The Reagent Ledger

You hold a licence from the Assay Office of Marrowgate, a city of viaducts, gas lamps and dye-works, and you have one year to make a name in it. Each month you draw three playing cards as Reagents, pose one of four Questions (Assay, Refinement, Transmutation, or the Open Question nobody funds), and roll 2d6 against its Risk. Cards of the right suit help. A success has a Weight, and you pay it: in Funding, or as a line in the Exchange Ledger saying what you took on credit and who you promised. At the end of each quarter, debts can be called in. Your Patron pays the grant four times a year. Your Rival publishes on a 5 or 6. If you chase the Open Question, six truths about what alchemy is actually for come out one at a time. In December the Symposium weighs your Reputation, less what you still owe, against the Rival's. What's in the book (33 pages) Four pages of rules and a worked month Setup tables for your licence, laboratory, Patron and Rival An alchemist's card, a reagent shelf for all sixteen card types, two Ledger pages Twelve month pages with space to write d6 tables for research questions, mishaps, debts and Rival papers The Mystery, the Symposium worksheet, three endings and a quick reference You need a deck of cards (jokers out), two d6 and a pen. A month takes about twenty minutes. The balance was checked over 5,000 simulated years: a careful alchemist wins the Symposium a little over half the time, and about one year in seven the laboratory closes.