Bit Cards

Declare a complex trap is set somewhere in the current scene and describe it in as much detail as you like. When any character, friend, foe, or self, next moves into the trap’s location, the trap springs. Roll a Hard Intellect check using Gag-Craft to resolve; on success, the trap functions as designed. On failure, the trap catches you. Traps persist until sprung and may only be defused by a successful opposed Gag-Craft or Craft check.

Before resolving a check that would end a scene or conflict in your favor, deliver a gloating monologue. You gain 1 automatic Success on the check. However, the opposing character, if they have a valid check available, may interrupt with it before yours resolves, gaining +1 Boon die on their interrupt.

Produce a custom-built gadget tailored to the problem at hand, a grapple-net, a pocket hovercraft, a rival-dissolver ray. On any action using the gadget, remove all Trial and Crisis dice from the pool. After the action resolves, the gadget breaks, explodes, vanishes into a puff of ink, or gently implodes. It is gone for the rest of the session, and in the fiction, for good.

Immediately after one of your checks fails badly (a Calamity result or a failure by 3+), throw a screaming, stamping, ink-flinging tantrum. Recover 2 Strain and gain +1 Boon die on your next check this scene. The GM gains +1 Chaos Point.

When chaos erupts around you, respond with a slow blink, a flat stare, and a single sigh. Recover 2 Strain and gain +1 Boon die on your next Willpower or Charisma check this scene.

Take a moment to patiently explain the current situation to one other PC or NPC. That character gains +1 Boon die on their next check this scene. You recover 1 Strain. The explanation need not be short, but the scene does not pause for it, enemies may still act.

When a character near you does something foolish, glare silently at them. Until they acknowledge the glare (in-fiction) or make a successful Charisma check against you to shake it off, they add 1 Bane die to any check this scene.

You are immune to mechanical penalties from fear, intimidation, startle, surprise, spectacle, or any source that would add Trial or Crisis dice to your pool based on emotional reaction. You still feel these things; you just never visibly show them.

When the GM rolls or declares that an anvil, piano, safe, or similarly heavy object falls in your scene, it aims for you by default, regardless of who provoked it. You take the full damage (usually 4–6 Elasticity), but the Wiped Out condition does not trigger from falling-object damage. If the damage would reduce you to 0 Elasticity, you remain at 1 Elasticity instead. After impact, recover 1 Gag Token.

When a scene-wide catastrophic event occurs, explosion, flood, collapse, ship sinking, acme-brand tornado, declare you are unaffected. The disaster passes through you or around you without cost. Everyone else is on their own.

At any point in a scene, ask the GM to recap what just happened. The recap reveals one plot detail you would not have known otherwise, as if you had been paying attention the whole time. The GM chooses which detail.

Fall asleep on the spot. You cannot be moved easily, injured by most means, or directly targeted by effects that require your participation while napping. You wake when the scene ends, when directly slapsticked (the classic bucket of water), or when another PC spends a maneuver to shake you awake.

When being pursued by a larger opponent, stop, taunt, wiggle, and resume running before they reach you. Your pursuer’s next check to catch you has one Trial die upgraded to Crisis .

Deliver a rapid-fire, circular, comically confusing monologue at a target. Make an Average Charisma check; on success, the target is Staggered for one round and loses their next action untangling what you said.

Construct a booby trap on the spot from whatever is in the scene, string, a bucket, a loose plank, a banana peel. No equipment required. The trap triggers when a named target next moves; on activation, they suffer an appropriate slapstick consequence and upgrade their next check’s Trial die to Crisis .

Any opponent physically larger than you, at least one full Scale size larger, adds 1 Bane die to social and combat checks against you while you are openly defiant. The audience loves an underdog, and loves a visibly frustrated big toon even more.

Deliver a formal declaration of your professional credentials. Gain +2 Successes on a skill check related to your profession, and one NPC in the scene treats you as the authority on the topic for the rest of the scene (they defer to your conclusions in-fiction, subject to the GM’s judgment on plausibility).

