Stealth & Law
Every act has a witness or it does not. The difference between a clever survivor and a wanted one is usually a lamp, a noise, or someone who ran to the guard.
Light, sound and distance
Crouch and you become smaller, slower and much harder to notice. Whether someone spots you depends on how far away they are, how much light falls on you, the angle they are looking from and your own skill.
True darkness changes the rules. Stand in deep darkness and nobody can see you from more than ten metres away, or five if you are crouched. Footsteps carry about fifteen metres when you walk upright and ten when you creep.
A throwing stone sends people to where it landed, never to you. They listen, search the area, and eventually give up. Sleepers hear at half the distance.
Know when you are seen
- GreyNobody has noticed you.
- AmberSomeone is working out what they saw.
- RedYou have been recognised.
When you crouch, an eye on screen shows how close you are to being found.
Locks, pockets and traps
Lock-picking
A key opens a door. So does a pick and a steady rhythm: three to five timed presses, with less time for each one on a better lock. Miss and the lock makes a noise.
Pickpocketing
Crouch close behind or beside someone who has not seen you, or who is asleep. Each item is a gamble that improves with your Stealth, and sleepers are easier marks. Get caught and it is a crime.
Dirty tricks
Pocket sand blinds and staggers everyone in a short cone in front of you. Bear traps pin a victim where they stand and rope snares hoist them upside down; both arm after two seconds and never catch you or your allies. Escaping one means struggling free.
Someone always saw
Draw a weapon in a crowd, cast near people, or let your corruption show, and they react: they watch you, back away or run.
Commit a crime in sight of someone and they will run, on their own feet, to find a guard. Only the guard they reach learns what you did. Guards who hear fighting nearby come to look, and a guard who finds a body stands over it and starts searching.
When a crime is witnessed you see exactly who saw it. Fighting back is never a crime: whoever strikes first is the aggressor. In co-op, crimes, jail and karma fall only on the player who earned them, and the karma for a kill belongs to whoever landed the blow.
Three kinds of order
- The Kingdom
- Assault, killing, theft, pickpocketing and tampering with locks are crimes. The guards arrest, and only the Kingdom’s guards do.
- Start Village
- The same acts are crimes here too. Dark Relief is forbidden outright, and Blood Relief makes people afraid.
- Hidden Village
- The same acts are crimes. Dark Relief is feared.
A Kingdom guard can sometimes be bribed, by someone who knows how to ask: the price rises with every offence. Raise a hand against the Crown and that door closes for good. Kingdom law · How the world keeps score.