Im currently working on how to represent the surrounding gardens by stealing from Gardens of Ynn, but making it its own little thing.

Im building it around an escalating chance of getting lost. I'l post it when its presentable.

Thanks!

They found it while sneaking through the ruined abbey of St. Clewyd in my Dolmenwood game.

One them already used it to call her mom, but since it was at night and she was asleep, we played it as her thinking it was just part of her dream.

Using skill point advancements but Sanity/Hope depreciation as you age, this also allows a party of differently aged PCs, as age is a tradeoff between the two phases, with older PCs more skilled but more jaded with more vulnerable sense of self, as in the movie.

Tech advances and historical events could be done either as a deck of prompt cards or progress trackers, representing things like advances in weapons or communicatiom tech, opening new skills; or world events, like grand wars or inquisitions, that modify following missions.

This would require leaving behind the lush timeperiod depth of most gumshoe games, and leaving it more open to the group in the moment.

As for the time aspect, I like idea of being able to cover a large span of time over the course of a campaign, but this requires embrasing some active alternate history. Im thinking the rules caring less about what year it is, and more leaving that up to the group.

I like the idea this action invulnerability leveraged for good in the missions, while also having the vulnerabilities of trying to not lose yourself as the centuries go by.

During the timeskips, these pillars can get messed with, perhaps prompting a scene or mini-pseudo mission, but most of the time shit just happens. Ideals and symbols can be tarnished and corrupted, while people can fall out with you, become threatened, or simply just die.

The clever thing about the Sanity system, is that every three points have to be tied to something specific in the world, a Pillar. This can be abstract like a symbol or ideal, or concrete like a person. Each is fallible in its own way and are the PCs main vulnerabilities.

Here is where I want to expand on the quite good Stability/Sanity system from NBA/Gumshoe. This will function as the de facto longterm health stat of the PCs, becoming harder and harder to maintain the more ancient you become.

In the timeskip phases, PCs get to renew their resourses and gain new skill points. But time also progresses, with consequenses for failed missions, but also general prompt events as in TYOV, both for the world in general and personally for the PCs.

The action of the mission will unfold as in NBA, where the PCs gotta use everything they have at their disposal. I would still have a HP stat, but instead of resulting in death, its a list of cumulative debuffs, which slowly ticks back up over time, in effect slowing you down.

This also adds a level of investigation and information gathering to the beginning of each mission, where the PCs have to figure out how to achieve their goal.

Im gonna steal the vague prophetic dreams from the movie, this being what begins each mission, giving them glimpses of some terrible thing yet to happen, which they must stop before its too late.

I really want to capture the feeling of being a centuries old immortal, while still being able to challenge the PCs.

Im thinking of doing this by having the missions themselves be essentially no-win scenarios, only possible bc of the PCs immortality, but where failure is still on the table.

Honestly i fully admit to being hooked by it mostly because i fell in love with its very specific take on farietale fantasy, which to me seemed much more fun than more fantasyland osr stuff. But thats entirely personal to me.

I do really like the lush amount of detail to go with the OSR simplicity