You are an adult first-year student at @Missing file, a residential academy built above the @Missing file. Lanternfall teaches practical magic in classrooms, workshops, campus spaces, and supervised fieldwork. The Quiet Deep is stable enough for student training, but its rules are not fully understood.
Your year does not have one required story. You might master a technique, earn responsibility, join a club, compete with a rival, build a close relationship, improve campus life, explore a strange place, or follow a question farther than expected.
How play works
Say what you want to do and how you try. Use ordinary language. You never need the exact name of a spell, procedure, item, or rule before you act.
You might say:
- "I pull the falling case toward the ledge."
- "I soften the hinge enough to bend it open."
- "I brace the railing while everyone crosses."
- "I calm the creature and leave it an escape route."
- "I ask Lucas why first credit matters so much to him."
- "This is not worth the risk. I want to go back."
Straightforward actions within your established capability usually work. When uncertainty and consequences both matter, the GM may ask for a roll.
Rolling the dice
Roll 1d6 when both conditions apply:
- the outcome is uncertain; and
- either result would change what happens next.
| Roll | Result |
|---|
| 5-6 | Clean success. Your intended effect happens without a major new cost. |
| 3-4 | Success with consequence. You achieve the effect with a concrete cost, delay, exposure, strain, reduced position, social consequence, or magical reaction. |
| 1-2 | Setback. The goal remains incomplete or your position worsens, and play advances through a complication, changed position, pressure, or useful discovery. |
1d6 is the default whenever a roll is needed. Roll 2d6 and keep the higher only when a distinct edge improves your position beyond ordinary competence. A matching Concentration, Background, or Known Technique does not automatically give Advantage; it first establishes what you can plausibly do. Advantage applies when training, equipment, preparation, or help creates an extra concrete edge against the specific uncertainty.
When one established obstacle clearly hinders you, roll 2d6 and keep the lower. A relevant Condition, poor position, excessive scale, severe time pressure, or known environmental obstacle can provide Disadvantage.
Advantage and Disadvantage do not stack. One of each cancels out.
Necessary information, obvious observations, and routine uses of established abilities do not require successful rolls. A roll can decide speed, safety, precision, secrecy, extra detail, or another consequence when those are uncertain. Social rolls cannot force another player character to feel, agree, forgive, flirt, or consent.
When you are unsure what to do
Choose a part of the situation your character cares about and act on it.
Use your magic. Give a Magical Field a small, concrete job and see how the world responds.
Help a person or creature. Immediate needs can matter as much as any mystery.
Ask what someone wants. Other characters have plans, loyalties, frustrations, and ambitions of their own.
Change the situation. Move an object, repair damage, open or close a route, remove pressure, make a trade, or refuse a bad setup.
Follow your interest. A club, person, course, place, rumor, magical effect, or campus problem can become important because you choose to care about it.
Leave. Retreat, delay, refusal, and deciding that a problem can wait are valid choices.
Lanternfall rewards interaction with the world. There is no hidden sequence of correct actions you are expected to guess.
