COST- Control: Operations, System, and Techniques
As a player, reading these pages is optional, but at least digesting this one page in particular is crucial for the game Director. These are the rules the Director uses to guide the game's narrative. First, let us define the moving pieces of these rules.
Moving Pieces of COST
There are a few moving pieces in the COST system, but the bulk of it is already on the player’s cards. You have two types of cards that you hold in secret from the players: Thread cards and State cards.
> Thread Cards
You define these with a short phrase summing up part of the game’s narrative. You play these cards to introduce events to the narrative that apply pressure to the player’s operatives. These should be a bit vague, e.g., “Empire Inspector Tarquin is hunting the crew”. The phrases on these cards are known game narratives to players, giving them ideas about what is happening around their characters.
You can play these cards in two ways: Open-ended and Reactively. Open-ended play happens if you play the card when nothing is currently happening in the narration. This is like a prompt to the players, saying: What about this? If something is going on in the narration, and you play the card, you are Reactively attaching it to the current narrative.
Open-ended playing of Thread cards is a solution to the occasional moment in the game where the players are all just looking at each other, with no idea of what’s next. It’s your push to get one of them to take action. Let’s explore that with our example card:
TODO
If you Reactively play a Thread card to active narration, you are attaching that story beat to the current narration. For example, let us say that a player decides their operative is taking a break and going to the local bar to get some satisfaction (mechanical gain of Comfort rating). You could play the Thread card “Empire Inspector Tarquin is hunting the crew” and narrate “As your operative has a glass of Argos Hot slid in front of them, they see a man watching them from a nearby table. You aren’t sure, but you suspect this man is keeping tabs on you for the Empire Inspector.”
> State Cards
State cards have one of the four poker suits and are directly attached to an operative in the crew. Each of them represents something in the fiction that is moving towards the operative. You play a State card when a Contest is entered to override the normal rules and narrate the outcome as you wish. When you do so, you give the state card to the player of the operative it is used upon. The suit of the card is the general type of element moving towards the operative, and the text of the card defines it to some extent.
>> Club State Cards
Each club State card is something bad coming for the operative in the interior sense.
>> Diamond State Cards
Each diamond State card is something of professional value for the operative.
>> Heart State Cards
Each heart State card is something of personal value for the operative.
>> Spades State Cards
Each spade State card is something bad coming for the operative in the exterior sense.
Crew Reputation Card
A card that tracks the current crew reputation globaly, and with entries for various important groups as well.