Level 1 · Actions, REP, Turns, Zones, Duels and Enigmas
Basics
“Everyone arrives with the same hundred deeds to their name. Few leave with them.”
Goal You can play your first day. Read it before your first day.
Actions and REP
Every player has a Reputation, or REP. The ranking of everyone's REP decides who stays in the game and who falls.
You start with 100 Actions. Actions are your own wealth: you win them in Challenges and lose them in defeats. Without a Contract, your REP equals your Actions.
Start: 100 Actions, 100 REP. No Contract means REP = Actions.
Turns and Zones
A game lasts 4 Turns, and each Turn lasts 7 real days. The ranking (the Ladder) is published twice per Turn at a set evening time: Zones only on day 4, and Zones with exact positions at the end of the Turn. Nothing is published in between.
At the end of each Turn the ranking is split into three Zones:
| Zone | Who | What happens |
|---|---|---|
| Green | Top 20% (at least 2) | Plays the High Grounds Battle. Survivors are Protected next Turn. |
| Grey | Everyone else | Moves on to the next Turn. |
| Red | Bottom 20% (at least 1) | Eliminated. |
Shares are rounded down. Players tied on a boundary stay together in the same Zone.
Minimum zones: whenever 3 or more players are ranked, the Red Zone has at least 1 player and the Green Zone at least 2. With exactly 2 ranked players, both are Green and nobody is Red; a single ranked player is Green.
Tip Turn 1 is gentle: nobody in the Red Zone is eliminated, there is no High Grounds Battle, and every Green player is Protected for Turn 2. Use it to find allies.
Bankrupt
A living player with 0 Actions is Bankrupt, whatever their REP. You stop being Bankrupt as soon as you have at least 1 Action again.
At the final Ladder of each Turn, Bankrupt players are always placed in the Red Zone. At the mid-week Ladder they are ranked normally, so you have the rest of the Turn to recover.
Bankrupt players fill the Red Zone first. If there are more of them than the Red share, the Red Zone is all of them and nobody else.
Careful A Contract can give you plenty of REP with no Actions of your own. It won't save you: only your Actions when the final Ladder is computed count.
Tip A Wisp's Spirit Shield can still save a Bankrupt player from elimination.
Challenges
A Challenge is any game with one winner and one loser. Team games name a representative per side; only the representatives win or lose. A draw is replayed until someone wins.
Duels, Conquests, Captures and High Grounds Battle matches can be played anywhere: in person, or in any other game you agree on. The app records who challenged whom, and the two players report the result (below).
Duels and Enigmas
- Duel: you and another player agree on a stake of Actions. The winner takes it. You can always refuse a Duel.
- Enigma: a puzzle or task set by the organisers. They announce the reward with each Enigma. A team reward is split equally.
Automatic Enigmas: on days 1, 3, 5 and 7 of each Turn, if the organisers set no Enigma that day, the app runs one. It opens at noon (game time), closes 12 hours later, and its results are published at once. Any living player who is not a Zombie can enter, for free: entering and losing cost nothing.
The reward pool is the average Actions of all living non-Zombie players when it opens (rounded down), split equally among the winners (rounded down). With no winner, the pool is not paid.
The format is drawn at random, and no format runs twice in a Turn:
| Format | How it works | Who wins |
|---|---|---|
| Cipher | A riddle or coded message with one exact answer. | The first 3 correct answers. |
| Two-Thirds Moon | Everyone picks a whole number from 0 to 100. | Whoever is closest to two thirds of the average pick. |
| Lone Star | Everyone picks a whole number from 1 to 50. | Whoever picked the lowest number nobody else picked. |
| Crossroads | Everyone picks Left or Right. | Everyone on the smaller side (a tie: nobody). |
| Share or Steal | The app pairs entrants at random (an odd one out wins alone). Each secretly picks Share or Steal. | Both Share: both win. One Steals: only the stealer wins, and counts as two winners in the split. Both Steal: neither wins. |
| Street Quiz | 5 multiple-choice questions about public facts of this game. | The highest score; ties all win. |
Careful Conquests and Captures are Challenges too, but far more dangerous. They are in Level 4.
Settling a Challenge
After the game, both players enter the winner in the app.
- If you both name the same winner, the result is recorded.
- If you disagree, the Challenge is replayed in the app as a minigame, and its result is final.
- If either player doesn't report within 24 hours (game time), the app settles it with a 50/50 coin flip.
- You can also skip the outside game and play a minigame in the app directly.
Careful False claim: if the minigame proves your report wrong, you also lose 10% of your remaining Actions to the System and are publicly marked Liar until the end of the Turn.
With a CPU: a Challenge between two CPUs is settled by a 50/50 coin flip. A human against a CPU always plays a minigame, and the CPU picks its moves at random.
Minigames
Pick your fight: whenever a minigame is played, the app offers 3 minigames drawn at random from the list below, and the challenged player (the target of the Duel, Conquest or Capture) picks one. In a High Grounds Battle match, a coin flip decides who picks. A CPU picks at random.
