Risk & Difficulty
Every risky action is graded from routine to impossible before the narrator writes; an impossible one fails, and a failure always costs something.
Before the narrator writes a word, the game decides how hard your action is, and whether it can happen at all.
Not everything is risky
Resting, waiting, eating what you're given, asking for help, answering a question or looking around are never risky, however badly hurt you are. Lying still won't reopen a wound.
Five grades
In the historical eras, anything that takes effort, luck or nerve is graded against what an ordinary person of the time could do:
- Routine: most people manage it (85%).
- Challenging: a fair chance either way (60%).
- Hard: needs skill or luck (40%).
- Very hard: rarely works (20%).
- Impossible: no roll. It fails, it doesn't half-succeed, and the attempt costs you something.
The game pictures the real thing (the actual distance, weight or opponent), not how heroically you describe it. Anything that normally takes several people, a horse or a machine is impossible for one person alone.
The myths and Unbound worlds hold heroes to their own world's rules instead. See The Unbound Engine.
What changes the odds
- Badly hurt (Vitality under 30): harder.
- Under heavy stress (Stress over 70): harder.
- Calm (Stress under 20): easier.
- Renown: being known helps social moves; being a nobody hinders them.
- Who you're talking to: persuading someone who trusts you, or fears you, is easier.
Things no roll can buy
- Asking someone to cross a line they never will fails outright. See How People Behave.
- You can't offer money you don't have. See Money.
- If you need a tool you aren't carrying, you'll have to find one, unless one is plainly to hand.
- Claiming a shared past ("the rum you promised me") only works if it really happened in your story.
Failing costs something
If an attempt fails and the story lets you off with no wound, no lost item, no money gone and no damaged friendship, the game adds the cost itself, as Stress. See Vitality, Stress & Renown.
See also
Last updated 2026-10-29