LENS — Reference Layer

The run-mode layer — the pages you keep open beside your game while you play. The teaching chapters explain why these rules work; How to Read a Lens Roll is the full procedure; this section is for using it all at speed.

R1 · Session Zero — set up once, then play

Do these once, before the first roll. Most take a line.

1. Source. What is the character moving through — a module, a dungeon or hex, a solo tool or oracle, or your own three sentences? The richer the source, the lighter your prep (see R12).
2. Character. Any character who can perceive and can have a gut-feeling qualifies. Have the sheet to hand — the Stake comes off it (R9).
3. The dice. Five: two d6 in different colours, for the Yes/No dice only; the Pressure d8; and the Result die — a d10 or a d12, chosen per roll, not here. The d10 for an answer that stays inside the world’s rules; the d12 only when this answer may break them, which opens results 11–12 for that one roll. Uncanny is relative to the setting: a familiar spell, a known creature, a ship’s drive that works the way the setting says it works — all d10.
4. Palette (optional). A genre reading-layer for the table results. Pick one if it helps; it changes flavour, never mechanics — the Dial included.
5. Ignition — three lines. Aim, Stake, Stage (R9), each with a table behind it. The source gives the Aim and the first lead; the sheet gives the Stake; the Stage is the first clock.
6. Set World Pressure. Size it to how long you want the arc to run (R5 sizing) and write the Aim and the Stake beside it. When it fills, the Stake comes due.

R2 · The Lens Loop

The whole engine, in order. Run it whenever the fiction hands you a question your character has earned an answer to; the rest of the time, just play your game. How to Read a Lens Roll is the full treatment. This is the card.

1. Golden Question. Whose eyes am I behind — and what is objectively true?
2. Has the character earned the answer? A host check succeeded, or none was needed. If the host said no, don’t roll to get it anyway. If it’s a yes/no fact, use the Yes/No dice.
3. Pick the table. Column: what kind of answer do I need? Row: what am I dealing with? (R10.) Your judgement, not a roll — and never by skill name.
4. Pick the Result die. d10 inside the world’s rules — d12 if this answer may break them.
5. Roll the Result die and the Pressure d8 together. Once.
6. Read it forwards or backwards. Forwards — the character has earned it: Result → Complication → Tell → Impression → record the Resistance → you choose what they do. Backwards — you know something they don’t: Approach → one immediate action → Follow or Resist (R3) → your game resolves it → the waiting Result, read through that outcome → Tell → Impression → record the Resistance. Never both faces of the d8 in one roll.
7. Mark the clock. The Resistance as Beats, under its tag. A Resisted Approach adds one more, under the same tag.
8. Check the fill. Full? Run the Commit Procedure (R4) before you narrate on.
9. Hand off to your game. Anything discrete and uncertain — a save, a check, a fight — your RPG resolves. The clock does not care whether it succeeds. A serious failure the host leaves without a consequence is a pressured moment: roll the table for what the character was doing and read it through the failure — or Reckon, if they were looking or asking. The tag is the price.
10. Continue, from inside the character. Lens fires again when the next moment has pressure.

Read it. Do it. Mark it. Move on.

R3 · Follow or Resist

These exist only in a backwards reading. In a forwards reading you have earned the answer, and there is nothing to Follow or Resist — you choose freely, and that is the point of having earned it.

A backwards reading hands you the character’s gut as a small action — the Approach, rendered as an Impulse. It is the thing a Game Master narrates on your behalf: you flatten to the wall; you slide the papers across as if bored. It decides what the character does before your knowledge can, and that gives your game an honest reason to make its check.

• Follow — take the Approach as the character’s next real action. When the Result is revealed, record its Resistance as printed. This is the default, it is free, and most rolls are Follows.
• Resist — take the pen. Choose a different Approach and author the character’s response against the grain. That is yours to do; it is your character. When the Result is revealed, its Resistance is one higher, under the same tag: the world tightens because you steered it. You may Resist for any reason — a competing instinct, a value, even something you the player know.

You never pay to rewrite a Complication. That is not steering the character. It is deciding what is true about the world — the author’s chair.

