Resolving a Scene

This game is built for storytelling first. You are not rolling dice to find out whether you win — you are describing what you do, and the GM decides what the world does back. A firefight is just another scene with higher stakes, not a separate mode with its own rules.

Most actions do not require rolls

The GM first asks: given the character, the situation, and their abilities, what would reasonably happen? If the answer is obvious, it happens.

• A Power 7 character doesn't roll to carry what an average person lifts.
• A master locksmith doesn't roll against an ordinary household lock.
• A Social 2 character doesn't deliver a brilliant speech just because the dice were generous.

Your stats establish reality. The dice only handle genuine uncertainty.

When the GM rolls

The GM calls for a roll when success is genuinely uncertain, failure would matter, and either outcome would create an interesting change. In combat and missions, the GM rolls often — every maneuver, save, shot, and standoff that can go either way earns its dice. Otherwise the natural result is narrated.

Resolution

When a roll is called, the GM weighs your relevant stat + relevant skill + the situation, and decides the likely outcome before the dice come out. The dice then introduce uncertainty — they don't rewrite what you're capable of.

• High ability means high reliability.
• Low ability makes extraordinary success rare.
• The GM may keep rolls hidden, so you experience the world rather than the mathematics behind it.

The pool — how your skill and stat feed the roll. When you roll, the GM rolls a pool of d10s: one die per point of the governing stat plus, when you're trained, one die per point of the governing skill it draws on. Untrained, there's no skill to add, so the pool is just your stat. Each die that comes up at or above the DC is one success; a die showing 1 subtracts a success, and if rolled 1s leave you with none, it's a botch. Both layers always count — a bigger pool produces more successes, and more dice also means fewer botches, which is what makes high ability reliable.

Difficulty (the DC): the DC is the target number each die must reach, set by the GM from the task itself, never from you — easy 3–4, average 5–6, demanding 7, hard 8, very hard 9, near-impossible 10. A higher DC means a harder task. Most tasks need one success; demanding ones need two or three. For a do-or-die moment the GM may call a critical roll, which doubles the successes required — a critical success is spectacular, while failing or botching it hits twice as hard.

Degrees — how well it goes. Each success over what you needed makes the result cleaner, and each one short makes it uglier:

• Plenty of successes — it goes as well as it could. The guard not only lets you in, he forgets you were there.
• Just enough — success, with a wrinkle. You got in, but you left a trail.
• Just short (no successes) — failure with a door left open. You're caught, but the guard is alone and bored.
• A botch (rolled 1s take all your successes) — it goes as badly as it can. You're caught, and you've just alerted the building.

When two of you contest — sneaking past a watcher, wrestling for a weapon, arguing against resistance — both roll their own pool, and whoever lands more successes wins — ties go to the defender, so the side starting the contest has to beat them, not just match them.

Attempt does not mean success

Your input is what your character attempts — not what happens. When you say "I grab his gun and throw him through the window," the GM hears the character attempts to grab the gun and throw him through the window, and resolves what actually happens.

You control your intentions. The world controls the consequences. Failure is real, and it's allowed.

Poses are written like a novel

Write your poses long, vivid, and detailed — the way a novel renders a scene. Show the character's movement, expression, and the small physical tells; give the room its sound, temperature, and light. The more concrete texture you put in, the more the GM has to build on — and the more the scene feels inhabited rather than summarized.

The world does not scale to you

The GM creates the world's people according to who they actually are, not to give you a fair fight. A rookie whose skill is 3 can meet a professional at 9 — and the GM will not soften them. Your victories are earned, your failures are real, and your decisions carry lasting weight. That's what makes growth meaningful.

Luck

A stat for the world's small turns of fate. When a moment is a genuine coin-flip and no one's ability decides it, Luck is what the GM uses to place the fortunate coincidence — and if a flat failure would dead-end a scene, Luck can turn it into a fortunate mistake. You can ask for a lucky break, but the GM owns the call, and Luck never turns a failure into a success — it changes what the outcome means.

The rule at the heart of it

Say what you do. The GM says what happens. The dice only speak when the story has something to lose — and when they do, the pool built from your skill and your stat is the voice they use.