Rules

You do not need battle maps, carefully balanced encounters, elaborate monster stat blocks, scripted stories, or pages of preparation.

Seriously. Don’t prep. Take notes.

NPCs and enemies do not need to be built like player characters. Know who they are, what they want, and roughly what they can do. Give them the few numbers you actually need when they become relevant.

Have a general understanding of the Basic Moves, the core rules, and the GM rules. Know how to make a simple NPC on the fly.

That’s enough.

You do not need to memorize the entire game. When something comes up that you don’t remember, look it up.

Start with the characters already doing something.

Maybe they’re relaxing in a tavern after a hard day’s work. Maybe they’re riding home after a successful job. Maybe someone is already throwing a punch.

They don’t even need to be together.

Days of Gold does not require the party to constantly move as one group. Your job is to keep the world interesting. The players decide where their lives go from there.

Don’t begin with a story you need them to follow.

Instead, ask yourself:

Why are we watching these characters right now?

What is happening in their lives or in the world that makes this particular period worth playing?

You don’t need the answer to become a campaign plot. You just need something worth putting on screen.

Look at the characters’ Current Wants.

If someone hasn’t written one, ask them:

What does your character want right now?

A lot of the time, the answer is probably going to be gold. That’s fine. Gold is useful.

If nobody knows what they want to pursue, have someone Get the Lay of the Land. One of the questions they can ask is:

What useful opportunity is here?

Give them something worth following and help them find the first thread.

From there, follow what they choose.

Pay attention to moments when the game starts losing momentum.

A player seems lost. Nobody knows what to do next. Someone hasn’t had much to engage with. Things have become a little too comfortable.

That’s when the world moves.

• A woman comes screaming down the road because there’s been a murder.
• A ruthless captain arrives looking for soldiers to deal with a monster.
• A desperate noble offers a fortune to anyone willing to rescue his daughter.
• A merchant recognizes the Rogue from an old job.
• A priest discovers something troubling at a nearby shrine.

You are not giving the players their next quest. You are giving the world something interesting to do.

They can ignore it.

That matters.

Don’t drag them toward the thing you invented. Put opportunities, problems, people, and dangers in front of them and let them decide what matters.

Players will usually follow a good breadcrumb when they actually want what’s at the end of it.

Often.

Don’t become stingy because you’re worried the players will get too much.

If the Rogue steals from an unattended purse and there’s no meaningful danger or uncertainty, they steal it. Give them some gold.

If they’re trying to steal the captain’s purse while he’s wearing it, now there’s danger. That sounds like Face Danger.

The characters have plenty of things worth spending gold on. Let them earn it.

Rewards don’t always have to be money either. Give them useful information, connections, opportunities, equipment, favors, property, reputation, or anything else that naturally follows from what they accomplished.

If something is easy and the fiction says they can do it, let them do it.

That’s mostly it.

Read the rules for Dread, Fortune, Basic Moves, and the other GM tools, then let the fiction carry the game.

Days of Gold is intentionally lightweight.

A few principles will take you a long way:

• Be a fan of the players.
• Let characters be good at what their class says they are good at. Don’t constantly look for ways to deny their Signatures or Perks.
• Don’t call for a roll when there is no meaningful uncertainty or consequence.
• Put interesting things in the world, but don’t decide how the players must respond to them.
• Reward characters for pursuing what they want.
• Play to find out what happens.

That last one is important.

Don’t write the encounter before the players get there. Don’t decide how the story ends. Don’t build three hours of material that requires the players to make one particular decision.

Listen to what they do.

Decide how the world responds.

Then find out what happens next.

That’s GMing Days of Gold.

One roll produces one GM Move.

• Lord: Discard unspent House Account and refresh it to its full amount. Resolve any Household Guard replacement due this session.
• Wizard: Reduce your Spell Exhaustion by 1, to a minimum of 0, and reset your spellcasting attempt count. If you have Studied Spell, choose which known spell it affects. If you have an Apprentice, choose the 2 spells they know this session. If your Familiar died, beginning this session you may return to your Arcane Sanctuary or a similar workshop to gain a new one.
• Druid: Per-session Grove Gifts refresh. If your Animal Companion died, beginning this session you may return to your Grove to gain a new one.
• Rogue: Roll three times for Ready Contacts, or four with Deep Network. If a Contact died, beginning this session you may return to the Den to meet their replacement.
• Priest: Roll +Presence for the Faithful. If you have The Clergy, replace 1 slain clergyman.
• GM: Dread and Fortune carry over between sessions; do not reset them.
• Business owners: If you own more than 3 income-producing businesses, resolve Business Management for the businesses beyond your 3 core businesses.
• Functioning income-producing businesses pay the income determined for them this session.
• Ask where every PC is, what they are doing, and what they want right now. The Knight and Warrior need no generated assignment; their Oaths and victories begin when their choices make them relevant.

