Rolling & Resolving
Every roll that matters is 2d6 + a skill rating, compared against a target number. You are trying to meet or beat the number. That is the whole engine. Everything else is deciding which skill, which target, and what a win or a cost looks like.
The target bands
The GM sets a target from the difficulty bands. They are three points apart, which is as wide as they can be: 2d6 spans only ten points, so wider bands would put Hopeless out of everyone's reach entirely.
| Band | Target | When the GM reaches for it |
|---|---|---|
| Routine | 6 | A competent person doing a thing under pressure. Only rolled if failing would cost something. |
| Tricky | 9 | The default. Fast, hurt, or wrong tools. |
| Hard | 12 | Real resistance — a jammed mechanism, a hostile crowd, a locked mind. |
| Desperate | 15 | The alternative is worse. Expect a cost even on success. |
| Hopeless | 18 | Should not work. Reserved for the story's keystone moments. |
A capable adult sits around attribute 2, and hits Tricky a little better than half the time. A specialist at rating 6 clears Tricky almost always — so a GM running a specialist inside their own field should be reaching for Hard, where rating 6 gets there roughly seven times in ten. Competent, never safe.
One consequence worth knowing: at rating 2 you cannot reach Desperate or Hopeless on the dice at all. Buy-in is how you get there — before rolling, take a condition, 5 exposure, or a supply for +2, once per roll. And the dice have two verdicts of their own: a natural 12 succeeds at no cost, the only free thing in the game; a natural 2 fails and costs one thing extra.
Attributes and skills
Your character has five attributes — Brawn, Reflex, Wits, Nerve, Presence — each rated 0–6. Every skill keys to one of them:
| Attribute | Skills |
|---|---|
| Brawn | Haul, Brawl, Fortify |
| Reflex | Gunplay, Evade, Sprint |
| Wits | Mechanisms, Medicine, Ciphers, Scavenge |
| Nerve | Hold Fast, Resist Anomaly, Focus |
| Presence | Command, Deceive, Rapport |
Your skill rating is your attribute's rating, plus +2 if you are proficient in that skill. Proficiencies are where a character's shape lives: the same Wits rating makes different people a medic, a fixer, or the one who reads the walls.
When you roll, and when you don't
Roll when a failure would actually cost something and an outcome is genuinely uncertain. The GM reaches for Routine when the act itself is easy; you roll only to find out what the pressure costs. Never roll to open a door nobody is shooting at.
The cost
You can succeed and still pay. A result at or above the target wins the thing — but the GM decides what it costs, from a condition to a resource to the moment you lose. In this game "you did it" and "that hurt" are not rivals. Expect both to be true.
Social rolls
Conversations run on Presence skills against the same bands, but standing modifies the target rather than the roll. Every point of standing between you and the person you are talking to shifts the target by one whole band, in either direction — three points of target per point of standing. A stranger at −3 asking a favour is attempting something Hopeless where a friend at +1 would find it Routine. It is the heaviest modifier in the game. Standing only changes through downtime, betrayals, and deaths — never through a single good roll. Nobody talks their way from loathed to trusted in one scene, and the GM should say so out loud when you try.