic situations, such as swimming, climbing, jumping and so on.
Storytell (R)
All but the most civilized places have lost their literary culture. What they have instead are storytellers, the sons and daughters of people who might have been erudite in their time. This Ability is used to know the old things and tell the truth of them, as well as to combine the old stories into new ones.
Thievery (I)
Thievery is experience in casing targets, picking pockets, stealthy entrance, confidence tricks and other unsavory practices that come with societal hostility and willingness to break norms. Experts are unlikely outside major urban centers.
Vagrancy (I)
Beggars and vagabonds are common in the Near of today. They learn how to freeload and draw a meager livelihood from the gratitude of strangers. Vagrancy is also useful for knowing things about the wider world. Aside from vagrants, any well traveled character might have this Ability.
Woodcraft (R)
Most of Near is temperate, consisting of woodlands, grasslands, wetlands and highlands. This Ability concerns survival skills in these wilderness environments, such as recognizing the flora and fauna, remembering their properties, tracking and trapping them. Extreme environments, such as dense jungle or bare tundra are wont to cause penalty dice, as is simple unfamiliarity with a specific terrain.

Creating new Abilities

In actual play of TSoY I’ve long used the Ability list more as a guide than an authoritative source for what can be turned into an Ability. Partially this has been because I haven’t sat down to sketch my own perfect list until now, but part has been the fact that some Abilities should be developed for individual campaigns only. For example, if your character concept is an optician or some such, and you expect the play to center on how he helps everybody with eyeglasses, I simply can’t predict that, and even if I could, all the crunch I wrote for the optician would be useless overhead for other campaigns.

Thus: remember that this book is a reference, the real crunch landscape is the one that is actualized by your individual campaign. It might have quite different Ability lists from what this general treatise suggests.

Local Ability

To give a less extreme example of what I mean, consider a street urchin sort of character that knows the city like the back of his hand. This is perfectly feasible in a fantasy punk campaign set in Maldor or Kalderon or such urban environment. The Ability:

Local (specify) (R)
The character has lived in a certain area for a long time. Choose a geographical area, community subculture or other such living environment. The character can find people, places and lore related to the locality with this Ability, and he is considered a member of the community here.

I didn’t put this in the general list because these Abilities need to be developed on a per-campaign basis: for a far-traveling campaign you’d want something like LOCAL (MALDOR) (R), while for something set in a single, sprawling city you’d want LOCAL (KALDERON) (R). Normal Ability-creation in that regard.

Missing Abilities

TSoY is more or less a flagship setting for SOLAR SYSTEM, so it’s pretty complex. Sometimes characters encounter each other in the weirdest of situations and simply have asymmetric Abilities. How to resolve conflicts when characters lack obvious Abilities?

The precept of Solar System is that Abilities simultaneously reflect character identity and allowable venues of conflict resolution. What this boils down to is that a character that lacks a MEDICINE (R) Ability, say, can’t resolve conflicts through this venue; he fails automatically when the issue is whether a disease will run its course or not. The only way for the group to avoid this stark reality is by manipulating the TURNING-POINT of the conflict: perhaps the issue is not whether a character can heal another, but whether he can travel quickly enough to bring a remedy from far away? Or perhaps success depends on being able to convince a traveling doctor to help? As long as the player can re-frame a problem in terms his character understands, he can tackle the conflict from the new direction and be victorious.

When two characters conflict against each other, both have a say in where the turning-point of the conflict forms. For example, if the issue is over a military campaign conducted by imperial Maldor using BATTLE (R) against a primitive tribe without similar strategic culture, it might well be that the imperial forces would win with a simple, uncontested Ability check: their tactical supremacy allows them to win the war without a fight. A player character on the other side, however, is well within his rights to influence the unfolding narrative to include a concrete fight scene wherein his character’s BRAWL (V) or other melee combat Abilities come to determine the fate of the war: whether the war between an empire and a primitive tribe comes down to brawling or logistics or some completely different Ability is a nuanced dance of scene framing, narration, player initiative and stakes negotiation: I can’t give a straight answer because this largely is the game of SOLAR SYSTEM. Play the game and find out!