# Spectres of Brocken *Created:* 2024-07-31, *Modified:* 2026-11-10 ![[Spectres of Brocken (cover).jpg]] ![[Spectres of Brocken - Full Spectrum (cover).jpg]] *Left: the core game. Right: **Full Spectrum**, the World Tendency supplement.* **Spectres of Brocken** begins as a school story and ends with the same people trying to kill each other from inside giant robots. Aaron Lim's game takes two to four players through an academy for mech pilots, where the characters are young, unfinished and mostly guessing at who they are, then skips the years and puts them in custom machines on opposite sides of a war neither of them started. Nobody is refereeing, and there is no guarantee that the person in the other mech is still your friend. ## Setting The book ships three World Tendencies: templates for a setting, not a canon. **Orbital Century** is grounded science fiction, with colony mechs built for construction and maintenance before the Earth Sphere and the outer colonies began refitting them for "peacekeeping". **Jet Fang Rumble** is the gonzo one, where biomechanical machines built from monster carcasses have been turned into a televised sports league now that the monsters are gone. **The Fire Quartz Crown** is courtly fantasy, with an empire, three Great Houses, royal hostages trained at an academy, and titan constructs powered by fire quartz. Whichever you pick, the academy is the point. It is a place where the pilots discover their own personalities and ambitions, and also an institution that exists to sort them into useful instruments for factions that have already decided what the next war needs. The book names the themes plainly: state power exercised through education, indoctrination, othering and the monopoly of violence. The Academy Phase is where the players feel that machinery closing around characters who are still working out what they want. The player characters are trainees in the Academy Phase and ace pilots in the Conflict Phase, and the two halves ask different questions. The first is about identity, connection and wanting: who are you, who are these people to you, and what do you want from them that they cannot or will not give? The second is about change, opposition and tragedy: what did the intervening years make of you, what will you do to win, and what does it cost? The touchstones are **Gundam**, especially **AGE** and **The Witch From Mercury**, along with **Break Blade**, **Fire Emblem: Three Houses**, **Naruto**, **Spider-Man 2** and Friends at the Table's **COUNTER/Weight**. The stated interest is in how mechs anonymise combatants while becoming a vector for characterisation, which is a polite way of saying you may not recognise the person you are shooting at until it is much too late. ### The World Tendencies - **Orbital Century** — the Earth Sphere Administrative Alliance, Irvine Industrial and the EZ8 Autonomous Area, with the Artesia School of Technology on Colony 7 as the academy. The factions want control, autonomy and profit, and the inciting incidents turn on a stardrive incursion, an infiltration, and a fight over an arkship. - **Jet Fang Rumble** — the Titan League, the AEGIS Rangers, Zandhaas, East Infinite and Silent Roar. Pilots are celebrities in a biomecha sports league, teams are owned by manufacturers, and the monsters everyone defeated may have been fleeing something worse. - **The Fire Quartz Crown** — the Royal Academy of Sephira and the Great Houses Ashka, Bresh and Esthani, plus the shadow network of Dhrystan's Legacy, all jockeying for a weak emperor's throne with prophecy, assassins, and titans that carry the souls of their makers. Each tendency also supplies suggested Words, pilot and mech names, Anchors, Mech Features and a set of Inciting Incidents for starting the war. The book is explicit that these are tendencies to play with rather than worlds to play in: change the names, the technologies, the mech aesthetics and the factions as needed. ## Mechanics ### Character Creation Each player makes a Pilot by filling in exactly one of the four Pilot Traits: a Conviction (something the pilot believes), an Impulse (how they react under pressure), a Pride (a talent or advantage they trust), or a Flaw (the thing they are struggling with). The other three stay blank on purpose. They are filled in during play, as the character discovers or admits them. Then each player creates an Anchor — a person, place, institution or event that shaped them — and one Bond with another pilot, written as a desire rather than a fact: friendship, recognition, trust, revenge, forgiveness, protection. Anchors cover non-pilots and places; Bonds cover pilots; the book asks you not to mix the two. Pilots also get a name, pronouns and a look, and optionally a theme song. Mech details wait for the Conflict Phase. ### Words, Not Dice **Spectres of Brocken** is diceless. Its engine is the Word Bank, a shared pool of words that works as currency and as a mood board. You seed it with **Identity**, **Connection** and **Wanting** in the Academy Phase, then each player adds one word of their own; the Conflict Phase adds **Change**, **Opposition** and **Tragedy**. Words move between the bank and the Pilot Sheet. When a Move tells you to gain a Word, you strike it from the bank and write it on your sheet; when you spend one, you strike it from your sheet and put it back in the bank, where it can be gained again. That circulation is the whole economy. Nothing is drawn at random, and a word you spend can come back to haunt you. The book asks for nouns and verbs over adjectives, so the Words do not collapse into Traits and Bonds. The lineage is No Dice, No Masters — **Dream Askew** and **Dream Apart** are the ancestors — but where those games pass tokens, this one passes language. ### Scenes and Moves A Scene begins with a lead player framing it. In the Academy Phase they pick two Situations and combine them — a lively meal, a test of wits, a team competition, a formal event or dance, sneaking about, a private duel — then choose a Scene Question such as "Who causes a major rift between two or more Pilots?" or "Who brings two or more Pilots closer together?" Each Situation supplies Reveals and Pivots, suggestions for the kinds of action that expose character or escalate the scene. Play is then mostly conversation. Moves mark the moments worth stopping for, and each player will activate one or two per scene: - **Raise Your Flag** — when