Making A Killing; a Pact Dice Module.

Table of Contents

Unique Features and Mechanics 2

Family/Faction Gameplay 3
Public, Party and Personal Spellbooks 3
A Campaign for GMs 3

Players as members of a Family/Faction 4

Hierarchy 4
Focus 5
Syllabary 5

Personal, Party, and Public Spellbooks 6

Party Spellbook 6
Family Prestige and Advancement 6

Campaign - Making a Killing - GM Guide 7

Campaign Introduction 7
Standard Session Flow 7
The First Murder Announced 7
Sharks in the Water 8
The Second Victim/The Second Target Saved 9
Conflicts in the Aftermath 10
Investigation Resumes/Discoveries Are Made 10
The Third Victim/A Crisis Averted 10
Climax 10
Epilogue/Clean Up 10

Unique Features and Mechanics

The following mechanics and features are built for the Making a Killing campaign.

Family/Faction Gameplay
Family/Faction gameplay is an entirely new way to play Pactdice as a party. Instead of
being individual actors from different families usually working at cross purposes and
occasionally forced together, the players are different members of the same family or
group of friends working together by default, with some exceptions that can occur during
play.

Schools, Priority and Family are replaced with three new bids - Hierarchy, which
determines the respect and authority each member has as a figure of the family to the
practitioner world, Focus, which determines the family’s main practice, and Syllabary,
which is a collaborative effort in determining what spells the family shares between
themselves.

As the players work as a group, they can seek to bolster their “family” (Or alternatively,
faction) while trying to become top dog in the eyes of the magical world, and in the eyes
of the spirits.

Public, Party and Personal Spellbooks

With a new Party and Personal spellbook system, you can experiment with materials
and schools to craft new spells anyone can use.

Finally, Public spellbooks now exist, which is a small collection of basic tricks and
techniques that nearly every practitioner you’ll deal with may tap into.

A Campaign for GMs

Making a Killing is a murder mystery campaign that uses dice rolls to create a sense of
mystery in developing the plot.
Players as members of a
Family/Faction
All players in the Making a Killing are now members of the same family unit.

In the bidding phase, the following realms are unchanged; Puissance, Longevity,
Access, Executions, and Research

However, the last three (Schools, Priority, Family) are replaced.

Schools and Priority are both replaced because being a “family” unit, every player has a
say in what magic each other can partake in. Family is replaced, because being the
same “family”, it means that there is no variation in how your family is seen.

The new values are Hierarchy, Focus, and Syllabary.

Hierarchy
Hierarchy focuses on the order of prestige, the family head and/or who inducted who
into the practice. Players at the upper echelons are seen as the family heads, prodigies
in the practice, and well liked, while those lower are newer members, black sheep and
estranged relatives.

The advantage is that by default, players with higher hierarchy have more “say” in the
player’s collective direction as a consequence of pact’s magical system. Not only that,
but success and good fortune tends to trickle up, yet also, bad karma and
consequences.

After bidding, players can talk and agree on how their group is arranged, with vetos for
each player and the GM.

Aaron, Bethany, Jonathan & William bid on Hierarchy. The results were that
William, Bethany, Aaron and Jonathan gained Supreme to Least in that order.

After briefly talking about how this would work, They’ve decided that William and
 Bethany would play as a Brother/Sister pair where William’s character is the elder
sibling, Jonathan would play as William’s student in The Practice and Aaron
would be a visiting cousin from a branch of the family from elsewhere.

Focus
Focus defines what the family is known for in terms of the Practice. Each player
chooses a school of magic, and then bids are made. The player with the topmost bid in
the Hierarchy will have their Focus selected as what the family is known for in the eyes
of the world of the practice. Players need not be limited to a specific table of practices, if
they wish to specify other kinds of practice, they may do so. They may also choose the
same practice, if they wish. The results of the Focus bid does not affect the player’s
primary choice of School, only what order their other schools are in expertise. A
Warding specialist in an Evangelist family will always be a warder first, but Evangelism
will be their secondary speciality.

Aaron, Bethany, Jonathan & William choose their schools. Aaron chooses to
become a Peddler, Bethany chooses to become a Scourge, Jonathan chooses to
become an Oni Mage, and William takes up Fae Magic.

During Bidding, the results were that Bethany, William, Aaron and Jonathan
gained Supreme to Least in that order. As such, the family is primarily a Scourge
family, that delves a little into Glamour usage, Peddling, and then Oni magic in
that order.

Aaron’s schools are, in order - Peddler, Scourge, Fae, and then Oni.
Bethany’s schools are, in order - Scourge, Fae, Peddler, and then Oni.
Jonathan’s schools are, in order - Oni, Scourge, Fae, and then Peddler.
William’s schools are, in order - Fae, Scourge, Peddler and then Oni.

Syllabary
Syllabary gives players “spell tokens”, that are then used in crafting Personal and
Communal spellbooks. These tokens tend to have a median of 7 tokens for an odd
number of players and 6.5 for an even number of players. After this bidding, three
tokens are awarded to the highest hierarch bidder, and a further two more to the highest
Focus bidder.

