Every uncertain action resolves with 2d6 plus the tags you call, one item you put to use, and minus any weakness you invoke. There are no ability modifiers. The dice are the engine; your tags and gear are the fuel.
Rolling
- Say what you're trying to do.
- Pick the tags that apply. The game will suggest tags; you confirm the set.
- Optionally put one inventory item to work in the roll (see Items below).
- Roll 2d6.
- Add +1 for each tag you called.
- Apply ±1 for the one item used, if any.
- If it makes sense to act through a weakness, you may invoke it: −1 to the roll, and you mark 1 improvement point (banked — applied at end of scene).
- Read the total:
| Total | Result |
|---|
| 10+ | You do it. Clean success. |
| 7–9 | You do it, with a cost, complication, or reduced effect. |
| 6− | The GM makes a move. The situation shifts against you. |
Calling more tags raises the odds, but only tags that genuinely apply to the fiction. Stretching a tag past its theme is a table call — usually a no.
Suggested tags
When you declare an action, the system highlights tags from your groups that fit — and may suggest an item from your inventory. You are free to ignore suggestions and call a different set — or none at all. Zero tags and no item is a pure 2d6 roll.
Items on the roll
Gear you carry can modify a roll the same way a tag does — one item per roll, never more.
| Item role on this roll | Modifier |
|---|
| Helps the situation | +1 |
| Gets in the way | −1 |
| No item makes sense | No item modifier |
- One mechanical item only. Choose the item that makes the most sense for the attempt. The narrator can suggest gear too; if several items could apply, pick a single one for the modifier.
- Flavour is free. You may describe as many items as the scene wants — laying out rope, passing a lantern, offering a salve to a friend. Only the first item used mechanically moves the dice.
- No stretch, no bonus. If nothing in your pack honestly helps or hinders, there is no item modifier.
- Expended gear leaves your pack. If the item is the kind that gets used up — a potion, salve, torch, ration, charge of oil — remove it from your inventory when the roll resolves (or when you spend it in fiction, if the GM calls it outside a roll).
Items are not tags: they do not live in a group, they earn no improvement points, and they never stack with each other on a single roll.
Weaknesses on the roll
Invoking a weakness is a choice, not a penalty the GM assigns. You take the −1 deliberately when leaning into a flaw makes the scene better — or when the fiction leaves you no honest way around it. Every invoke is worth one improvement point.
Example
You're crossing a flooded cave mouth with a coil of rope in your pack.
- Called tags:
Reads the terrain (+1), Moves unseen (+1)
- Item used: rope anchors the crossing (+1)
- Invoked weakness:
Fears open water (−1)
- Roll: 2d6 = 4 + 5 → 9, then +1 +1 +1 −1 → 10
Clean success — you pick a route the others never saw, with the rope keeping you upright in the current. You bank one improvement point for the scene. The rope stays in inventory; if you had spent a healing salve instead, it would be gone.