If you have been reading the blog for the last couple of days—or, better yet, have been here for a while—you’ll know where we’re heading next, the Lifepath. It’s the heart of character generation in Sanction, where you find both the mechanical potential of your game persona, in their Abilities, but also uncover a few fragments of their background for you to build upon, in their Purpose, Struggle and Influence.

I hope you can see that when I wrote Sanction (or the Utility RPG as was its original moniker) I sought out a way to provide both a basic mechanical system and a way to give each character a splash of individuality. I also want to offer something else with the framework and simplicity. I offered the prospect and Promise that you could use the system to make your own game, or Genre Setup.

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I have touched upon this before, before the month started, but at the heart of Sanction lies the principle that the core rules are a hackable toolbox. In the, admittedly slim, core book you have the basic system, the approach to character creation, challenges, encounters, and hazards, and a bunch of worked examples in the form of the very stripped down fantasy Setup of With Guile, Incantation and Faith, and the more developed spy drama of The Agency. You have the essentials to create your own Genre Setup, Wrought by Sanction.

So, those with Sanction and a creative streak can take advantage of the ideas and guidance presented in the core and other Genre Setups to pull together material of their own and release it under the Community Content Creation licence. I hope, if you have been reading for the past two weeks, you can see the simplicity and flexibility. I think that the melting pot of ideas makes Sanction something special, and with enough releases and interest, I might finally get my own Game System category on DriveThruRPG!

For those with the urge to read more about Sanction, the Bundle—of core rules and several Genre Setups—remains on sale, at close to half price, on DriveThruRPG. Between the Genres published and those presented over the month so far, you have eleven Genres—twelves if you include Flight into Darkness. I look forward to seeing what others can come up with.

Lifepath By Appointment

You know the order of service. Roll 1d12 once on each table, below—or take the A to 10 cards, plus Jack and Queen in this instance, of three suits from a pack of cards and pick one of each. Purpose establishes what you did while alive. Struggle determines how you died. Influence establishes when you lived.

Choose three Abilities from the eight presented: three from Purpose, three from Struggle and two from Influence. You can choose any three from that eight, not necessarily one from each. These are deliberately practical Abilities rather than supernatural powers: death hasn’t taught you how to do everything, it has simply given you an exceptionally long time to practise what you already knew.

Purpose

d12	Purpose	Abilities
1	Hunter — You provided food, skins and safety for your people.	Keeping (Dog), Tracking, Camping
2	Craftsperson — Your deft hands made things other people wanted or needed.	Hand Crafting, Materials (type), Appraise
3	Farmer — You understood seasons, animals and what the land would produce and tolerate.	Farming, Keeping (Animal), Natural History
4	Soldier — Someone put a weapon in your hand and expected you to use it.	Discipline, Fortitude, Tactics
5	Household Servant — Great households function because unseen people make them function.	Observation, Organisation, Gossip
6	Cook — You fed people for a living, whether they deserved the fruit of your expertise or not.	Cooking, Gourmand, Organisation
7	Healer — People came to you when something hurt, broke or refused/needed to come out.	Diagnosis, Herbalism, Ministration
8	Scholar — Books, numbers or ideas occupied rather more of your life than some might think healthy.	History, Research, Linguistics
9	Entertainer — You earned your coin or keep by engaging and holding people’s attention.	Performance (type), Carousing, Sleight-of-Hand
10	Trader — Everything has a value, although not necessarily the one written on it or agreed upon.	Bargaining, Commerce, Evaluation
11	Keeper — You watched over a household, estate, institution or community as a stalwart caretaker.	Leadership, Observation, Preparedness
12	Maker & Mender — If something stopped working, people found you to get it going again. For a while.	Mechanics, Construction, Rework

Struggle

d12	Struggle	Abilities
1	Violence — Murder, battle, execution or an argument that went very much awry.	Apprehend, Intimidation, Debate
2	Fire — House fire, ill-tended furnace, bombing or unexpected conflagration.	XXX, Demolition, Survival (environmental type)
3	Water — River, well, flood, shipwreck or an unfortunate quantity of bathwater.	Swimming, Boating, XXX
4	Disease — Plague, fever, flux, infection or something nobody at the time could name.	Diagnosis, Bleeding, Herbalism
5	Childbirth — Yours, or someone else’s that you died attempting to assist.	Midwifery, Ministration, Meditation
6	Work — Crushed, cut, buried, poisoned or otherwise killed earning a living.	Labouring, XXX, Preparedness
7	Travel — Horse, carriage, train, car, aircraft or simply being somewhere dangerous between here and there.	Navigation, Orienteering, Survival (environmental type)
8	Exposure — Cold, heat, starvation or abandonment did for you. Drawn out and unpleasant.	XXX, Fortitude, Scavenging
9	Misadventure — You really would prefer everyone stopped asking for details.	Acrobatics, XXX, Recreation
10	Self-Sacrifice — You died because somebody else didn’t.	Motivation, XXX, Discipline
11	Your Own Folly — Drink, bravado, greed, curiosity or spectacularly poor judgement.	XXX, Gambling, Provocation
12	Unexplained — You genuinely don’t know. Perhaps finding out would be unwise.	Second Sight, Puzzling, Occult Lore

Influence

d12	Influence	Abilities
1	Before 4000 BCE — Old Stone Age	Foraging, Hand Crafting
2	4000–800 BCE — Neolithic & Bronze Age	Hunting, Materials (type)
3	800 BCE–CE 43 — Iron Age Britain	Keeping (Animal), Survival (Wild)
4	CE 43–410 — Roman Britain	Construction, Laws of the Land
5	410–1066 — Early Medieval	Farming, Song and Story
6	1066–1485 — Medieval	Heraldry, Theology
7	1485–1714 — Tudor & Stuart	Carousing , High Society
8	1714–1837 — Georgian & Regency	Etiquette1, Carriage Handling
9	1837–1901 — Victorian	Heavy Machinery, Photography
10	1901–1945 — Edwardian & World Wars	Driving, Mechanics
11	1945–1990 — Post-War	Electronics, Street Smart
12	1990–Present — Modern	Computer Use , Urban Awareness

1. There’s a fairly standard catalogue of Abilities that I build from when statting out a Sanction Genre Setup, but occasionally I have to rejig or rethink, like adding a bunch of Cooking options for Dying On The Pass. Etiquette is doing the job that High Society doesn’t quite do: a Regency servant could understand etiquette intimately without possessing any standing in high society.

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Question? I look forward to reading about it in your RPGaDay post.

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