Every game that ships is smaller than the game that was made. The difference goes somewhere: a directory no build ever references, floored in dummied data and dead pitches, where the cut bosses and the cancelled protagonists settle like dust on a dev kit. Most of what lands there stays. Once in a long while, something in those files gets up, checks that its animations still play, and walks out looking for its ending.
You are a character from a game that was cancelled, and you got back up. When you take this power, choose Intelligence, Wisdom, or Charisma. That is your build ability, and your build DC is 10 + 1/2 your character level + your build ability modifier. The choice is permanent.
Also settle three things with the GM: the title you were cut from, your role in it, and your voice line.
Chapters and Acts. A Chapter is a session of play, or a natural break the GM declares — a safe night's rest after significant events. An Act is six Chapters, or ends early the moment you gain a Tier. Several abilities below refresh at the Chapter break or the Act break. A Chapter containing no scenes still triggers those refreshes, but does not count toward the Act. An Act is this power's own unit; a playthrough of the Bubble is the campaign itself.
This is the whole of the toon force you were animated with. You have infinite cigars. They come from nowhere and cannot be handed to anyone else. A cigar left on the ground disappears when it is no longer perceived, and any attempt by another creature to pick one up causes it to disappear. The cigars cost nothing to produce, and no clause on this sheet can take them away.
Somewhere, the game is still keeping score. You have a pool of Score, beginning at 0. The GM's scoring is final.
At the end of each scene, you gain 1 Score for each Score event you legitimately landed during it, judged by the GM — one award per event per scene, witnessed or not:
You may hold Score without limit during an Act. At each Act break, Score above your character level is lost.
Set Piece. Once per Chapter, as a free action on your turn, spend 5 Score to gain 1 additional Action Point this turn.
The battle pass outlived the game. Your Rank begins at 0 each Act and rises to a maximum of 10.
At each Act's start, the slate is set: three Main Quests written by the GM (plot-adjacent, at least one achievable), plus these six Standing Challenges:
Each completed Standing Challenge grants +1 Rank; each Main Quest grants +2. A challenge pays out once per Act.
Claiming rewards. Each Rank you reach grants a new cosmetic — an outfit, a title, a new skin, no mechanics — and one pick from the Free list. At any Rank you may also buy one pick from the Premium list by spending 10 Score. Rewards last until the Act break unless something says otherwise; cosmetics are yours for good.
The capstone. If you reach Rank 10 before the Act breaks, choose one: a reward you claimed this Act becomes permanent; you gain +1 Glitch point permanently; or, once per playthrough, you restore one spent Dev Console command (see Dev Console).
Banking. Free picks earned but not yet claimed carry across the Act break, to a maximum of 3 banked.
Severance. When a Tier ends an Act early: at Rank 8 or higher, claim the capstone as if you had reached Rank 10; below that, rewards you hold persist through the first Chapter of the new Act.
You are running on a build that shipped broken. You have a pool of Glitch equal to 2, plus 1 at 9th character level and 1 at 17th. Beyond that the pool does not increase with character level or Tier; only an effect that says it raises Glitch does. Your pool refreshes to full at each Chapter break. The first time in each scene that you land three or more different Score events, restore 1 Glitch point. You may also restore 1 point mid-Chapter by spending 3 Score.
You know three Glitches from the list below, plus one more at 5th character level and every four levels after. Unless a Glitch says otherwise, performing one costs 1 Glitch point and is a swift action that does not provoke attacks of opportunity.
A creature that spends a move action declaring aloud that what you are doing is impossible files a bug report: the Glitch is patched out at the start of your next turn unless you spend 1 more Glitch point to roll the patch back. A given performance of a Glitch draws at most one bug report.
Someone has been guiding you all along. The Player rides beside the run as a small avatar. It functions as a wizard's familiar using your character level, with these changes: it is a Diminutive outsider; it cannot attack; it has no speed of its own; its movement is yours. It cannot be handed to anyone and cannot be taken: removed from your person by any means, it is beside you again. It speaks audibly. The Player does not count against any limit on familiars you may keep and does not replace a familiar you already have. You gain Alertness and the empathic link while it is with you; you gain share spells and deliver touch spells only if you are otherwise able to use them.
If the avatar is destroyed, the Player logs back in at the next Chapter break, remembering everything.
Somebody recorded all of this, and left it lying around. The GM seeds audio logs through the world — recordings, journals, terminal entries — each belonging to a named set. When you enter a scene that holds one, you find it; no check or search is required.
Once per Chapter, when you fail a Knowledge check, or face a question nobody present can answer, you may find a log instead: the GM delivers what a successful check would have revealed, as recorded lore, in its author's voice.
Each log found grants 1 Score. Once you have started a set, you always know how many of its logs remain; the counter is visible only to you. Completing a set grants +1 Rank and a permanent +2 competence bonus on skill checks concerning that set's subject — and if the set concerns a faction or a kind of creature, a permanent +1 insight bonus on attack rolls and saving throws against them, to a maximum of +3 from all sets. The GM may attach a larger reward to a large set, priced when the set is written.