The firewall is the Belief, not the action. Whatever you make the character do, the Belief you later write must still come only from what they actually felt, saw, or rolled (R4). Steer the conduct if you must; you cannot give the character knowledge they have not earned. The sharpened tag prices the authorship; the Belief keeps the character honest. And a Resist never escapes consequence — it adds to the tag, so the Commit lands harder in that shape.

R4 · The Commit Procedure

When a Pressure Clock fills, run this before narrating on. A full clock is not success or failure — your RPG resolves the action; the Commit says what the world does in response to the pressure that built.

1. Find the Dominant Tag. The tag with the highest combined value in the record. If two tie, the most recently rolled of them wins; the earlier one stays on the Card but does not shape this Commit. Untagged fill never counts.
2. Shape it. If the change isn’t obvious, roll Turn Spark (d6): 1–2 Commitment, 3–4 Escalation, 5–6 Revelation. If the tag record is empty — every tag targeted away — the Commit is shaped by Turn Spark alone.
3. State the Commit. One concrete world-state change, on screen or off. It is a fact now; it goes on the Card.
4. Move any Belief it bears on. A Commit is a fact. Every Belief on the ledger (R7) that it supports goes up one; every Belief it contradicts goes down one. You don’t get to leave them. If the character forms a new Belief from it, write that too — from what they felt, saw, or rolled, never from what you know.
5. Advance the clock above by +1, carrying this clock’s Dominant Tag (untagged if there was none). See R5.
6. Open the next clock. The Commit usually writes it; name it as a question and size it.

No dead ends (Discover). If a Discover-family clock asked a question you still can’t answer, the Commit delivers a Lead (a concrete next direction, R11) and a Consequence (the Dominant Tag as a cost). Never a wall.

R5 · Pressure Clocks and World Pressure

Marking the clock. Every roll marks the clock it serves — that is the always-on tempo, not a cost — unless it is an informational read of an NPC or alternate viewpoint, which adds nothing to any clock (see Ch5, the three Stances). On a roll that does mark a clock: add the Result’s Resistance as Beats, and record the tag — it can become the Dominant Tag. When a tag reaches +3 on a clock, give it a name in the world — Exposure +3: the duty log — the thing that will Commit, and the thing you would Target. If you Resisted the Approach in a backwards reading, the revealed Result’s Resistance is one higher, under the same tag — the price of taking the pen. The clock a roll serves is normally your own character’s; a non-PC perspective takes Beats only if you have opened a clock for it (Ch5, Stance Three), and then they go there, never on yours. Untagged Beats — a tag struck by Targeting, or a child clock that committed tagless — fill the clock but never feed the Dominant Tag. When the clock fills, Commit (R4): the Dominant Tag — highest-valued tag in the record, ties to the most recent — shapes what lands.

A Pressure Clock is a question in the character’s voice, a size, and a row of boxes that fill with Beats. It measures movement toward consequence, not progress toward success. It is always there — even in calm it waits as the standing question above your play, stirring only when you roll; a Beat is the tempo and countdown you came for, not a cost, and if it fills faster than the scene wants, size it bigger.

World Pressure carries the Aim and the Stake. Write them on it: close the case — or Vice takes it and Reyes goes down for it. Local clocks ask scene questions — can I get the retirement records before the shift ends? — never the whole Aim. If your first local clock and World Pressure have the same name, the Aim has slipped down a level; lift it. When World Pressure fills, the Stake comes due, in the shape of its Dominant Tag — the Stake is what, the tag is how — and every open Belief is tested (R7). That is the ending, whatever the state of the Aim.

Everything is a Pressure Clock at some scale. Local clocks fill from Lens rolls. When any clock fills and Commits, it adds +1 to the clock one level up, and that Beat carries the filling clock’s Dominant Tag (or is untagged, if it committed on Turn Spark alone). World Pressure is simply that next level up — it builds a tag record from the dominant tags of the local clocks beneath it, and when it fills it Commits by the same procedure (R4) and may feed a clock above it. Stack as many levels as you like — local, World, campaign, saga — and size each to taste, even to 1. The names are ours; rename any tier to suit your game, and the mechanics never change.

One rule at every scale: a clock fills from below, Commits, and feeds the clock above.

Untagged fill. Beats that fill a clock but never enter its tag record. Two sources: a tag removed by Targeting, and a tag-less child clock feeding its parent. They move pace; they never shape the Commit. A Resisted Approach is not one of them — its extra Beat carries the Result’s own tag.

