Cortex:Silver Lining Advancement
Rewards 💰🤝 and Advancement 📈⬆️for Silver Lining Characters
Reward Pool
Represents monetary or material resources and contacts, etc that can help with character advancement. There are two different types of reward pools.
Personal
Used for advancing an individual character. Tracked per character.
Partnership
Used for advancing the ship or other partnership related resources.
PCs may spend one of their dice towards partnership advancement. Any dice spent this way get stepped down before being applied. Example, a personal die becomes a partnership die. Ship stuff just costs more.
PCs may never take from the partnership pool.
Advancement
Advancement can only occur in a Tag Scene (see below).
Attributes
Cannot be advanced. Can only be adjusted from to or back. Once a tag scene. Cost:
Distinctions
Can not be changed without challenging the distinction (this is different than using the Hinder SFX). See p65 - Trait Statement. No Cost otherwise.
SFX
Can only be added to or changed on a Distinction or Signature Asset
New Locked SFX
Cost:
Unlock SFX
Cost:
Alter an existing SFX
If the attached Distinction changes because it has been challenged, and the SFX no longer fits thematically, free.
However, If the change is more than cosmetic (completely changing what the SFX can do as opposed to merely changing the name of it) Cost:
Skills, Relationships, and Signature Assets
A characters can only advance either a Skill, Relationship, or Signature Asset once per Tag Scene. For example, if a character advances a Skill, they cannot advance a Relationship or Signature Asset until the next tag scene.
Additionally, the advancement must be from one die rating to the next - you cannot advance two die ratings in a single tag scene ( to is fine, to is not)
Skills
Cost: New Skill die rating. Skill pyramid (p 59) applies.
Example: Scrapper to Scrapper . Cost:
Note on Cost: Skills, while likely to be used in every single roll, which means they're much more useful (and carry an intrinsically higher value), have their advancement constrained by the skill pyramid. This adds a layer of cost to "build" the base of the pyramid with lower ranked skills, so the building of the pyramid + a multiplication of the die required to advance skills would be onerous.
Relationships
New Relationship die rating times 3.
A new relationship (ie, a new player) rank will be determined at the time of the player entering the game, and will not cost.
NPC relationships do not apply here as they will often be rewards in themselves.
Example: Bob to Bob Costs
Signature Assets
New Signature Asset Die Rating times 4
New Signature assets start at ( doesn't have to be "passed through")
Example: New asset Big Damn Gun Cost:
Example: Existing asset Big Damn Knife to Big Damn Knife Cost:
Partnership Advancement (the Silver Lining)
Attributes cannot be changed
Distinctions cannot be changed (the ship cannot challenge that it's a C-8 "Greyhound" Light Freighter. That is an immutable fact)
Signature Assets
Same as PCs
Rewards
During a Session, usually at the end, the players will be rewarded for things they have done. This reward will be represented as a die rating or one or more cortex dice: . That amount may vary depending upon level of success, cost, collateral damage, contract fulfillment, etc. Each player, even absent ones, will receive the same amount. This die will go into their personal pool. A stepped down die will go into the Partnership pool. This reduction represents the cost of maintaining the ship (lunch, gas, tolls). (In reality, the "ship" gets a much larger share, but maintenance is a bear. The amount that goes into the Partnership pool more-or-less represents "profit"). This means that if the PCs get a , the Partnership could get nothing.
Combining and getting "Change"
A die can be "combined" into a higher rated die to boost that die to the next rating. Ex: Bob wants to advance his Big Damn Gun to Big Damn Gun , which will Cost .
- Bob has in his pool.
- Bob may take + to create a
- This puts in Bob's pool. Still not enough.
- Bob may then take + to create a
- This puts in Bob's pool. Still not enough.
- Bob may then take + to create a
- This puts in Bob's pool. Helllooooooo Big Damn Gun
- Bob now has in his advancement pool.
In the above example, Bob could have combined
+
to create a
, but this would have been wasteful since a
is enough to step the die up. Over spending on a boost doesn't result in getting "Change" from the transaction, though we can discuss making exceptions in the cases of a large over-spend.
Tag Scene
See p89 - Tag Scenes. With the exception that they will usually occur at the end of an Episode, not a session.