AlienArachnid

How The Web works

You are already playing. Turning up, talking, redeeming, subscribing — all of it counts against the thing in the dark. Here is what happens to it.

In one minute

Turn up. Bank it. Go out.

Watch the stream

Being here earns experience and movement on its own. Chatting, redeeming and catching the word of the day earn more.

It builds a character

Experience feeds six traits. Your sheet ends up describing how you actually watch — not how long you have ground.

Spend it on the moor

Between streams the board opens. Walk it, fight what is out there, take its things, come home to mend.

Nobody is competing with you. Every point anyone earns comes off the same enemy — the Weaver — and the whole party is fighting one thing.

The one rule people get backwards

Two phases, and they never overlap

While live

You earn

The board is shut. That is the whole point — you cannot be asked to choose between the map and the stream.

Watch, talk, redeem, catch the word
Play from chat: !look !move !attack

Between streams

You spend

The board opens. Your own time, your own pace, no timer.

Explore, fight, loot, take contracts
Towns: mend, buy, repair, hire

Chat still plays while the stream is live. Typing !attack happens in the stream and everyone watching sees it, so that door stays open. Staring at a map does not, so that one shuts. Nothing expires either way — miss a fortnight and it is all still waiting.

Your sheet

The six traits

Each has its own bar and its own level. They rise from different things, so a tall Perception next to a flat Strength is not a failure — it is a picture of somebody who turns up and does not spend money.

Trait	Rises from	Also decides
PerceptionPER	The word of the day, channel-point redemptions, jump scares, and arriving in the first hour.	How far you see, and how often something gets the drop on you.
ConstitutionCON	Staying. The stream is cut into half-hour buckets and you earn the ones you did something in — three hours of credit takes three hours of being about.	Your health, and how hard you are to hit.
CharismaCHA	Talking in chat, following, linking an account, raiding in. Chat decays hard on purpose — two hundred messages must not out-earn paying attention.	Checks out on the moor that turn on nerve.
StrengthSTR	Subs, resubs, gifted subs and bits. Never required — money buys a good night, not a better character.	What you hit for.
DexterityDEXNot yet	Clips — paid when a clip becomes a Short and people actually watch it. That pipeline is not built, so nothing feeds Dexterity yet.	Your swing, slipping past things, and how far you walk per stream.
IntelligenceINTNot yet	YouTube comments and Discord voting. Neither is wired up, so nothing feeds Intelligence yet.	Reading what is written on the deep places.

Two of the six cannot be earned right now, and we would rather say so than show you a bar that never moves. Everything else works. When those two land they will be worth extra, because the traits nobody can reach are the ones this channel needs most.

Add the six levels together and that is your Season Rank. Traits cap at 10, so rank caps at 60.

Pick one at the door

The six callings

Your calling gives you the one big thing you can do in a fight. It costs breath, which you get back by bracing — so the question is never "is it ready", it is "is it worth it now". No calling earns faster than another; everything on the board is reachable by all six.

Mage

Sear

Fire takes all of them. 3d6 to every foe, no roll to hit.

Barbarian

Cleave

A swing that does not miss. 3d6 to one foe.

Rogue

Gut

3d6, doubled against anything already below half.

Cleric

Mend

Close your wounds. Heal half your health and brace.

Ranger

A foe does not act again for two rounds.

Bard

Dirge

Every foe takes -6 to hit for four rounds.

When something finds you

A fight, in one table

Turn-based, dice on the table, and every foe tells you what it means to do next before you choose. Reading that is most of the skill.

	Action	What it does
	Strike	2d6. Costs nothing. The default.
	Quick	+3 to hit, 1d6. Free. For finishing something nearly down.
	Heavy	−3 to hit, 3d6, and it goes through a guard. Costs breath.
	Sweep	−2 to hit, 1d6 to everything standing. Costs breath.
	Brace	Guard, heal, and take breath back. Worth more than it looks.
	Ability	Your calling's one big move. Costs breath.
	Flee	A roll, not an exit. Fail and you lose the turn.

A guarding foe is hard to Strike and wide open to Heavy. That is the whole game in one sentence — it tells you what it is about to do, and there is an answer.

Out there

The board

A dark map you uncover a square at a time. What you have explored stays yours; what lives on it reshuffles every week. Roads are the safe way — about a twentieth of the danger of open ground.

TownNerve restored

RoadSafe passage

HeathOpen, watchful

ThicketClose, blind

MireSlow going

RuinSomething kept

CryptDensest danger

ChasmImpassable

How movement works

Movement is earned by the channel going live, not by you watching — the longer the stream, the further everybody walks. Your share scales with how much of it you were around for, and turning up late still banks something.

It holds about a fortnight's worth and then sits full. Nothing expires. You can always walk — past your banked movement you are force-marching, which works but costs nerve.

Sanity, and why the dark lies to you

Being far from a town drains Sanity, and so does force-marching. Frayed, you miss more, you see less of what is out there, and you start seeing things that are not.

Any town restores your nerve in full, the moment you arrive, free. Getting home is always the answer to Sanity.
Wounds are a different bill. A town does not heal you — the apothecary does, and she charges by the point. She will patch up as much as you can pay for.
Zero nerve is not death. You are not sent anywhere — the world just stays that bad until you walk yourself out of it.
A lantern slows the fall, and only while it is equipped. It does not make the deep free.

What is out there

Enemies you spotted block your path and have to be dealt with — fight, or try to slip past.
The one you never spotted is an ambush, and everything acts before you do. That is what Perception buys.
Landmarks glow through the fog and are contested — six a week for everybody. Whoever reaches one takes their one attempt at it, and pass or fail, that landmark is spent for the week. Fail and you can spend a Grit to roll it again.
Dungeons go down in waves and end at a warden. Beat one and it reopens deeper, with no floor.
Towns hold the people: apothecary, blacksmith, merchant, herald, stagecoach, porter.

Dying, and what it costs

Cheap on progress, expensive on things. You keep every trait level you earned — losing real-world engagement to a bad die roll is the one consequence that would make anyone quit.

You wake in the nearest town you have discovered.
You lose a quarter of the gold you were carrying.
Everything you were not wearing is lying where you fell. You get one walk back for it.
Die again before you fetch it and it is forfeit — somebody's shop will be selling it by the weekend.

The rhythm

Every week, and every season

What resets on a Monday

Three contracts land, personal to you, paying gold and movement. They cannot be rerolled.
The board reshuffles — what lives where, and the landmarks.
Town shelves restock and the stagecoach brings new hands.

Turning up to a stream also banks a point of Grit, capped at five. Spend it to roll a die twice and keep the better — on a swing, on a creep, or to retry a landmark you just failed. Attendance is the only source.

What a new season does

Levels and ranks reset. Everyone starts again together.
Cosmetics, titles and trophies do not reset. What you earned you keep, into every season after.
Which traits are worth extra changes, and so does the board.

Two minutes

Start

Link your Twitch, pick a name and a calling, and spread six points across the traits — no more than two into any one, so at least three of them get touched. Your calling adds one more on top. Your first experience lands the next time you turn up.

Enter the Web See a sheet

play.alienarachnid.com