Shadow Accord is a game where characters can have any number of different skills and powers at their disposal. It takes place in a world where violence is all too common, and the rules include various ways that characters can hurt and heal each other. It can all be a little overwhelming at first, but don’t worry! We were all new to the game at some point, and good players are willing and able to help you out if there’s something you don’t understand.
While the rulebook is the final word on how different abilities work, here is a general explanation of how different powers will affect your character and how fighting will work in practice.
There are a bunch of Power Effect <types> in Shadow Accord, but most work in a way that means you don't have to remember anything special. The big three Effect types, which most powers reference and have the most interactions when it comes to attack and defense, are below.
Attacks that hurt, including either from boffers or packet attacks. Damage attacks always come with a spoken "sig" call that includes a number, and that number is how much Health your character loses if you get hit with it. Some damage attacks are Aggravated, which we’ll get into in more detail below. Aggravated attacks hurt bad and are hard to recover from!
Attacks that change how you act. These don’t have a packet; the user will give the sig call for the attack and may indicate a target if who they want to effect isn’t obvious. Characters can spend 1 Willpower to resist a Mental attack when it first hits or to break free at any time; simply say "Resist" when you're shaking off the attack. Mental attacks last for 10 minutes and can only be used within 10 feet of the target. You can only be affected by one Mental at a time, so if you’re hit by a second one, it replaces the first one.
Attacks that alter how your character interacts within the world. These are generally packet attacks and will vary quite a bit from power to power. Ask the person who threw the packet at you to explain if you’re not familiar with it! Only specific powers will let you resist Status attacks; if you don’t have one, try to dodge that packet! Status attacks last for 60 seconds. You can only be affected by one Status at a time, so if you are hit by a second one it replaces the first one.
Sensory: If someone looks at you significantly and says something like “Detect X” or “Sense X,” they’re using a Sensory power. Answer the question out-of-character to the best of your ability. The answer to a lot of these is “no” or “no effect,” since each faction has its own weird stuff to keep track of and a lot of it won’t apply to your character.
Mask: Mask powers involve putting on a mask, which usually gives the character access to more powers. If you have one of these, make note of what it gives you (most often it’ll make you hit harder or let you grow claws). If somebody else is wearing a mask, your character sees their character looks the way the mask indicates. Very few people in medieval Brittany are used to seeing people with wolf heads, so be sure to roleplay accordingly!
Passive: These powers are always on. They will generally make the character who has them tougher or stronger, so you’ll only ever need to keep track of your own.
Self: These only affect the user, but aren’t always on like Passives. You’ll only have to keep track of these if your character has any.
Touch: These don’t have a packet and will be accompanied by their own call. They require the caster to physically touch the target with their hand and can be resisted with Willpower like a Mental attack.
Counted Touch: These require both physical touch and a 3-second count. If the count is interrupted, the effect fails; it can be broken by physically moving away or attacking the caster. Once the touch is finished, the caster will explain what happens next. It might be fairly involved, but if you’re in a faction that uses these powers often (especially Wraith), you’ll get used to it all pretty quickly.
Condition: Conditions are usually poisons or illnesses. They tend to be pretty nasty, and last until the end of the weekend or they get cured by a power or item that specifically removes conditions. These will be delivered in very specific ways, like being mixed into your food or drink. Note that nobody will actually put a physical substance in your food or drink, they’ll just affix the poison tag to the dish and your character will be affected by it when you eat or drink from it.
Even if you’re not playing a particularly martial character, it’s still a good idea to know how fights work. You never know when another character might come after yours, or your character may some day decide to take up the sword and fight back against the forces of the night!
Shadow Accord is a boffer larp. What that means is that if a character wants to hurt another character, they need to use packets or boffer-safe weapons. The weapons used at Shadow Accord will mostly look fairly realistic but are made of foam and latex. Packets are made of cloth and filled with birdseed. Either of these things can sting and bruise if there’s too much muscle behind them, but it’s very uncommon for someone to get real-life injured by an in-game attack. (Slips and falls are much more common sources of injury, so be sure to keep an eye on your surroundings. Don’t feel shy about pausing the game for a second if somebody is about to get hurt!)
With boffers, the weapon needs to be pulled back a full 45-degree angle between attacks. Boffer attacks can be blocked with a shield or with another boffer: if an attack bounces off of a boffer and hits your body, it still counts as blocked as long as your boffer got in the way of the attack.
Every now and then there will be a big fight in town between very experienced player characters and very powerful NPCs. These fights can be overwhelming, so it’s a good idea to hang back at first and get an idea of what’s going on. Usually there will be weaker opponents that newer characters can group up and engage with, and these NPCs will generally have more time to slow down and explain calls than the big bad boss will.
Sometimes a player will be swinging their boffers too fast or too hard: you’re entirely within your rights to quickly tell them so out-of-character. If they are machine-gunning (swinging their weapon faster than once-a-second or without withdrawing their weapon between blows), then only one attack counts per second. If it becomes an issue, then you’re also entirely within your rights to report the player to staff.
Your character has a pool of Health that shows how much punishment their body can take. Most characters have 10, but some powers will increase that number. Armor can also let your character take a bit more damage before they fall.
Every time your character takes a Damage effect, you’ll reduce their current Health by the number in the effect. Once you hit 0 Health, you’ll become Incapacitated. An Incapacitated character falls down unconscious or slumps over in place if it’s not safe to lie down on the ground. It is not possible to go into negative numbers; once you’re at 0 health that’s where you’ll stay until you die (see below) or something heals you.
If you stay at 0 health for 10 minutes (keep count of the seconds in your head as best you can: nobody expects you to be lying in the dirt with a stopwatch), then you stop being Incapacitated and become Dying. Incapacitated characters can be healed by any healing effect, but Dying characters can only be healed by specific powers. After you’ve been Dying for 10 minutes, you become Dead.
Dead characters are dead. Their story is over. You can stick around to represent your corpse if you want to, unless your faction turns to dust or you otherwise fades away. A handful of merits or other circumstances may allow your character to return in some other capacity, perhaps as a vengeful ghost, but for the majority of characters, this is the end. Find more information on character death here.
Some attacks call aggravated damage (agg for short). Many sig calls have a have a <type> that will cause Aggravated damage to specific factions, such as Silver for werewolves or Dark for wraiths. Whether it’s from a generic Agg call or a specific damage type, Aggravated damage works the same way.
First, you take regular damage per the number of the call. A hit of Agg 4 reduces your current health by 4 points. Next, you reduce your maximum health by one point. A hit of Agg 4 also reduces your maximum health by 1 point. It does not matter how big a number the attack had; each individual agg attack only ever reduces your maximum health by one.
This can be a little tricky to keep track of in the heat of combat. Common practice is to keep track of your current health during a fight, then when the fighting’s over (or while you’re incapacitated and have a moment to think) figuring out how many aggravated hits you took and reducing your maximum health by that amount. Luckily, any strikes that were absorbed completely by armor also weren't strong enough to make an aggravated, lasting mark. That is, a hit of Agg 4 on someone with armor of 4 reduces their armor to 0 and their current health by 0 points and has no effect on maximum health.
If through aggravated attacks or another way maximum health goes all the way to 0, skip Incapacitated and go straight to Dying. Only powerful magic can heal someone who’s in the Dying state, so aggravated damage can be extremely dangerous.