Growth, and Why NPCs Don't Grow
The single most distinctive rule in the system is an asymmetry: the player and their party get stronger; the world around them does not. This chapter is about the design intent behind it and how to honor it.
What "grows through use" means mechanically
There is no XP and no leveling. A skill rises when the GM decides it should, in response to the character using it meaningfully. The GM is the judge of when a moment is earned. That's it — no counter, no threshold, no formula. The rule is a judgment call, which is exactly the kind of thing this system wants to be.
The pace of growth
Improvement should happen slowly enough that it matters. The GM uses these bands to judge when a rise is earned:
| Current score | How it grows |
|---|---|
| 1–3 | Fast early improvement is possible. |
| 4–6 | Requires meaningful practice and repeated use. |
| 7–8 | Requires serious dedication. |
| 9 | Improvement becomes extremely rare. |
| 10 | Extraordinary mastery — requires extraordinary circumstances. |
Stats change far less frequently than skills. The sheet's stats layer is "who you are"; the skills layer is "what you've learned," and it's the only layer that moves with any regularity.
Why the world stands still
If every guard, rival, and monster scaled with the party, growth would be meaningless — you'd be on a treadmill, always the same relative size to the world. By keeping NPCs fixed, every point the party gains is a real gain. The thug that nearly killed you at session one is a speed bump by session twenty, and that contrast is the story of the campaign. It makes your party's growth the emotional through-line.
Who grows, and who doesn't
The grows boolean on a character file is the mechanical flag. Set it true for:
- the player character
- permanent companions
- close allies
- lovers
- rivals strongly tied to the protagonist
- important recurring NPCs whose lives the story is changing
Leave it false for ordinary background NPCs. They can still change narratively — the GM just doesn't maintain mechanical progression for hundreds of people. This keeps the player's orbit alive without bloating the simulation.
Running it at the table
When you bump a skill, say why — "that climb through the storm drain, the way you read the runoff, that was real learning; Tracking's a 6 now." Naming the moment makes growth feel earned rather than arbitrary. Reward *doing, especially doing that changes something. And when an NPC doesn't grow, let that be visible too: the world's limits are what make your party's rise feel like a rise at all.