Kickstarter Pre-Launch and the Essential Quickstart!

After a long wait, the ARC Kickstarter is almost here. The 170+ page, lushly illustrated A5 book containing infinite possibilities you can make about the end of the world. You can even sign up at the pre-launch page.

To celebrate, I'm sharing a beautifully formatted Quickstart document! This is absolutely free and contains what you need to start playing ARC. In between September and today, there's also been a few updates to the rules, particularly skills.

• Doomsday Clock "segments" now renamed to "moments"
• Skills removed from the game: Stealth, Presence
• Skills added to the game: Coordination, Insight
• Jab renamed to Impose; Gab renamed to Charisma
• Long rests now take up to 9hours minus lowest modifier.
• Some clarification that, if a player doesn't reroll their max Blood and Guts after a long rest, they recover 1d6 Blood and Guts instead.
• In conflict, a player can try and justify using a different skill than Impose or Guile for psychosocial attack, though the Guide also has leeway to refuse or apply a difficulty modifier.
• Clearer guidance on consequence and opportunity - instead of just examples, categories of what players can suggest
• Clearer guidance on assigning difficulty modifiers.

Additional design notes for Skills

• Stealth is no longer a skill. This is mostly because it was an incredibly, hyper-specific skill that couldn't really be used outside of...well, sneaking.
• Instead, it's been replaced by Coordination, which can be used for making very efficient or deliberate body movements --- useful not just for sneaking quietly, but also for succeeding at sports requiring excellent hand-eye coordination, and even more micro-level actions like sleight of hand. It is, essentially, Dexterity and Agility rolled into one, but defined separately from Acrobatics. Coordination is more deliberate and useful for controlled body movements over longer periods of time; Acrobatics is more appropriate for dynamic movement utilizing the entire body.
• Subsequently, sleight of hand tricks are now moved from Guile to Coordination - as this dexterous, deft hand activity has always been more appropriate as a Physical skill. That said, players can still use Guile to, say, distract their target or misdirect them with verbal or non-verbal communication to make up for not having the actual physical dexterity to pull that sleight of hand off.
• Jab has been named to Impose. In practice, it's mostly the same, as you still use this skill to insult others; even intimidate, coerce or bully. The name change hopefully enables players to view it in broader terms and encourage using the skill outside of one-off insults.
• Gab has been named to Charisma. In practice also mostly the same, however the rename makes more sense as it helps players realize it's not just verbal skill but even non-verbal communication - a great smile, a friendly demeanor, knowing how to be appealing.
• Presence has been removed completely. Originally, Presence was intended to be a social attack skill, as well as the skill players should use so heroes can impart a specific impression: whether intimidating, friendly, composed, and so on. However, appearing intimidating can be done already by using Physique to be literally physically imposing; or Impact to do the same but through social coercion. Players can also use Charisma to appear friendly, approachable.
• Instead, a new skill is added: Insight. Insight is social wisdom of sorts: knowing how to communicate meaningfully, intuiting how to address someone else's emotional needs, and even applying that grace and maturity to staying composed and observing others' emotions or truthfulness.
• Subsequently, the Observe skill now specifically applies to just physical observations. Before, a player can use Observe to detect if others' emotional states; with the changes, Insight should be used instead.