Eight is the line. The margin tells the rest.

Roll 2D6, add your DMs, compare to the target.

Whenever your character attempts something that could fail, you make a check: roll 2D6, add every modifier that applies, and compare the total to 8. Reach it and you succeed; fall short and you fail.

Check total

2D6 + skill level + characteristic modifier + difficulty DM + circumstance DM

There are two kinds of check and they are the same procedure with a different middle. A skill check asks what your training can do; a characteristic check asks what your raw body or mind can do. Which one the referee calls for depends on whether an obvious skill covers the task.

A skill check adds your levels in the skill, the modifier for the skill’s governing characteristic, and the difficulty. If you have no levels in the skill at all you may usually still try, at a -3 penalty for being unskilled.

A characteristic check is for a task no skill obviously covers, or one where innate ability is what matters — shoving a jammed door, holding your breath, keeping your nerve. Roll 2D6 and add that characteristic’s modifier. These tend to be all or nothing, though the referee may still read the margin.

An attack roll is not a separate system. It is a skill check that happens to decide whether you hit, using your levels in the relevant combat skill as the modifier.

The standard target number, and what it means to meet it.

The target is 8, always. Nothing in this game moves it — a harder task gives you a worse modifier, and an easier one gives you a better modifier, but the line you are trying to cross stays where it is.

Success

check total >= 8

One target number is enough for the whole game because difficulty is expressed as a modifier rather than as a goalpost. That is what lets you read any check at a glance: the only question is ever how much you can add to 2D6.

Where the raw dice override the total, and where they do not.

Two is not doom and twelve is not destiny. On an ordinary check the raw dice mean nothing on their own: a natural 12 that still falls short of 8 after modifiers is a failure, and a natural 2 that reaches 8 is a success.

What the raw dice do get you is a floor and a ceiling on the total, and with 2D6 those matter enough on their own. There is no automatic-success rule and no automatic-failure rule to reach for behind them.

The two overrides above are printed in the character-creation rules and apply to those two throws only. They are listed here beside the general rule on purpose: met alone, either one reads like evidence of a natural-roll rule the rest of the game does not have.

The difficulty ladder and the DM each rung applies.

Difficulty is a modifier the referee sets before you roll, from +6 down to -6. When a task states no difficulty, it is Average and worth nothing either way.

Each rung is worth two points, so moving a task one step is a real shift in the odds and moving it three is a different task. The referee picks the rung from what the fiction says is happening, not from how much they want you to succeed.

The margin between your total and the target, and what it decides.

Effect is how far your total landed from the target: total minus 8. A success of exactly 8 has an Effect of 0, and a failure carries a negative Effect.

Effect

check total - 8

Effect is a real value the rest of the game consumes, not a description of how well you did. It settles opposed checks, sets what a helper adds to your roll, feeds damage, prices a trade and decides how accurately a jump lands. When a rule says "with Effect", it means this number.

The bands Effect falls into, from exceptional to catastrophic.

Effect falls into four bands, and some rules care which one you landed in. Beat the target by 6 or more and it is an exceptional success; miss it by 6 or more and it is an exceptional failure.

The bands are not evenly sized in likelihood. On 2D6 an Effect of +6 or better means a total of 14, so an exceptional success needs real modifiers behind it and is never a matter of luck alone.

Reference rule — not active yet

Two characters roll; the better Effect wins.

When two characters push directly against each other, both make the check and the higher Effect wins. Neither is trying to beat 8 so much as to beat the other.

Active · completed 2026-08-11T05:13:43Z

When one of the world’s people rolls alongside you, and what their Effect does to yours.

Someone helping you makes the same check you do, and their Effect becomes a modifier on your roll. Help is a modifier, never a second attempt at the task.

Help can make things worse, and often does. A helper who fumbles hands you a penalty you would not have carried alone, so asking is a gamble rather than a free point — and the printed rule is explicit that the referee limits aid to suit the task and the conditions, because on many jobs outside help is no help at all.

Whether somebody helps is theirs to decide, and two answers are no. Anyone less than friendly towards you will not lend a hand at all — winning them over first is what talking to them is for. And a person helps only with the one thing they know: ask the bartender about the drive housing and they will beg off rather than make a hash of it. Neither refusal is worth pressing; ask somebody else, or ask about something else.

Somebody merely friendly holds back. They bring at most a single level of their skill to your check, whatever they are actually capable of — limited help, given willingly. Win them round further and the whole of what they know comes with them.

Situational DMs, and who decides them.

The situation is worth a modifier of one, either way. Good tools or a genuine advantage give you +1; broken tools or a real hindrance cost you -1.

The referee chooses from this list rather than inventing a number, which is what keeps a vivid description from being worth more than a real advantage. Anything genuinely bigger than one point is difficulty, and belongs on the difficulty ladder where you can see it.

When a failed check may be repeated, and what it costs.

You can usually try a failed check again, and keep trying. What stops you is the consequence of the failure, not a rule against repeating it.

Some failures close the door themselves. Falling off the cliff you were climbing makes the second attempt a different problem, and some tasks simply cannot be attempted twice once they have gone wrong. The referee says which kind you are looking at.

Succeeding again is usually worth nothing. Once you have the password out of the computer, further checks on the same computer do not get you a better password — the task is done, and repeating it produces no new result.

Reference rule — not active yet

How long a check takes before it resolves.

Outside combat, a task takes a rolled amount of time rather than a fixed one. Roll 1D6 and multiply it by the increment the task uses — so a job in minutes takes 1 to 6 minutes.

Forcing a flimsy door is seconds; delicate surgery is hours. Inside combat this ladder gives way to the round, where actions are pinned to a fixed six seconds instead of rolled.

Reference rule — not active yet

The shorthand a written task uses to state its check.

A written task states four things in a fixed order: the skill it needs, the characteristic it uses, how long it takes and how hard it is.

Formal task format

Task description: Required skill, Characteristic, Time increment, Difficulty

Most tasks are written informally instead, as a difficulty followed by a skill — a Very Difficult (-4) Engineering task. When a task is stated that way the referee supplies the characteristic and the time increment, if the situation has not already made both obvious.

Reference rule — not active yet

Trading time against your DM.

You can trade time against your odds. Move up one or two rows of the time ladder to work faster at -1 per row, or down one or two rows to take longer at +1 per row.

Declare the change before you roll — this is a decision about how you are working, not a reaction to how it went. Two rows is the limit in either direction, and the referee settles anything the new time frame makes nonsense of.

Reference rule — not active yet

Doing two things at once, and the penalty for it.

Doing two things at once costs -2 on every check involved, and each further thing costs another -2. The penalty lands on all of them, not only on the extra one.

Multiple-action penalty

-2 to every check, for each extra thing you are doing at once

Flying a ship while firing its weapons, or disarming a bomb while staying out of sight, are two tasks sharing your attention. Splitting it degrades both — which is usually the argument for doing one of them properly and leaving the other to somebody else.

Active · completed 2026-08-11T04:42:10Z

Using a world's law level as the target of a check.

Where a task runs into local law, the world’s law level sets the difficulty. A lawless world makes it Routine; a tightly policed one makes it Formidable.

The law level is one digit of the world’s profile, so the difficulty of smuggling a weapon past a port, buying something restricted or talking your way out of a stop is legible before you land. This table is the starting point; the referee still moves it for what you are actually attempting.