Harm
This games doesn't keep track of injury using any sort of point system. Instead, you take Harm, and the Harm often is not physical. There are four levels Harm in this game, and here are some of examples and of the effect of the levels.
| Level | Examples | Effect | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Mind | Social | Body | |||
| 1 | Lesser | Dazed | Anxious | Bleeding | Reduce a positive effect, or increase a negative effect |
| 2 | Standard | Nausea | Terrified | Slashed Arm | Roll with a -1d |
| 3 | Great | Migraine | Panic Attack | Broken Leg | You need someone else Assisting, or you make must make Push Yourself |
| 4 | Extreme | Deceased | Kicked the Bucket | D‑E‑D | You are dead. As you are dead, you are limited to laying there, unmoving. |
Lesser and Standard Harm
Harm is something that the GM has a lot of flexibility about once you get it.
Lesser and Standard Harm generally only matters if you are doing something if you're trying to do someting relevant to the type of Harm. Each Harm is mostly going to be limited to a specific attribute, either Body, Mind, or Social. If you're Bleeding, you're not going to be as good at Body stuff, if you're Dazed you're not great at Mind stuff, if you're Anxious, you're not good at Social stuff.
However, at the GM's discression, it can interfere with whatever seems to make sense. For example, Bleeding, which logically is a type of Standard Harm that would apply to Body Action Rolls, might also interfere with a Grift roll, if you're trying to hide that you're injured. But might not interfere if you're not trying to hide it. Likewise, if you have Nausea and you're trying to Sneak, that might cause problems.
The GM can also not give you the standard penalty for Lesser or Standard Harm, and instead give you an additional Outcome to avoid. Or you can ask for this. For example, Bleeding might not interfere with Sneaking per se, but it might mean you have to avoid leaving a blood trail.
You can try to work around the Harm, just like in real life, and it's up to the GM how plausible that sounds and if they allow it. For example, if you have a Spained Wrist as Standard Harm, you could decide to start Assaulting with your feet, and the GM might allow that at reduced effect instead of taking away 1d.
You could even try to use the Harm to help with what you're doing...if you're Anxious you can ask if you attempt to make the Grifting role also be anxious, will you maybe get more effect instead of less?
Being Greatly Harmed or Killed is Really Bad, Actually
Great Harm is very serious and is likely to interfere with pretty much all Rolls, and maybe even doing non-rolls things you'd nomally find trivial, like walking. In theory, you can continue in the scene, in practice, it's probably best for everyone if you exit the scene as soon as possible, with assistance from other players if you need it. You are extremely vulnerable like this. See Shake It Off below if you want to make a speedier exit, although that does result in a lot of Stress.
At Extreme Harm, of course, you require the assistance of other players to do anything. For ideas how they can manage that, see the movie Weekend at Bernie's. Because you are dead.
Filling up a Level
When you take the same Lesser Harm twice, such as if you get cut again and need to mark another Bleeding, you remove that from Lesser Harm and put it in Standard Harm. The good news is, when you have that, you can't get same Lesser Harm again, and this Standard Harm counts as new Harm for the purposes of reducing it, so you can get it back down to Lesser again, see Removing Harm for how that works.
When you fill up Standard Harm, and need to mark another Standard Harm, it goes in Great Harm. Also, if you have taken Standard Harm and take identical Standard Harm, it move it up to Great Harm. And that's true even if you've reduced that previous Standard Harm. You just got hurt in the place you barely patched up, it undid all that.
When you fill up Great Harm, and need to mark another Great Harm, or take even more identical Standard Harm to something that has already escalated to Great...you have a problem. In theory, this would escalate to Death and kill you. In practice, the GM should offer a Devil's Bargain, of some sort of permanent injury, one with a real mechanical effect that would go as an Ability on your character sheet, such as having nerve damage in your hands and taking a -1d to fine manipulation with Grasp. This is why you probably want to exit the screne if you already have Great Harm, especially if you got it by filling up Standard Harm.
The only time the GM should make you die from Extreme Harm with no option to do something else if is you, directly, take Extreme Harm. Which you can usually resist to Great Harm, so practically the only time you should actually die is directly taking something designated as Extreme Harm and your stress is full and no one can reduce it.
Removing Harm
When a scene ends, and there's a few minutes where you are 'off screen' in a safe space, all Lesser Harm goes away, no effort or explaination required. You put on a bandage and sit down and catch your breath or whatever. You can also actively work to remove them in a scene, skipping some action for that. Or it may just remove itself, if you're Anxious because of what someone did in a scene, if they leave, you're probably fine.
If there's at least an hour time jump where we don't see you, you can turn one Standard Harm turn into Lesser Harm. This should be explained by you if it's interesting, or just handwaved if it's not. If you have long enough, you might be able to reduce two different Moderate Harms into Lesser Harms, it's up to the GM if enough time has passed.
Reducing Severe Harm takes you at least until the next day to recover from and reduce down to Standard. This should be explained and perhaps even shortly roleplayed, you might have had to go to the hospital or see some sort of expert or meditate or something.
Note: You can only reduce each different Harm once a episode. If you take Standard Harm, and recover it down to Lesser Harm, that Lesser Harm sticks with you until the end of the episode. Same with Great Harm, it can be reduced to Standard, assuming you have an empty slot there, and that's it.
If all of this seems complicated, you are probably worrying it too much about it, PCs should not get injured that often with the tone of the games that Keepers in the Dark is aiming for. It would be odd to get more than a single Standard injury per PC in a game.
Between episodes, you'd are completely healed.
Shake It Off
You can, at any point in time, take Harm out of play. You just have to pay for it.
You just have to take one Stress per level of Harm, 1 for Lesser, 2 for Standard, 3 for Great.
This means that specific Stress cannot be used against you by the GM in any way. You might have a Broken Leg, but you are gritting your teeth and walking on it like normal.
It does not remove the Harm from your sheet, and if you take an identical Lesser Harm it escalates it to Standard Harm just like before, although it still can't be used against you.
For Lesser Harm, it's probably better to just step to the side in a scene for a little bit and try to fix the problem, which not only is free, but actually removes it from the list. But you can Determinator your way past that if you do not have time. You can, of course, still remove it later, but that obviously won't get you the Stress back.