Welcome to the Unknown

You are an investigator: a detective, doctor, scholar, reporter, soldier, priest, or simply someone who noticed that the world does not make sense. You are not a superhero. You are a person with useful skills, imperfect information, and a mind that can be damaged by what it learns.

The game is about pursuing mysteries and deciding what you are willing to risk for the truth. One player presents the world, its witnesses, dangers, and consequences. Everyone else plays an investigator. Speak in character when you can, describe what you attempt, and let the dice decide uncertain outcomes.

What you need

Bring an investigator sheet, a way to roll percentile dice, and a willingness to ask questions. Your investigator needs a name, occupation, background, skills, equipment, and reasons to keep going when retreat would be wiser.

The game moves between investigation, conversation, travel, danger, and recovery. Most scenes do not require a roll. Roll when failure matters, the outcome is uncertain, and the situation cannot be solved simply by explaining what you do.

Your first principles

• Ask before you act. What do you see? Who benefits? What has changed?
• Use the right skill. A clue may be found through observation, research, science, social pressure, or intuition.
• Work together. An investigator's weakness is often another investigator's specialty.
• Treat violence as dangerous. A gun can end a threat, but it can also begin a worse one.
• Make the horror personal. Your relationships, fears, beliefs, and responsibilities are part of play.

A session in brief

A mystery usually begins with a hook: a disappearance, a strange letter, an impossible crime, or a witness who should not be alive. You follow leads by searching places, questioning people, and researching records. Complications consume time and draw attention. Eventually you reach a revelation, confrontation, escape, or terrible choice.

The Keeper describes the situation. You say what your investigator does. If the result is obvious, it happens. If the result is uncertain, choose a relevant skill and roll. The Keeper describes the consequences, and the investigation moves forward.

You will not always win. Success may mean escaping with proof, saving one person, or learning the truth soon enough to act. Survival is valuable. So are the people who remember what happened.