These tokens are used during the development of spellbooks.

Aaron, Bethany, Jonathan & William bid on tokens for the Syllabary. The results
are that Jonathan, Aaron, William, Bethany gained Supreme to Least in that
order.

Jonathan gained 8 tokens, Aaron gained 7 tokens, William gained 6 tokens, and
Bethany gained 5 tokens.

Because William was the winning Hierarch bidder and Bethany the winning Focus
bidder, their final tokens were 9 for William and 7 for Bethany respectively.

Personal, Party, and Public

Spellbooks
In Pactdice, each player has a personal spellbook. This module divides this personal
spellbook into three separate spellbooks. The Personal spellbook which at the start of
the game only contains three spells the player knows, the Party spellbook which is a
collaborative pool of spells that the family together knows, and the Public spellbook,
which is a collection of spells nearly every NPC and all the players know, usually basic
and regional practices.

Personal Spellbook
The personal spellbook is unchanged from pactdice. It is a private collection of available
spells and resources that can be used by the player it belongs to, as they see fit.

Party Spellbook
The Party Spellbook is a set of spells every player can use, that is contributed by
players. Players invest as many tokens as they please from the Syllabary bid into spells
for the Party Spellbook.
Spells can cost 1, 2 or 3 tokens. Increasing cost corresponds to increasing longevity,
more uses, greater power and more variability.

Public Spellbook
The Public Spellbook is a collection of basic practices every practitioner in the campaign
knows and is capable of. These be default

Family Prestige and Advancement

Naturally, the players actions influence the standing of the family in both positive and
negative manners. Karmic damage, loss of status, and more.

Campaign - Making a Killing -

GM Guide
Campaign Introduction

Standard Session Flow

The following describes the session flow of what one would assume is a “typical”
campaign. Naturally, things can go haywire very quickly, from killing the BBEG early on,
to getting every player trapped in the Abyss.
The campaign is built off of the Save, Solve, Survive style campaign, with the players
sitting at a “pick all three” status and only going downhill as they make mistakes or
make bad rolls to a potentially disastrous “pick half of one” situation.

The First Murder Announced

Players are at a meeting at the theatre. Murder announced, arguments flare up as
necromantic elements are involved, but also savagery.

Here, the GM should highlight one of the main complications - the Campbell and Frazier
families have a tense truce, and at any moment could go into nearly open warfare.
Players can take a side, fan tensions or calm them down.

GM clues to give:

What NPCs state

● The Practitioner killed was an Ogre/War Magi known as Jessica Watts.

● Her Echo has been taken.
● She was killed outside in a nearby public park.
● Her body was torn in two, and her heart is gone.

Players can press to go to the site of her death and look for clues there, or go to the
body .

Body clues

The following clues can be found at the morgue:

● Heart has no connection, no link to what should be Jessica’s heart.

● Bones have fingerprints on them. Taking those bones may allow for a connection
to the killer, and the killer to players.
● Her corpse has been “Purified”, in that negative spirits are gone. (Rot, evil,
disgust - it makes her corpse look pretty and nice, even if it’s a woman ripped in
twain.)
● She seemingly put up a fight from defensive wounds on her left arm.
Site clues

● There’s a lot of darker spirits in the site of the murder nearby, but spirits regarding
necromancy would all but be cleansed from the area. Magically, things (that
aren’t plants) that are “killed” within 5 feet of the site of the murder don’t die until
they leave the area, where spirits will allow them to die.
● Hypothetically, the players could collect those spirits and try to make an Other
that would state the general appearance of the killer - Male, hairy, snarling.
● Several trees would be broken, some in unique ways that pertained to Jessica’s
skills. Jessica fought back.

Sharks in the Water

Others get active as the practitioners are distracted. Outside threats, long running plots,
and tensions flare.

This is a breather session, designed to help players shore up resources and develop
connections from NPCs

The Second Victim/The Second Target Saved

Clues from the investigation may lead to saving a second target. Or, if they don’t, they
have to investigate a second killing.

During this session, the GM should select at random, from the table below, a
practitioner. If that practitioner is already dead, they can choose the one above, or
reroll, or even choose themselves if they wish.

1d10 results Victim

1
2

10

Each Victim results in different consequences, from making the Campbell/Frazier feud
turn violent (Colin, Susan, James) to releasing dangerous, bound Others or making
projects backfire.

Conflicts in the Aftermath

In this chapter, the secondary issue of the Frazier-Campbell feud comes to a head. This
presents an opportunity for players to gather even more resources and secure their
power, at a price of violence and possible loss.

Investigation Resumes/Discoveries Are Made

Once the Frazier-Campbell war is over, players resume investigations.

The Third Victim/A Crisis Averted

Depending on how clued in the players are, they can find the killer in the act or find the
third victim.

Climax
B

Epilogue/Clean Up
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