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Congratulations! Your character is an angel…or a demon, or a witch, or a spirit. You have preternatural powers over the natural world and other beings. In the world of Never, what does this actually mean for you as a player, and for them as a character? The guidelines below are meant to provide some structure.

There Is No Stat Sheet

Never, NM is a collaborative writing exercise. It is not designed with either the hard rules or the limitations of a tabletop RPG. Your character does not have the sort of concrete statistics, hit points, or attacks that those games require. You do not need to roll dice of any kind to determine how to use a character’s powers or what the effects of those powers might be (provided that they fit the very basic limits outlined in the relevant section of your character type’s KB article).

You DO need to communicate with any writing partner(s) and reach an agreement about the narrative events in your threads. Collaborative, in this context, means that all players contribute to a thread’s story--beginning, progress, and conclusion.

Basically, all players share the role of DM!

If none of the players have strong feelings about outcomes, or if you live for variety, you’re welcome to roll any dice you choose to determine the next narrative step! But that will never be required and it isn’t intended as the foundation of the kind of storytelling we do here at Never.

Energy Expense

Whenever a character uses a power, that’s going to require energy. If a character is poorly fed, extremely stressed, or simply exhausted, using a power will become progressively more difficult. If a character is in bad enough condition, using their powers may be impossible, and they will need to recover first. We trust players to judge their characters’ abilities and restrict their powers accordingly.

• Minor Magic
  • Minor magic includes the sort of domestic tasks that make life a little easier, and they require very little energy to use. Some examples would be: heating a kettle; sparking a fire in a hearth; summoning a small object; repairing a broken cup; cleaning a shirt.
  • The more minor magical tasks a character completes without recovery time, however, the less energy they will have to spend on greater magical endeavors. Keep that balance in mind.
• Common Magic
  • These are the powers given according to a character’s type. They make up the majority of a character’s impressive arsenal and include things like Elemental, Intimidate, Prophesy, and Healing. These will always take a significant amount of energy. For example, a witch with an Elemental fire power might attack two or three times with a ball of flame, but then he might need several hours to recover before doing anything so strenuous again. A spirit that invokes Prophesy on two people in a row might not even be capable of remaining corporeal while she recovers from the effort.
  • Characters can combine their efforts to create larger or more sustained effects from their minor or common powers.
  • Each witch and spirit is given a specific power according to their type. Each angel and demon receives one power chosen by the player from the appropriate list. Additional powers must be purchased from the shop.
• Showstoppers
  • These are the powers that have enormous narrative impact.
  • For angels, performing miracles fall under this category; for demons, creating contracts. These are the sorts of powers with the potential to permanently alter the life of the responsible party, the target, and any bystanders. As such, they require the expenditure of points.
  • You can see these powers and their costs in the shop.