You arrive in every scene in full, context-appropriate professional attire, no matter how implausible. Deep-sea diving gear in a library; full judge’s robes at a circus; surgical scrubs on a battlefield. When your outfit is contextually absurd, you gain +1 Boon die on any check that depends on others taking you seriously.

When you face a named professional rival, exchange formal greetings (bow, handshake, tip of the hat). Both of you recover 2 Strain. Neither of you may attack the other for one round. Civility resumes in the second round, at which point the pants-kicking may commence.

Deliver an uninterrupted speech on your craft. You gain Breakthrough on a single check this scene, even if no Mastery die is in the pool. Other PCs may each spend 1 Gag Token after your monologue ends to gain +1 Boon die on any one check made later in the scene.

Burst into song. All other characters in the scene must spend a full round listening unless they succeed at a Hard Readiness check to ignore you. At the end of the number, you gain +1 Gag Token and +1 Boon die on your next check. If the song is genuinely enjoyed by the table, the GM may grant a second Gag Token.

When another character’s check would produce a Breakthrough, upstage them: the Breakthrough credit transfers to you. Their check still resolves mechanically as if they had produced it, but the audience and the in-fiction onlookers credit the moment to you.

Take a moment to mug for the audience, a pose, a wink, a twirl. Gain +1 Boon die on your next check this scene. The GM gains +1 Chaos Point.

Address the audience directly for one sentence or gesture. This is a full Fourth-Wall interaction (see Chapter Eight). You become Fourth-Wall Aware for the rest of the scene. On a successful Easy Fourth-Wall check, the next check made in your favor by any PC gains +1 Boon die .

You are permanently Fourth-Wall Aware (Chapter Eight). You can see the audience at all times, whether your character is in a performance scene or not. Once per scene, your first Bit or talent that is a Fourth-Wall action does not count against that Bit or talent’s own listed limit. This does not bypass the Fourth Wall subsystem’s global limits: only one Addressing may be done per scene, and Walking Through remains once per session unless another rule specifically increases it.

Produce a stick of dynamite (or a grenade, or a rocket-propelled anvil, or a tiny red bomb with a lit fuse) from the air and throw it. Roll a ranged combat check; on any success, the target’s location explodes for standard ranged-weapon damage. The GM then rolls 1 Bane die , every symbol result on that die is an unintended secondary effect (knocked scenery, property destruction, attracted attention).

Arrive mid-scene through a wall, a window, a ceiling, or the floor, regardless of how you got there or whether the scene had been sealed. The scene pauses for your entrance. Gain +1 Boon die on your first check this scene. The wall, window, ceiling, or floor is now damaged.

When you make any Might or Agility check involving forward movement, you never stop short. You always overshoot, burst through, or blow past the intended stopping point. This lets you break through barriers no other character could, thin walls, locked doors, chain-link fences, security cordons, as a side effect of simply moving. GMs should adjudicate collateral damage generously in your favor.

When one of your actions results in significant property damage, take a moment to admire the wreckage. You gain +1 Boon die on your next check. The ENDS Prop Department adds the cost to your tab (see Chapter Six).

Ask one sincere, earnest question of an NPC. The NPC must answer truthfully, even if it compromises their goals. The GM may refuse only if the NPC is a professional deceiver (active spy, career politician, a lawyer in session); the default answer is yes.

When you fail a check at Hard or higher difficulty, declare yourself the Lovable Dope. The check succeeds at minimum margin, the wrong thing you were doing turns out to have been the right thing. The table should describe, in one sentence, how the misunderstanding happened to work.

Attempt to hug another character. If they accept (voluntarily), or if they fail a Readiness check to resist, both of you recover 3 Strain and your Bond with each other shifts +1 (to a maximum of +3; see Chapter Eight). Hostile characters may resist the hug, but the offer itself may shift Bonds.

Once per session, when you fail a check, you may declare the failure actually worked, provided the table can collectively describe how the wrong answer turned out to be correct. The GM is the final arbiter of “describes a wrong thing that actually worked.” When accepted, the check succeeds at the same margin it failed by.