Learn to Play · Season 2
Who Your Hero Is
Hope, skills, the ways to act, Truths and Anchors: what makes your hero more than a stat block.
In this season
8. Earning Hope · 9. Spending Hope · 10. The nine skills · 11. The four ways to act · 12. Truths · 13. The five Anchors · 14. Reserve and Heritage
Episode 8
Earning Hope
Hope is your everyday fuel. You start each session with Hope equal to your Reserve (usually 3), and you can never hold more than twice that. You earn it when the world leans on what you love: when the GM presses one of your Anchors (you take the Hope the instant the press lands), when you roll a Setback, when the GM plays a Rising card against you, and when you put the team first at real cost.
Episode 9
Spending Hope
One point of Hope buys one of four things. Reach: call on an Anchor or a Truth for +2 dice or a reroll, any time until the result is locked. Declare: with the GM’s nod, a small fact one of your Anchors would know becomes true. Steady: downgrade an incoming Condition by a step. Or fuel a Showstopper. The danger to what you love is what pays for saving it.
Episode 10
The nine skills
Before you’re super, you’re a person. Every hero has all nine skills: Force, Finesse, Nerve, Notice, Insight, Sway, Know, Make and Connect. Your rating is the number of dice you roll, from Trained (1) to Paragon (5). At creation you take one at 4, two at 3, three at 2 and three at 1, and there’s never a 0 on your sheet, because an Untrained die can never Surge.
Episode 11
The four ways to act
Everything you try is one of four moves. Overcome beats an obstacle. Set Up creates or uncovers a Truth, and your first call-on is free. Strike lays a Condition on a foe. Guard protects a person, a place or a Promise by setting the difficulty to get past you. There’s no separate combat system: a fight is the same four moves, with lives on the line.
Episode 12
Truths
The story is made of Truths: facts the dice will honour, like Raining Glass or He’s Bluffing About the Ledger. Some are simply true; others you make with a Set Up. Once a Truth exists, anyone in the scene can call on it. The first call-on is free for whoever made it; after that each one costs 1 Hope, for +2 dice or a reroll. Getting hurt makes a Truth too, one that points the wrong way.
Episode 13
The five Anchors
Every hero has the same five Anchors: Home, People, Purpose, Burden and Horizon. Each one is a lever and a handle. Call on it for 1 Hope to get +2 dice or a reroll. When the GM presses it, the world turns it against you and you take a point of Hope. Write each one as a line you’d be happy to see quoted, because the more it means to you, the more it earns its keep, in both directions.
Episode 14
Reserve and Heritage
Reserve is your Hope baseline. Your Hope resets to it every session (3 for most heroes) and your cap is twice that; the most powerful Showstoppers can lower it for good. Heritage is what you are, from Human and Nova-born to Synthetic, the Radiant and Dimensional, and it’s a Truth too. Non-human Heritages get a Birthright: a permission, never a bonus. Heritage is what you are; Origin is how you got your powers.
Season complete · Up next
That’s Season 2: you know who your hero is. Carry on with Season 3: Powers, Harm and Teams, starting with building a power in six moves.
Ready to play?
Start with the free QuickStart
Everything in these videos comes from Nova City Heroes: First Light. The QuickStart has everything you need for your first night in Nova City.
