Illuminated Worlds System

Illuminated Worlds is a game system originally created for Darrington Press's supernatural investigation game Candela Obscura. It was based on the Forged in the Dark system of Blades in the Dark and the Year Zero Engine of Vaesen. The system uses pools of six-sided dice and focuses on teams of investigators delving into fantastical mysteries. The core mechanic involves rolling a number of d6s based on your character's rating in the relevant Action and reading the highest result. If the best die is a 3 or less, the action fails and consequences ensue. If it's a 4 or 5, the roll is a mixed success; you accomplish what you wanted, but there's a cost or complication. On a 6, the roll completely succeeds with no consequences, and if multiple 6s appear in the result, it's a critical success and you gain an additional bonus. Illuminated Worlds gives players a few tools to tip the scales in their favor: Drives represent characters' ability to push themselves, and they can spend points of their Drives to add bonus dice to an important roll or help an ally. Drives also have some number of Resistances that allow players to re-roll dice when they don't like the result. Each character will also have Gilded Actions, which replace one die rolled for that action with a special d6 called a gilded die, which replenishes one point of a drive whenever you choose to use its result (even if it's not the highest one). In addition to creating characters with unique abilities, Illuminated Worlds also has a system for creating a Circle, or the group to which your characters belong. The Circle has abilities and resources that everyone in the group has access to, and represents the strength of their organization. The Circle can grow, change, and advance just like player characters can.