Sanction: A Tabletop Roleplaying Game of Challenges & Hacks begins with an explanation of its mechanics. A Player Character has three Resources rather than attributes or traits. The default are Physical, Mental, and Willpower, but will vary according to the Genre Set-Up. Each Resource is represented by a die type, ranging from ‘D4’ to ‘D12’, but ‘D4’, ‘D6’, and ‘D8’ being the most typical. If a Player Character is faced with a Challenge where the outcome is unknown, his player rolls the appropriate Resource. The Game Moderator decides the terms and goal of the Challenge, what happens if the Player Character succeeds and the Consequences if he fails, and if the Resource can have a ‘Step Up’ or ‘Step Down’, and thus be changed to a higher or lower die size depending upon the circumstances. The player rolls the die and if he rolls three or more, his character succeeds. However, if he rolls one or two, the Challenge Falters and the character suffers the stated Consequences. (Throughout the rules, options are given for using cards from an ordinary deck of playing cards instead of dice.)
A Player Character can also have an Ability which applies to a Challenge. This Ability can be a skill, a knowledge, or a power, depending upon the Genre Set-Up. The Game Moderator can decide that the Ability simply lets the Player Character undertake the task without the need to roll or that it provides him with an edge in the situation which will be represented by a ‘Step Up’. Alternatively, an Ability lets the Player Character undertake the task because it is so specialised. For example, the ‘Concealment’ Ability might simply let the Player Character hide in the undergrowth surrounding a castle or give him a ‘Step Up’ if there are guards on patrol. Whereas, a Player Character with the ‘Cantrips’ can cast minor magical spells that he would otherwise be unable to.
If a ‘Step Down’ decreases the die size to below a ‘D4’, the Game Moderator may still allow the Player Character to act. This is known as a ‘Call to Fail’ and the Player Character will suffer severe Consequences. In general, this option is for the Player Character who wants to cause a distraction.
The most obvious type of Consequence is the Hit. This might be due to a fall, poison, or being hit in combat, but Sanction is not a roleplaying game that emphasises combat. Morse so given that a Player Character only has three Hits before being severely injured or dead. Instead, Consequences can take the form of delays, susceptibilities, breakages, or losses. Their aim is to present interesting narrative outcomes and to test the Player Characters in ways other than being slashed with a sword.
Character creation involves first assigning dice steps to the three Resources. The base for each is a ‘D4’, and once the dice steps have been applied, all three will be at ‘D6’ or one at ‘D4’, one at ‘D6’, and one at ‘D8’. The next step is to take the Player Character through a Lifepath. This consists of three steps. In the default setting, this is a Past, a Diversion, and an Influence. The Past is typically an occupation, the Diversion is why the Player Character is in his current predicament, and Influence is an aspiration. Each of these provides an Ability. The Player Character also receives some equipment. Many items have a Supply Die which, like a Resource, ranges in value from ‘D4’ to ‘D12’. When a Player Character uses any items with a Supply Die, the die is rolled. If a one is rolled, the Supply Die is stepped down to the next die size until this happens on a ‘D4’ and the items are exhausted. A Player Character’s Past, Diversion, and Influence can either be rolled for or the player selects them.
Geoffren is a failed petty wizard. His bursary ran out and he turned to petty theft in order to fund his further studies. It turned out that he was as bad at that as he was at handling his money. His tutors bailed him out in order to prevent any embarrassment to the academy. Now he owes them. He has joined one of the Lesser Orders of the Grand Guild, a minor adventurer assigned to clean-up teams working through dungeons already battled through by mighty Warriors. He notes down everything that his team discovers and recovers and reports back to his true masters in between assignments.
Geoffren
Physical D4 Mental D8 Willpower D6
Past: Scholar
Diversion: Petty Crime
Influence: Sage
Abilities: Blather, Burglary, Folklore
Equipment: Journal
Hits: 3
Sanction is a player-facing roleplaying game. This means that the player always rolls whilst the Game Moderator never does. Nowhere does this show more than in combat or facing Threats. Here the player rolls for his character to attack a Threat and also rolls to avoid being attacked by a Threat. When facing Threats in Sanction, it extends to the order of play as well. Thus, whilst the Game Moderator states the goals for the Threats first and the players states their second, the players resolve their characters’ actions first and then the Game Moderator does for the Threats. Combat is fought out in Moments, each lasting a few seconds, during which time a Player Character can typically attack or act once and react once. A Player Character will typically inflict one Hit with a successful attack, whereas an NPC has its own damage table. The results are determined randomly and can be to move to a more advantageous position, inflict bruises or leave him bloody, or do one Hit. With doing a Hit being only one of the four options, this again emphasises the narrative Consequences of the rules rather than simply doing mechanical damage. This is the most basic range of damage, meant to represent an ordinary person. Sanction includes a range of Threats, each with its own range of damaging Consequences. For example, the Damage options for the Giant Spider consist of ‘Move’ which imposes a ‘Step Down’ on attacks against it; ‘Catch & Throw’ triggers a physical Challenge which inflicts the Restrained condition on a success, but Restrained and a Hit on a failure; ‘Impale’ for one Hit; and ‘Poison’ which inflicts a Hit, causes Bleeding, and injects venom.