Review followers whose pay, treatment, or demands mattered this session. Usually raise or lower Loyalty by 1 when there is a clear reason; leave it unchanged when there is not. Exceptional generosity, mistreatment, or betrayal may justify a larger change. Show the reason through the follower’s behavior.

Keep Loyalty between −3 and +3. Account for changes already made during play; do not apply the same cause twice. Resolve any immediate change written by Test Loyalty or another rule when it happens.

When your Regional Knowledge applies to Journey or Get the Lay of the Land, choose 1 additional option or question, regardless of the result of the roll.

Use the character's class knowledge and the place or route to determine when it applies. A hired guide can provide the additional Journey option through their knowledge of the route.

Most NPCs need only a name, desire, one or two tags, Wounds, Harm, Armor, and any special thing they can do.

An NPC's Wounds rating is the number of Wounds they can take before they are defeated. In lethal violence that usually means death; the fiction can instead make the result surrender, capture, flight, or another clear defeat when that makes more sense.

A useful situation has several handles so different classes can care for different reasons. None is an assigned class mission. Example: a noble wedding, guild election, and week-long market fair fill the city at the same time.

• Warrior: An undefeated visiting champion offers a public bout with a 300 gp purse.
• Knight: An apprentice falsely accused of theft asks for protection; the Knight decides whether that promise becomes an Oath.
• Wizard: A glassworker has rare mirror glass useful for a spell the Wizard wants to invent, but wants arcane help instead of only coin.
• Lord: Several bidders want a warehouse the Lord intends to buy, and the guild election will decide who receives favorable terms.
• Rogue: The Master Forger knows a client offering 400 gp to replace a sealed marriage agreement before it is read aloud.
• Druid: Exotic animals brought for the fair can describe their handlers, routes, and fears; dye runoff is also killing fish in the canal.
• Priest: Both families want the Priest to officiate while an active Following Want makes the public vows politically charged.

Each character can pursue their own life without leaving town. Their choices may overlap, collide, or remain separate, and the situation keeps moving either way.

Use these as starting calibration values and adjust for danger, rarity, and the local economy. A Class Perk costs 2,000 gp on purpose, so several successful jobs or one major score can fund a meaningful new ability.

A week-long market fair fills the city. No one announces a quest. The Lord refreshes a 250 gp House Account and plans to buy a warehouse. The Knight is already escorting an accused apprentice to a hearing and decides the promise is serious enough to become an Oath. The Warrior enters a 300 gp public bout. The Wizard wants to invent a spell that reads vows hidden in sealed documents. The Druid is using the Grove as lodging while bargaining with exotic animals brought for the fair. The Rogue rolls three Ready Contacts and asks the Master Forger about available work. The Priest rolls +Presence for the Faithful and gets Mixed Fortunes: Informed is in Surplus, bringing news about exploited workers, while Judgment becomes active.

The Lord pays the Warrior 100 gp from personal Gold to provide visible security after the bout, hires a scribe for 10 gp per session from House Account, and pays 10 gp per session for each additional Guard from personal Gold. The Master Forger knows a client offering 400 gp to replace a sealed marriage agreement; the Rogue takes the job and recruits the Wizard for 75 gp. The Wizard says what the vow-reading spell should do; the GM requires rare mirror glass, a copy of the original oath formula, and a night of work in the Arcane Sanctuary. The Knight investigates the apprentice's accuser while carrying out the Oath.

The Druid learns from caged river birds that dye runoff is killing fish. Helping is the Druid's choice, not an assigned nature mission; meaningful preservation gives the GM Fortune. The Priest issues a decree for the Faithful to gather testimony and shelter workers, then rolls The Faithful Answer to see who answers. Their public pressure makes the Lord's warehouse negotiation politically useful.

The GM cuts whenever a decision lands. By the time the threads collide, everyone has already spent half the session playing their own class. Nobody had to leave town. Gold changed hands, a Contact created shared work, an Oath raised the stakes of an existing promise, the Arcane Sanctuary made new magic, and followers, property, Renown, and the Grove all mattered because players chose to use them.

That is the intended shape of play: class toys first, independent choices, overlapping interests, and a world that keeps moving.