Keeping Your Job

Reducing Spirit, Avoiding Risk

The holiday spirit runs rampant in Claus Manor. But the staff have found ways to keep their worlds from turning into yum-nummy-num marshmallows.

Characters with peaking Holiday Spirit can reduce it directly by revealing embarrassing secrets – their Advent Masks.

The Wassailing of Claus Manor also uses a currency system of Ducks to push risky tasks onto other characters.

If you're running the game, be sure to remind players of these as they get into situations where they'd be useful. And if you're playing, feel free to ask to use them!

Screen-Shot-2022-12-14-at-10.29.56-PM

Advent Masks

You’ve constructed masks to hide things about yourself – and often from yourself. Facing these things would surely dampen your seasonal fervor. And that might prove beneficial at times …

When your Holiday Spirit reaches 5, you may reduce it 1 by removing any of these masks:

  • White Wordmas – What skill tied to your Servant Role did you lie about on your application? How have you maintained the fiction?
  • Chestnuts Roasting – What story do you tell about your background that (you have a distant sense that) everyone’s tired of?
  • Sugar Rum Cherry – What’s a humiliating nickname the family’s given you? How did you get it?
  • FIVE GOLDEN RINGS - A Christmas carol seems to play at you through the manor’s tears in time and space. What line seems most targeted to you? Why?
  • Back Door Santa – You once secretly undermined one of the Claus family – perhaps before your employ. Who was it? What did you do?

Ducks

Over time, staff accumulate authority and favors that allow them to delegate to others – the ability to duck responsibility.

Ducks can be designated by tokens or marks on character sheets. They will often be exchanged between players.

When you use a Duck, these things should happen:

  • Narrate what your character does or says to push the situation onto another character. 
  • The receiving player takes action. They receive the Duck and may use it in a future situation.
  • Draw another family member and increase the tier of their Trouble.

Cook a Goose

Spend a Duck to suggest to another staff member that their goose is cooked. 

If they lean into the risky action you insist on, the entire staff will reduce its Holiday Spirit by 1, including the goosed character. 

Insist they take a risky action directly related to:

  • A servant-role skill they lied about. They may not add a light die for the skill on this roll.
  • A background skill they talk incessantly about. They may not add a light die for the skill on this roll.
  • Anything pertinent. Call them by their nickname. It acts as their only skill.
  • Anything pertinent. Sing the lyric that haunts them. It acts as their only skill.
  • The family member they once undermined. Twists must involve the family member.

Each character can be goosed once per session. They may choose to ignore the goose.

When Ducks are used in this way, they are removed from play.