Inner Strength

tl;dr: The July update to the Player’s Guide replaces the Extra Time bonus die with an Inner Strength bonus die and refines a few moves based on the experience of running two campaigns and a one-shot this month.

Players were reluctant to use the Extra Time bonus die, because it gave the GM an opportunity to Jump Cutand advance threats. It’s been replaced with Inner Strength:  "Can you tap into the balance of your inner conflict? Describe how it helps with the task at hand (e.g., 'I’m Investigating and tapping into my inner conflict of Trust vs. Paranoia by methodically reviewing all the logs, looking for anything suspicious or out of place')."

This works really well in one-shots, since it gives players a reason besides XP to lean into their inner conflict. 

One playtester mentioned that they were confused about the ramifications of selecting an inner conflict during character creation, so I added two more paragraphs describing how it works in play.<ins></ins>

Minor edits:

• Clarified that you can only turn one miss into a hit by using a skill, not one per skill you use.
• Changed the one-shot guidance to just select one move per background or specialty rather than take them all. Fun facts from playtesting: last one-shot, no player took all the moves, despite that being the instruction at the time; back in my first one-shot, players complained about taking all the moves, which they thought was too much.
• Renamed the Engineering Theory skill to Applied Engineering. Because you want to actually do something with it, not theorize.
• Renamed End Credits to Closing Credits, to parallel Opening Credits.

Reflecting how many times we’ve played now, the move edits this month were all very minor tweaks or clarifications:

• Flashback – “If your highest result is a 6…”
• Outfit – Clarified that “the redshirt takes only a stungun.”
• Rosetta Stone – Clarified “not capped by LEX” since the point is you are facilitating understanding either without the Universal Translator or before it has advanced the translation matrix much.
• Speak with Animals, Speak with Plants – Changed “study” to “closely observe.”

Illustration credit: Public domain, May 1950 cover illustration to Amazing Stories.