another player's action excites you about where it could go, add a Word to the bank. - **Show My Face** — when you open up to another pilot, gain a Word. - **Stack the Deck** — when you introduce a complication or action that highlights a Word already in the bank, gain that Word. - **I've Got This** — spend a Word for a pivotal impact that highlights a Trait or Bond, and define the Trait if it was still blank. - **See Through The Mask** — spend a Word to tell another pilot who you think they are, offering them a new Trait or Bond, then ask whether you have hit on something true. A yes earns them a Word and a change to the sheet; a no lets both players adjust their Bonds around the awkwardness. - **Find The Answer** — when the Scene Question is answered, end the scene; everyone named in the answer gains the same Word. There is no randomiser in any of that. The uncertainty comes from what the players choose to reveal, and the book is candid that the moves are prompts and mini-goals rather than a resolution engine. It even suggests pausing or rewinding a scene if you realise a Move should have fired. ### Blood The Conflict Phase adds **Blood**, a pool of tokens that measures violence and paces the scene. You start with one Blood plus one per pilot in the scene; two pilots means three Blood, three pilots means four. Every token is a step towards the end of the scene and a marker of what the war is costing. The Conflict Moves are built around it: - **Make It Personal** — take foolhardy action for your own desires, say how it risks you or an Anchor, then gain a Word and risk Blood. - **War's Toll** — when you gain Blood, answer whether it would devastate you more to lose yourself or to lose your connections. Lose yourself: put the Blood on your sheet and erase a Trait or Bond, along with its linked Mech Feature. Lose your connections: hold the Blood and say which Anchor is now lost or destroyed. - **Echo the Past** — when you remind another pilot of the academy, or invoke a Situation or Complication's Echo, both pilots gain the same Word. - **Levy the Cost** — when another pilot takes a dangerous action in a mech or risks Blood, ask whether they are ready to pay the cost. Yes means they gain a Blood from the pool; no means nothing happens, but they will have to pay eventually. - **Finish the Fight** — when the Question is answered or the pool is empty, end the scene; each pilot named in the answer chooses a Faction Want that was fulfilled or a Key Asset lost or forever changed, then holds one Blood. Holding Blood does not trigger **War's Toll**. Only gaining it does. Pilots do not die by default when they take Blood — the loss is a Trait, a Bond, an Anchor, a Mech Feature, or a piece of themselves — though the book offers optional rules for a pilot who chooses to die or sacrifice themselves in battle. ### Mech Features A Mech Feature is the machine expressing a Trait: transformable body, remote drones, incredible speed, overcharge protocols, a hidden beam scatter cannon. Features are defined during play rather than at the start, ideally at the moment a pilot needs one, and they are tied to a Trait. When that Trait is erased by **War's Toll**, its Feature goes with it. ### Ending the Game Two to four sessions of two to four hours is the expected shape, though the book suggests splitting each phase across sessions if you have shorter evenings. The Academy Phase runs two or three scenes, until each player has had a chance to fill in at least one Trait or Bond; the Conflict Phase runs two or three more, until each player has had a chance to gain some Blood. The Epilogue is played in order of who has the most Blood on their hands. Each player answers a question — whose death impacted you, what place can you never return to, what relationship changed forever, how does your mech become an icon of the war — and sets a Blood token down as a memorial or monument. The book asks you to stop before you spend all the Blood, leaving some questions unanswered and some scars unexamined. ## Editions - **Spectres of Brocken** (2023) — the core game, Kickstarted in October 2022 and released in November 2023, with a V1.1 update in December 2023 for grammar and spelling fixes. *In the library.* ## Supplements - **Spectres of Brocken: Full Spectrum** (2024) — seven new World Tendencies by seven guest writers, each a double-sided one-page playset. *In the library.* - **Mercury Frame Lullaby** by Mike Balles — technomantic Century Children fight for humanity's future in sentient variable fighter mechs. - **Higher Than the Sun** by Austin Taylor — solarpunk SkySails and the struggles for freedom and purpose beneath a post-war utopia. - **Infinite Inkwell** by Fin Coe — mystery, crime and conspiracy in a corrupt City of mechanised Jackets and masked instructors. - **Reaping Season** by Ethan Yen — hardworking souls rejuvenating a blighted Earth after an apocalyptic insectoid invasion. - **Iron-Blooded Chefs** by Juliet L'mous — pilot-chefs in titanic Stations fighting cuisine battles to please the dragon lords. - **Mortal Waves, Deathless Sea** by Arisia Santiago — necromancer-warriors commanding reanimated amalgams of ancient beasts through turbulent politics. - **Cities Dreaming, Cities Waking** by Valis Teoh — civic summoners invoking the spirits of their cities, pitting cultures and ideals against one another. ## References - [Spectres of Brocken - ehronlime on itch.io](https://ehronlime.itch.io/spectres-of-brocken) - [Spectres of Brocken: Full Spectrum - ehronlime on itch.io](https://ehronlime.itch.io/spectres-of-brocken-full-spectrum) - [Spectres of Brocken - Kickstarter campaign](https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/ehronlime/spectres-of-brocken) - [Indie RPG Newsletter #110: Spectres of Brocken - Thomas Manuel](https://ttrpg.substack.com/p/110-spectres-of-brocken) - [Review: Spectres of Brocken - Gurll Talk](https://blog.magicalgurll.com/2022/12/review-spectres-of-brocken/) - [Monthly Mecha: Aaron Lim of Spectres of Brocken - Backwards Tabletop](https://www.backwardstabletop.com/june-2025) - [Aaron Lim is on a Journey Home - Heart of the Deernicorn](https://heartofthedeernicorn.com/blog/aaron-lim-is-on-a-journey-home) - [Intro to Spectres of Brocken, Toxic Mech Yaoi Generator - 11dragonkid](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EgOaAaYEhIM)  - [High School Never Ends - A.A. Voigt review](https://youtu.be/ZW3HYxkOMjM)