For the Game Moderator, there is advice on creating encounters, supported by sample creatures and Threats, and on resolving hazards. The ‘Hacker’s Toolbox’ offers a guide to using the various parts of character creation to enforce and foster the flavour and feel of a Genre Set-up in Sanction as well as adding unique elements. This is further supported by advice on creating Threats suitable for the Genre Set-Up. Given the size of Sanction, it should be no surprise that the ‘Hacker’s Toolbox’ is short, but it is succinct, helpful, and to the point.
The Game Moderator is supported with not one, but two Genre Set-Ups. ‘With Guile, Incantation, & Faith’, or ‘.GIF’, is the default, threaded throughout the pages of Sanction as an example. In ‘.GIF’, the Player Characters are second rate adventurers, investigating and clearing out dungeons on behalf of the Grand Guild. A mighty Warrior on a euphoric ‘Weird Out’ has already been through the dungeon and done the hard job of slaughtering the major—and most of the minor—Threats. Now it is the job of the members of the Lesser Orders to investigate and clean up. Having failed to become a true Adventurer like the Warrior, the Player Characters have become blue collar dungeoneers, collecting treasure, recording details, mapping out the complexes, and so on, all while wondering where it went wrong for them. Inspired by B1, In Search of the Unknown for Basic Dungeons & Dragons, the ultimate abandoned-clean-up dungeon, ‘.GIF’ does two things. First is to give characters who would otherwise have been the role of the hireling in traditional Dungeons & Dragons-style roleplaying games a greater role and agency of their own, whilst the second is to provide a means to play just about any dungeon all over again, ideally after the players’ actual adventurers have battled their way through it.
The second Genre Set-Up comes at the end of the book, complete rather than threaded through the book. ‘Agency: Outlet Work’ shifts Sanction from the fantasy genre of ‘.GIF’ to the espionage genre. Not though the action espionage of the superspy James Bond, but the grim, grimy, and pathetic espionage of the Slow Horses series by Mick Herron with dash of John Le Carré. The Player Characters are ex-agents, failures and fuck-ups, washed out of active service, but not out of the service. Exactly why is something that will have to be worked out between the player and the Game Moderator during Agent creation. Reassigned to small towns and cities like Wolverhampton or Grimsby, the Agents do data processing, combing through reports and archives, and so on, before sorting it and sending it back to head office, with no explanations as to why or what the information is for. It is make-work, a window job, and that is all that the Agent will have until he retires. Yet the agent hopes, and worse, he cannot help but want to apply his tradecraft.
‘Agency: Outlet Work’ changes its Resources to Network, Cover, and Tradecraft. It has its own Lifepath table and it adds Espionage Specialties, Bonds, and a Burn Track. Bonds are connections to NPCs who might help the Agent, whilst the Burn Track measures his stress. Rolling a one or two on a Resource when undertaking a Challenge in public or dealing with an actual intelligence asset, calling in a favour, or resorting to an act of violence, will increase an Agent’s Burn Track. As it increases, there will be Consequences, which get worse and worse, until the Agent washes out completely, is killed, or arrested. What is noticeable here is how bad violence and fights are in ‘Agency: Outlet Work’. There is not a fight-related Resource and fights are so stressful that in the long term, the Consequences are career or life ending, taking into account the fact that the Agents of ‘Agency: Outlet Work’ have no career. There is advice for the Game Moderator and a table of prompts, but no scenario. Admittedly there is no scenario for ‘.GIF’, but you really wish that there were for ‘Agency: Outlet Work’. (Fortunately, there is one available, For A Rainy Day.) ‘Agency: Outlet Work’ is deliciously pathetic and rife with roleplaying possibilities.
Physically, Sanction is a well presented, tidy book. The artwork is decent and the book is easy to read.
Although its heritage lies in the Old School Renaissance, Sanction is not part of it, but more tangentially adjacent to it, having adopted a more narrative approach in terms of its mechanics and storytelling. The simplicity of the mechanics make it very easy to learn and play, and they also make it easy to adjust to other Genre Set-Ups. Perhaps a third Genre Set-Up might have been included in Sanction to showcase its flexibility more fully, but there can be no doubt that ‘Agency: Outlet Work’ not only does that, but is also worth the price of admission alone. It would also be good to see other Genre Set-Ups, perhaps as an anthology from a variety of authors, showing off Sanction in other genres. Overall, Sanction: A Tabletop Roleplaying Game of Challenges & Hacks is an impressive design, providing simple, but not simplistic, mechanics that encourage roleplaying and storytelling whilst also being flexible enough to adapt to different genres and settings.
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