Playing

OVERVIEW

Playing the game, generally speaking, consists of the following phases, linked together by story or some other form of narrative progression:

  • CONFLICT: Fighting, debating, or otherwise coming into conflict with others who disagree with your agenda.
  • TRAVEL: Moving from one place to another, often with interesting consequences.
  • EXPLORATION: Looking for clues, secrets, breadcrumbs, or trouble once you’ve arrived somewhere.

CONFLICT

TRAVEL

EXPLORATION

Now that you’ve built your character, you probably have one last question on your mind: how do you actually play the game?

Fortunately, this is the easy part! From now on, your character will be faced with Challenges when you try to achieve something in the game. Resolving Challenges is easy!

  • Your Referee will tell you what the TARGET NUMBER is for the Challenge - usually from 2 (easy) to 12 (nearly impossible)

  • You’re going to roll three dice:

    • 1 die will be your Character’s TALENT DIE, from their SPECIES.
    • 2 dice will be your Characters TRAINING DICE, from the ABILITY they’re Challenging.

  • You can add your QUALITY MODIFIER to any one of the dice you’ve rolled, to change its total value.

  • Every die that rolls equal to or higher than the Target Number is considered a SUCCESS,

  • The number of Successes determines the OUTCOME:

SUCCESSES OUTCOME DESCRIPTION
0 BOTCH Ouch! You fail, and something else bad happens too.
1 FAILURE You simply don’t succeed at what you attempted.
1 SACRIFICE You succeed, but something bad happens, too.
2 SUCCESS Well done! You succeed at what you tried to do.
3 TRIUMPH Whoa! You did what you set out to do perfectly!
Info

Getting 1 success can result in either a Failure or a Sacrifice. Whoever rolled the Challenge gets to decide which!

There are more complications than this - Challenges can be timed, faced by an entire Group, and there are special rules for Challenges during Combat as well as Spellcasting, but this, in essence, is how you’ll resolve every Challenge you face. We’ll cover over those specifics in Section 7 - Challenges of the PLAY guide.