Your Role as Gamemaster
You set the stage, voice the world, and adjudicate the fiction. You don’t roll dice, players do. Your job is to make their choices feel meaningful and their risks feel real.
Setting Difficulty
Difficulty (0–100) determines how much can go wrong even on a success. Think of Difficulty as how unforgiving the situation is, separate from whether the character can handle it.
Set Difficulty based on environmental pressure, not character competence (that’s what the Target is for):
- 0: Calm, controlled, no stakes. Success brings no complications.
- 10: Only a slight chance of problems.
- 25: Minor friction. A complication is possible but not likely.
- 50: Contested or dangerous ground. A success without complication requires rolling well.
- 75: Hostile or chaotic. Even a capable character will probably face complications.
- 90: Overwhelming. Complications are nearly guaranteed.
Ask yourself: If a complete expert did this, would anything still go wrong? If yes, raise the Difficulty. A master lockpick in a burning building still faces fire.
Don’t set Difficulty secretly to punish players, set it openly so they can choose whether to proceed, find leverage, or create Advantage before rolling.
If an adversary is directly involved in the action, you should factor in relevant abilities they have—see Adversaries – Strengths and Weaknesses.
Advantage and Disadvantage
Advantage and Disadvantage reflect situational leverage, not character ability. They stack and cancel, so the fiction matters more than counting modifiers.
Grant Advantage when:
- The character has prepared specifically for this situation
- The environment actively assists (terrain, lighting, timing)
- An ally is coordinating or distracting
- The opposition is caught off-guard, unaware, or compromised
- The character is using their Skill in its most natural, direct application
Apply Disadvantage when:
- The character is improvising without relevant tools or preparation
- The environment works against them (noise, weather, wounds, darkness)
- They’re being actively disrupted or rushed
- The action strains the edges of what their Skill covers
- They’re pushing through something that would slow anyone down
Don’t grant Advantage for things already built into the Target. If a character has a high Skill in picking locks, that’s already reflected. Advantage is for the situation, not the character.
Applying Effects
Most conditions—poison, fear, disorientation, magical influence—translate to Advantage or Disadvantage on relevant rolls. Don’t reach for a number when a flag will do.
Some effects deal recurring harm: a disease, a lingering burn, a slow poison. These deal damage at the beginning of each scene; the character rolls the relevant Attribute against a Difficulty you set to resist or reduce it. When the effect ends is a fiction call: treat it, find the antidote, get clear of the source.
Some effects constrain options rather than penalize rolls. A restrained character can’t move freely; a compelled one acts under outside influence. These are resolved through the fiction: the character must overcome the constraint before acting normally. A compelled character may attempt to resist as their action, rolling against whatever holds them.
When multiple effects are in play, don’t stack modifiers; let the most significant one set the tone. A character who is wounded, frightened, and poisoned is in serious trouble; the fiction should reflect that without requiring four calculations before the roll.
Scenes
A scene is the unit of immediate fiction: a single location, situation, and cast with a clear reason to exist. It begins when the characters arrive at something that matters and ends when that thing resolves, shifts, or is abandoned.
Opening a scene: Name the location, its immediate sensory details, who’s present, and what pressure is already in the room. Transport players to the location and paint them a picture in broad strokes.
Closing a scene: A scene ends when the central tension resolves, the characters leave, or the situation becomes something else entirely. Don’t linger. Once the meaningful choices are made or actions taken, and their consequences land, cut to the next thing.
Between scenes: This is when recovery happens. Each Attribute recovers 1d10 at the end of a scene, recurring effects trigger at the start of the next one, and the fiction has a moment to breathe before the next pressure arrives. Mark it clearly so players know where they stand before moving on.
Story Arcs
A story arc is the unit of meaningful narrative progression: not a session, not a dungeon, not a fight. An arc is complete when the characters have resolved (or failed to resolve) a core tension that drove their choices.
Signs an arc has concluded:
- A central threat has been defeated, escaped, or transformed
- A mystery has been answered (or deliberately buried)
- The characters have changed their relationship to a key person, place, or truth
- A goal that shaped play has been achieved or abandoned
Arcs don’t need to be tidy. A failed arc still ends—the characters advance because they survived and learned, not because they succeeded.
As a baseline, one arc typically spans two to five sessions, but trust the story over the calendar. A tense single session can be a complete arc. A long investigation might sprawl further. When players seem to be settling into comfort rather than chasing something, it’s often a sign an arc needs to close and a new tension needs to open.
Advancement is the mechanical reward, but the fictional reward is equally important: acknowledge what changed, who the characters are now, and what the new world looks like before beginning the next arc.
Adversaries
Adversaries share the same three Attributes as player characters. A wolf at Body 10 feels fragile next to a PC with Body 40; a dragon at Body 80 is genuinely dangerous.
Threat
Threat is a single multiplier that the GM applies when placing an adversary. Scenario and setting publications define adversary templates with base values; the GM picks a Threat level to match the encounter’s stakes.
- Weak
- Average
- Strong
- Formidable
- Legendary
When no Threat is specified, Average (2) is the default assumption.
Template Notation
A template marks each value to indicate how Threat applies:
×T: multiply the base value by Threat (Attributes, weapon Quality, strength and weakness offsets)+T: add Threat flat (bonuses that scale less dramatically)- bare
T: Threat is the value directly, usually as a threshold for unlocking abilities
Fixed values carry no modifier; they apply regardless of Threat. A simple template might look like:
A Weak wolf (×1) has Body 10, a Bite of Quality 5, and no special abilities. A Formidable wolf (×4) has Body 40, a Bite of Quality 20, raises Difficulty on Tracking rolls by 40, and has both Pack Tactics and Fear Aura active.
Strengths and Weaknesses
Strengths (↑) indicate abilities that the adversary is good at, and should be make them more difficult to deal with. Likewise, Weaknesses (↓) make approaches that exploit them more likely to succeed and less likely to produce complications.
In both of these cases, the ability should factor into the Difficulty you set for actions. If it’s directly related, use the rating as a Difficulty baseline. If it’s a lesser factor, adjust the Difficulty up or down accordingly. When in doubt, lean on the most impactful factor.
Keep these focused. One or two Strengths and one clear Weakness is enough. The Weakness should change how players approach the encounter; if it doesn’t affect strategy, it’s backstory.
Abilities
Abilities are special actions available beyond the standard attack and defense loop. List them with a minimum Threat tier in parentheses; the ability is only available when the adversary’s Threat meets or exceeds that threshold.
This lets a single template represent a creature across a wide power range. The same wolf is a minor hazard at Weak and a scene-defining threat at Legendary, and GMs can tune that on the fly without rebuilding anything.
Running Adversaries
Treat the adversary’s attack like equipment: its Quality (often set by a weapon value in the template) determines the Impact of a hit, applied after the player’s roll. Armor reduces incoming damage passively before being applied.
Surface a Strength the first time players underestimate an adversary. Reveal a Weakness as a reward for observation, research, or the right question asked at the right moment. Neither should be announced at the outset—discovery is part of the tension.