Fatigue & Recycling

V2 status: Approved player-character core rule. Fatigue, fatal draw failure and Rest recovery are established for player characters; the GM is not subject to card Exhaustion and uses a different deck system.

When Fatigue occurs

These Fatigue and Exhaustion rules apply to player characters, not GM decks. GM decks work differently and are not affected by card Exhaustion; their specific procedures will be designed later.

Fatigue triggers when a player must draw a Skill card but their Deck is empty. Merely emptying the Deck does not trigger a reshuffle by itself.

When that happens:

1. Take the cards in Discard (but not Exhausted cards or cards still face up in front of players because their effects are active).
2. Shuffle them to create a new face-down Deck.
3. Immediately Exhaust the top card of that newly created Deck. This is the Fatigue cost.
4. Only then continue the required draw from the remaining Deck.

This reduces the number of reusable Skill cards as the player repeatedly cycles through their deck. Exhausted cards are unavailable for normal recycling until recovered, principally through Rest.

Fatal draw failure

If a character is required to draw a card but cannot draw it because their Deck is empty and there are no playable Discarded cards to recycle, the character dies. This is a form of death from complete exhaustion, rather than a temporary inability to act.

The same outcome applies when a reshuffle creates only one card: the mandatory Fatigue step immediately Exhausts that card, leaving nothing to satisfy the required draw. If a required draw cannot be completed after applying the normal recycling/Fatigue procedure, the character dies.

How that death manifests in the fiction is flexible: a heart attack, stroke or fatal exhaustion are possible descriptions, rather than separate mechanical causes.

This makes Rest and recovery a core adventuring decision. Players must manage how quickly they consume their Skill deck and when they stop to regain Exhausted cards.

Physical table layout

Players are encouraged to use a compact combined pile to save space:

• Keep the Deck face down.
• Put Discarded cards face up on top of the Discard pile.
• Place Exhausted cards face down at the bottom of that same physical pile.

This creates one physical stack with two clearly distinguished groups. Only the face-up Discarded group is shuffled into a new Deck when Fatigue triggers. Active Burned or otherwise ongoing cards remain separate on the table until their effects expire and they enter Discard or Exhaust.

Players with enough table space can instead use separate Discard and Exhaust piles; both setups have exactly the same rules.

Connections

• Deck Structure & Card Zones explains the 30-card Skill deck and zone distinctions.
• Card Commitment & Burning governs how Skills are used and where they go.
• Hand Size & Round Refills explains the mandatory start-of-Round refill that can trigger Fatigue.
• Rest & Recovery is how Exhausted cards can return to the Deck.

Open edge cases

• Multi-card draws: the exact timing of repeated reshuffles/Fatigue costs within a multi-card draw remains to be worked through; the fatal outcome for a required draw that cannot be satisfied is established.
• Rest specifics: recovery amounts, conditions and timing; see Rest & Recovery.
• Draw timing: the normal start-of-Round refill is approved; initial draws, freeform timing and special multi-card draw events remain to be reviewed.
• GM draw failure: the player character’s lethal draw-failure rule is not applied to the GM. The GM’s distinct deck and draw-failure procedures remain open.

These details are intentionally left open rather than inventing new procedures.