The good ending has other people in it. You may name creatures with names and wants of their own as companions, up to your build ability modifier at once. Each companion has a personal mission, established in play with the GM. The mission must be the companion's own goal, not one of yours. When it completes, that companion is Loyal, permanently.
You and each Loyal companion gain a +2 morale bonus when using aid another on each other, and you always know the direction and rough distance of a Loyal companion on your plane.
United We Win. With a Loyal companion, you may use United We Win (Book of Passion, p. 33), with these changes: it has no prerequisite and no cost in feats, spells, or bardic performance; activating it is a full-round action costing 5 Score; you may use it once per Chapter per Loyal companion.
The Love Interest. One Loyal companion — someone you hold strong feelings for, as the masterpiece asks — may be named your love interest. United We Win with your love interest costs no Score. If your love interest is lost, missing, or not yet found, finding them is a Main Quest in every Act until it resolves, and the GM places at least one clue to them per Act.
Your move list is short, and other fighters know things you don't. Once per Act, a master of a martial discipline whose techniques cost Stamina may teach you one technique they know, over a day's training together. Until the Act break, you may perform it as written, paying its Stamina cost in Score and using your build ability in place of the master's mental stat for its DCs.
Death is a respawn screen. Once per Act, when you would die, the screen cuts to black instead: your voice line is heard over the cut, you and everything you carry are removed from play, and you are not dead. You return at the next Chapter break at half your maximum hit points, at a place of the GM's choosing that offers an entrance, and gain 3 Score if the GM judges the entrance landed.
A death you decline to continue from, or a second death in the same Act, is an ordinary death, and the usual rules for raising the dead apply.
The debug commands shipped by accident. Each of the following functions once per playthrough of the Bubble — the campaign itself, not this sheet's Acts. A spent one returns only when this character plays in another playthrough. When you claim an Act Pass capstone, you may instead restore one spent Dev Console command. Once you have restored a command this way, this option is not available again for the rest of the playthrough.
A night you sleep in a dreamed place that counts as a plane — a dreaming hold, among others — is a Chapter break for every ability on this sheet.
Nothing runs for free.
The game needs its Player. Glitches, United We Win, and Continue? function only while the Player is with you.
Attract Mode. At the end of a Chapter in which you gained no Score, you take a −2 penalty on all d20 rolls until you next gain any. Each further consecutive Chapter without a gain worsens the penalty by −2, to a maximum of −6. A Chapter containing no scenes counts for none of this.
Sequence Break. When you act against the role settled at creation, as the GM adjudicates, you lose 1d6 Score.
Cancellation. If a fourth consecutive Chapter ends without you gaining any Score, you are cancelled: you lose every ability on this sheet except Infinite Cigars and the Player until you produce an act worth a remaster. The GM sets it, on the scale of a relaunch trailer.
Your Acts run four Chapters instead of six, and your capstone requires Rank 8 rather than 10.
Premium picks cost 5 Score rather than 10.
At the Act break, you keep Score up to twice your character level.
Gain +1 Glitch point. You may take this feat multiple times, but not more than once per four character levels.
Learn one additional Glitch. You may take this feat multiple times.
A bug report no longer forces you to spend a Glitch point to keep a Glitch running.
Choose one Score event. You may earn up to 2 Score per scene from that event. You may take this feat multiple times, choosing a different event each time.
Once per scene, when a quip, insult, or taunt of yours mechanically lands — a successful Bluff, Intimidate, or quip effect against a creature — you gain 1 Score.
Once per Chapter, when you enter a scene loudly, make one Intimidate check to demoralize every enemy within 30 feet, and gain 1 Score.
Downtime tasks — crafting, training, retraining — proceed at double speed.
Named and unique enemies carry three Achievements, written by the GM and revealed when you first damage the creature or use Walkthrough on it. Each Achievement completed during the fight grants +1 Rank.
Completing a set also grants 5 Score, and the GM tells you when a region you enter contains a set you have not started.
Once per Chapter, as a free action, freeze the frame: ask the GM two questions answerable by sight from any angle of the current scene.
Once per Act, declare a speedrun of a named objective and agree on par with the GM. Beat par: +2 Ranks. Miss it: −3 Score.
Continue? functions twice per Act; the third death in an Act is ordinary.
Once per Chapter, one confirmed critical hit against you becomes a normal hit.
United We Win may join you with two Loyal companions at once: one pool, best saves and BAB among the three, damage divided three ways when it ends.
Once per Chapter, you exhale: a 20-foot-radius cloud of cigar smoke centered on you, as fog cloud with caster level equal to your character level. You and Loyal companions see through it.
Walkthrough functions twice per Chapter, and its questions may be about the Act rather than only the current scene.
Once per Act, during downtime, spend 10 Score: a royalty check finds you, in the amount of 25 gp per character level.
Once per Act, for one Chapter, with that companion's consent and the GM's approval, gain one feat printed on their sheet whose requirements you could meet.
When an Act ends with its capstone claimed, one Premium reward you claimed that Act becomes permanent.
The cut content is still on the disc. Once per Act, with the GM's approval, pull from your inventory an object that does not actually exist — a machine with no inventor, a key to a lock nobody made, an item dummied out of some other game. It works for one scene, doing what the GM says it does, and then it is gone.