Terminology

Adjective: An adjective is a describing word. In Neverwhere adjectives are used to describe your character and these are then used to determine how good you are at doing things. Your character might be ‘strong’ or ‘tough’ for example, or something more esoteric like ‘sparkly’. For the purposes of the game other descriptions are considered adjectives like, for example, the phrase ‘good with children’.

Adverb: An adverb modifies an adjective, so that rather than just being ‘strong’ you might be ‘extremely strong’, instead of ‘tough’ you might be ‘unfeasibly tough’. Adverbs are used to describe multiple traits, if you have an adverb in front of an adjective then that adjective counts three(+3) times for bidding. The exception is the adverb ‘very’ which is used to indicate an adjective that counts double(+2).

Bid: A bid is the number total you have before you roll. It’s the total of your adjectives and your profession bonus, the higher the better. For example, trying to squeeze down a pipe Sligo bids very lithe, flexible, squirmy, slippery (from some oil he stole) and novice contortionist for a total bid of six(+6).

Conductor: This is the person nominally ‘in charge’ of the game. They make the rules calls and determine the story of the game as you progress through it.

Description: A description is the information used for anything in Neverwhere from a person to a weapon to a difficult situation. The description contains the information needed to form – or modify – bids.

Down: A ‘down’ is an adjective in your description that’s normally a bad thing that counts against you. If a Down applies then you take one(-1) away from your bid where you would normally add one(+1). Downs can, rarely, count as a positive. A character who is very depressed for example might count that as a positive bid against a magic spell designed to make people happy, for example.

Explode: When you roll a six(⚅) on the dice, that six(⚅) ‘explodes’. This isn’t anything bad, in fact, this is something really good. You add the six(+6) as normal to your bid and roll again, if you get another six(⚅) you add one(+1) to your bid and keep rolling until you stop getting sixes(⚅), adding one(+1) each time that you do.

Implode: When you roll a one(⚀) you take one(-1) away from your bid and the dice ‘implodes’. This is bad. You take away the one(-1) and roll again, if you get another one(⚀) you take one(-1) away from your bid and keep rolling until you stop getting ones(⚀), taking one(-1) away each time you do roll a one(⚀).

Legendary: Occupation are described as being Novice, Professional, Master and Legendary, rather than being described in the same way as adjectives. A legendary Profession counts as six(+6) traits towards a bid.

Loaning: If you help someone else out with something they’re doing you can loan them an appropriate trait, adding to their bid total. For example, if two people are trying to move a piano up some stairs then the one with the highest bid total makes the roll, but he could be loaned powerful by the other fellow, increasing his bid by one(+1).

Master: Master describes a level of an occupation, the highest someone can normally aspire to. A Master profession counts as five(+5) traits towards a bid.

Non-Player-Character: A non-player-character or NPC is someone played by the Conductor, a person in the background, an enemy or anyone else your characters run into.

Novice: A Novice is just starting out in their occupation and having the Novice level counts as a single(+1) trait towards a bid related to that occupation.

Occupation: Occupations are the sorts of things you might describe yourself as and depending on the level they’re at (Novice, Professional, Master, Legendary) they add between one(+1) and six(+6) traits to your bid. A character can have multiple occupations, there’s usually more than one string to someone’s bow.

Player Character: A player character or PC is one of the characters played by the players of the game, the main protagonists of the story.

Professional: A professional does their occupation as well as someone who does it for their living; being a professional in an occupation counts as three(+3) traits towards a bid.

Prose: Prose is the sort of written description you will be giving your character. Rather than numerical statistics, characters in Neverwhere are described by adjectives and other words.

Roll: When you make a roll you roll a six-sided dice(⚅) and add the result to your bid to give you a final total. That final total determines whether you succeed or fail at what you were trying to do. This gets complicated by the exploding and imploding dice rules, but not by too much.

Traits: Traits is the catch-all term for all the words that describe your character, the adjectives, the occupations and everything else that helps you do things in the game.

Up: Normal adjectives and professions count as ‘up’ traits. Things that – if they apply – add to your bid total. Rarely some ‘up’ traits can become ‘down’, or negative, traits, just as ‘down’ traits can become positive ones sometimes.

Very: ‘Very’ is a special adverb that, when used, makes an adjective in your character description count double(+2). Someone who is very fast and gets to include that in a bid gets two(+2) points for the bid, rather than one(+1).

Wobbly: A wobbly trait is one that can be taken as either an up or a down trait with about equal chance. A character whose description included the adjective bland looking, for example, wouldn’t normally have that trait apply in most bids and it could just as easily be a negative as a positive. That’s a ‘wobbly’ trait.