| Minigame | How it plays | Who wins |
|---|---|---|
| Stone, Paper, Blade | Best of 3. Both pick at the same time: Stone beats Blade, Blade beats Paper, Paper beats Stone. A tie replays the round. | First to 2 rounds. |
| Rooftops | A 7-column, 6-row board. Take turns dropping a tile into a column; it falls to the lowest free space. | First to line up 4 in a row. A full board replays. |
| Street Dots | A 4×4 grid of dots. Take turns drawing one line between two neighbouring dots. Closing a square claims it and gives you another turn. | Most squares when all 9 are claimed. |
| Liar's Lanterns | Each player rolls 3 hidden dice. Take turns raising a bid on how many dice of one face are on the table, or call "liar". | A true bid: the caller loses; a false one: the bidder loses. Best of 3. |
| Night Auction | 5 goods worth 1 to 5 come up one at a time, in random order. Each player has 15 coins for the whole game and bids secretly on each. | Most total value, then most coins left. |
| Word Heist | Both get the same 7 letters and 3 minutes to make one word, using each letter at most once. | Longest valid word; a tie goes to the faster answer. |
| Neon Hex | A diamond board of 7×7 hexagons. Each player owns two opposite sides and places one stone per turn. | First to connect their two sides. No draws. |
| Coin Pits | Mancala: 6 pits each plus a store, 4 coins per pit. Scoop a pit and sow counter-clockwise. | Most coins when one side is empty. |
| Dock Raid | Battleship on a 6×6 grid, with 3 hidden boats (3, 2 and 2 squares long). | First to sink all 3 enemy boats. |
Game clock: a minigame lasts at most 1 hour (game time). Each player has a 30-minute chess clock for all their moves together; it runs only during their turn. Run out and you lose. Word Heist keeps its own 3-minute limit.
Duel record: your sheet keeps your minigame record (wins and losses, per minigame). It is private to you.
Rumors may speak about Duel records, without naming the player (for example: "A Diplomat has never lost at Rooftops").
What you can see
- Public: the mid-week Ladder (Zones only), the final Ladder at the end of each Turn (exact positions), no REP numbers anywhere, and anything a rule says is announced.
- Public conditions: Criminal, Protected, Captured and Liar, since who can be targeted depends on them.
- Also public: Exposed (a Vampire who failed a Bite).
- Also public: Undead (a Zombie).
- Also public: Wanted (a Bounty or the Wanted Board).
- Public: every player's House.
- Your Contract group sees each other's REP: all Peers of a Clique, a Master and their Servants.
- Also in a Contract group: the two Partners of a Couple. A Slayer's group is themselves.
- Also in a Contract group: all Hunters of a Pack, and a Vampire's Parent and own Siblings.
- Only you see your Actions and your Duel record. Contracts and roles stay private to the players involved.
- When a target is off limits for a hidden reason, the app only says they are untargetable.
The game masters can read every secret message, so they can settle disputes. Everything else here is true for players.
Houses
Every player belongs to one of 4 public Houses, one per temperament. Before the game, a short sorting quiz suggests yours; the organisers (or the CPU game master) assign it when the game starts, moving players only to keep the Houses even.
| House | Temperament | Motto |
|---|---|---|
| Analysts | NT | Every lock has a key. |
| Diplomats | NF | No one walks the street alone. |
| Sentinels | SJ | The line holds. |
| Explorers | SP | Tonight, anything. |
Your House never changes, and it is not a Contract: it never changes your REP, your Contracts or how you win.
Trials are House events set by the organisers (or the CPU game master). The announced Actions reward is split equally among the participants from the winning House. Other Houses lose nothing.
How to win
You earn a main win only if all of your win conditions are met. Surviving alone is never a win. The standard win conditions are:
- Survive until the end of the game.
- Win the game: be the champion of the final High Grounds Battle.
Contracts change the second condition. For example, a Peer wins if they or a Peer of their Clique is the champion, but must still be alive at the end.
Players still alive at the end without a main win get a Survivor badge on their profile. It is not a win and carries no prize.
Only a living player can earn a main win. An eliminated player can still earn a Spirit win through their spirit form (Level 4). A Spirit win is listed apart from the main wins, never counts as one, and carries no prize: only a Spirit title and badge.
The one exception is the Horde: if the Zombies win, Soul Street falls, the game ends at once, and every Zombie still in the game gets a main win (Level 4).
Variants
Every game is played in one of three variants, chosen by the organiser before the game starts and shown to every player. The full rules are always the source: a variant only says which parts are switched on. A rule from a switched-off part never applies, and a reference to it is simply ignored.
| Variant | What it switches on |
|---|---|
| Core | The essentials: Actions, REP, the Ladder and Zones, Clique and Court, Duels, Conquests, Captures, Donations, automatic Enigmas and settling Challenges. Only the conditions Criminal, Protected, Captured, Bankrupt and Liar. Every fallen player becomes a Ghost. |
| Classic | Core, plus the Couple, Autocracy (the Slayer), characters with abilities, every condition and all three spirit forms (Ghost, Wisp, Zombie). |
| Full | Everything: Houses and Trials, the elite races (Pack and Family), Relics, City Events, Rumors, Bounties, the Wanted Board and the rest of the streets. |
Tip A first game for new players should be Core. CPU players and the CPU game master can be used in any variant.
CPU players and the CPU game master
A game can include CPU players, be run by a CPU game master, or both. The setup is announced to all players before the game.
- CPU players follow every rule like anyone else. The player list marks them as CPU; their roles stay secret.
- Two CPUs settle a Challenge with a 50/50 coin flip. Against a human, a CPU always plays a minigame and picks its moves at random.
- A CPU can win, but never receives a prize, title or badge. A prize that would go to a CPU is not paid.
- The CPU game master does the organisers' jobs from the rules text only. If the rules don't settle a question, it pauses that action and alerts the project owner. It never invents a rule.
Trial
Answer every question correctly to clear this level.
1. You have no Contract and 140 Actions. What is your REP?
2. At the end of Turn 2 you are in the bottom 20%. What happens?
3. You survive to the end of the game, but someone else is crowned champion. You have no Contract. Did you win?
4. Someone offers you a Duel for 30 Actions. Must you accept?
5. You and your rival each report yourself as the winner of a Duel. What happens?