This is part 6 of my test run with the Radiance Adventure Engine from Oddfish Games. Read Part 5.
Housekeeping and Rewards
OK, I resolved the tough Grenade path, even though it cost my PC a lot of stress in terms of the Cartel RPG system. Plus, the type of action I used ended up adding a complication to the next path I encounter. More on that later.
The Grenade path also has a special rule that if you resolve it, you earn a Reward Cube, which is Radiance’s narrative currency. You may spend Reward Cubes on very directly influencing the story, and the more you spend at a time, the more powerful it becomes. For one measly cube, you could choose to ignore a complication entirely, introduce a helpful flashback and similar things. I’ll keep my cube for now.
New Stage
I finally solved stage 1 of the adventure by completing two paths. Now we enter the final step in act 1, described on the card below.
This card sets up some conditions for going through this stage, mainly that the chosen story will have an added complication and that the initiative token is flipped to initiative lost. Let’s take the token first: this token can be either initiative gained or lost, which may affect some action outcomes positively or negatively.
Complications are extra problems, which may be added to stories or paths – there’s a long list for either, and normally you choose which complication to add to a given situation. For stories, this might be adding more paths to a story, minor added hassles, or even a B-Story, which are more involved and count as two complications. For paths, this might be increased difficulty for an action, narrative dramatic fortune changes and many other.
But all in all: both my next story and next path will have complications, unless I spend my lonely reward cube to remove one. I won’t.
Story Card: Patron
The next story card I draw is Patron, which is a promo card from Gencon 2022:
The two details are passion and vault. I decide passion is Morisa and vault is Morisa and Fernando’s daughter Ayia, the storyline being something like “Morisa requests long-term help from Laura, because of a problem with Ayia.” I have a feeling that Morisa is very unhappy in her marriage to a cartel jefe.
That will have to do for now, and I chose the story complication A Delicate Matter: “This story can fail! On the second abandoned path, the story is discarded, and the adventure stage is started with a new story.”
Path Card: First Responder
I draw two path cards and choose First Responder:
I think this detail must be Morisa again – as mentioned earlier, you may reuse details later in your story. This time I don’t even draw one.
Laura expects the last guy in the house to rush out after the noise from the car crash – she kneels on the grass outside not far from the door, draws her revolver and is ready to take him out the second he appears. I roll Push Your Luck: 5. A miss.
Nobody exits the house, and in the not so far distance police sirens are heard, closing in.