📈 Advancement

This campaign does not hand out a weekly pile of points to spend wherever you like. Advancement flows through several parallel channels, and the biggest one is tied to what your character actually does. Fighters get better at fighting. Riders get better at Riding. A leader who keeps struggling with command slowly becomes the commander the party needs. Over time, your character sheet should read like a record of your character's experiences — not a shopping list.

Learning by Failure

Every time you fail a meaningful roll during a session, your character learns something. Each failure earns a hash mark on the specific trait that failed — Broadsword failures mark Broadsword, Riding failures mark Riding, Diplomacy failures mark Diplomacy. When a trait collects 3 hash marks, they convert into 1 CP invested in that trait, and the table announces it in chat.

That CP is restricted: Broadsword CP buys Broadsword, and nothing else. You cannot move it to another skill, an attribute, or an Advantage.

The Fine Print

• One CP per trait per session. Once a trait converts its marks into a CP, further failures with it that session teach you nothing more. This keeps a heavily rolled combat skill from sprinting ahead of everything else.
• Marks carry over. Finish a session with two marks in Riding and you start the next one needing a single Riding failure to convert. Nothing is ever lost — quiet sessions just bank progress.
• No per-scene limit. Legitimately fail Broadsword three times in one desperate battle and that battle alone can produce the session's Broadsword CP.
• It has to be a real roll. A meaningful challenge, at stake, during play. Rolling Lockpicking at your own front door twelve times is not advancement — the GM will strike farmed marks without ceremony.
• Attribute checks count too. A failed Will, PR, or KN check marks the attribute itself. At 10 CP per level, attributes rise slowly this way — a long, background accumulation.
• Untrained rolls teach the attribute. A default roll is an attribute roll at a penalty (see Half-Stat Defaulting), so failing a skill you never learned marks the attribute — you can't sharpen a skill you don't have.
• The Art learns upward. If a spell is already at its cap, the mark flows to its Path skill; if the Path is capped as well, it flows to QN. A practitioner always learns something from a botched working.
• Self rolls don't count. A roll made with the chat Self Roll visibility never generates advancement — practicing in front of a mirror is free. And if you roll the wrong thing by mistake, hit the 🚫 button on that roll, then roll the right one; the mis-roll is struck from advancement entirely.

Notice who this system favors: the struggling. Low skill fails often and learns fast. A master at Broadsword‑15 learns nothing from easy fights — but in the dark, wounded, on bad footing, effective skill drops, failure returns, and so does growth. Characters learn fastest when pushed past their comfort zone. That is exactly the intent.

General CP — Steady Growth

Every PC earns 1 general CP per session, automatically. General CP is freely spendable under normal campaign rules — skills, attributes, Advantages, anything permitted. A talky, investigation-heavy session with barely a roll in it is never a "no advancement" session.

Disadvantage Awards

Meaningfully roleplaying your Disadvantages earns additional general CP. "Meaningfully" is the operative word — the Disadvantage should influence a decision, create a complication, cost your character something, or close off an option you wanted. Mentioning your Code of Honor while doing the convenient thing anyway earns nothing.

Milestones

Major campaign achievements bring milestone awards of roughly 5–10 general CP — closing a chapter of the story, pulling off something transformative. These are deliberately large: they exist so you can occasionally afford a 10‑point attribute level or an expensive Advantage like Combat Reflexes without hoarding single points for months.

Treasure — Rewards from the Story

Not every improvement is purchased. Some of the most valuable things your character can gain — an Ally who owes you their life, a Contact cultivated over months of favors, a Patron, a Reputation, Status, Rank, a title — can be earned directly through play.

The line is the GM's to draw, and it works like treasure: if you want an Ally, you may buy one with general CP under the normal rules. But if the relationship arises naturally from events and it fits the story to grant it, the GM may simply award it — no CP charged, the same way a magic sword taken from a vault costs nothing but the getting. Your character's point total still rises to reflect what they now possess; it measures what your character is, not merely what you paid for.

The knife cuts both ways: the fiction can also alter or remove traits when circumstances genuinely change them. Burn your Contacts, and they are burned.

Spending Your CP

• Restricted CP spends only on the trait that earned it.
• General CP spends on anything the campaign rules allow.
• Skill levels typically cost 2–4 CP, so restricted CP often accumulates for a while before it can buy the next level. That running balance is kept for you.
• Learning something new? Tell the GM. If you're deliberately working toward a skill or spell you don't have yet, awards can be directed toward it before it ever appears on your sheet.

Mechanically: check your Advancement window in Foundry for your available CP, make the purchases in GCS, then re-import your character in Foundry. The table reconciles what changed against the CP you've earned — if the numbers don't line up, the GM gets a note, so keep your spending inside your balance.