The timeline guard. No clock, at any level, may move an authored timeline. When the fiction fixes the climax to its own calendar — the vote on the third day, the duel at dawn, the tide that will not wait — that scheduled event is the confrontation, on its schedule, whatever the clocks read. The clocks produce the escalations that build toward it; they never reschedule it. Where the fiction has a fixed climax, size World Pressure to that calendar, and the Stake comes due there. Where it has none, World Pressure’s fill is the climax: the Stake comes due.

Sizing a local clock

Social and investigative play runs on +1s and wants room: a single social scene 0/4–0/5; a social or political arc 0/6–0/8 or chained; a scene of investigation 0/4–0/6.

Sizing World Pressure

Teaching note: meet this at two levels first — local clocks feeding one World Pressure — and treat deeper nesting as an option. The rule is one rule; the newcomer meets it as “World Pressure is just a bigger clock.”

R6 · Targeting a rising tag

When a tag is climbing toward dominance and the character does not want the world to commit in that shape, they can target it.

1. Name it, concretely, in the fiction. The rising Exposure is the cameras on the gantry; the building Threat is the dog off its chain. If it reached +3 it is already named on the Card (R5) — that is the target.
2. Act against it with your game’s rules — a shot, a check, a Yes/No roll if the fiction is open.
3. On a hit: the tag is struck from the record — it can no longer be the Dominant Tag. Its Beats stay on the clock as untagged fill. Pace is untouched; the clock commits on schedule, just in a different shape (or on Turn Spark alone if the record is now empty). Target a tag and the whole tag goes — several Beats of one tag are the same pressure growing, not separate sources, so clearing it clears them all.
4. On a miss: the pressure worsens — add a Beat to that tag (+1). A miss is the only time Targeting moves the clock’s pace.

Scope. Targeting reaches only a tag building on the current clock. A Commit already on the Card is a fact the world won’t take back; you live with it, you don’t Target it. And remember the act is real — the shot that kills the cameras is heard, and may earn its own Lens roll and a new tag. The world answers what you do to it.

R7 · The Pressure Card and the Belief ledger

One card per clock; any notepad or index card works. It is the canonical session log — the world made concrete and inarguable, and the character’s mind beside it.

Read the Card as an oracle mid-session: a Fact is true whether the character knows it or not; a Belief that contradicts a Fact means the character is simply wrong, and that is story. The gap between them is where the tension lives.

The ledger. Two kinds of line. A Belief is one claim the character holds that the world hasn’t confirmed — a theory or a prediction, in their voice, rated 1–5. A Question is a thing the character hasn’t leaned on — is the sire lying? — written with a question mark and no number, deliberately unresolved. A Question becomes a Belief the moment the character leans — until then it is answered only by play — never in your head. The rating is the Yes/No likelihood, and it measures how far the record on the Card supports the line — never how far your own knowledge does. Four states, one card: observed is the Tell, inferred is a Belief, unresolved is a Question, confirmed is a Fact — a Commit, a host result, the source, or a tested Belief. Facts and Beliefs are separate objects. A Commit is what a filled clock does to the world; a Belief is what the character thinks, from any source — a host roll, a Lens roll, a look across a room. Neither is written about the other.

Writing. Whenever the character forms one — from an Impression with backbone, a host result, a Commit, the fiction. Written from what they felt, saw, or rolled, never from what you know: could the character have known this from what they experienced? If no, write the smaller Belief. Start at 1 for a hunch, 2 when there is reason to think it, 3 for a conviction. Not every Impression goes on — write the ones the character would act on, or fear.

The three grades, in one case. A hunch: the steward looked away when the seal was mentioned — the steward knows something · 1. Reason to think it: two witnesses have since put the steward at the gate that night — · 2. A conviction: your detective is at a desk with a piece of black-market tech, and the host’s lead table has just made a fact of it — the device is tied to an arms smuggler and a case another agency is running. The fact is the host’s — confirmed, no clock filled, not a Commit — and it goes on the Card as a Fact. The Belief you build on it — if this goes in my report, they take the case off me — is the character’s, and it starts at 3, because it rests on something confirmed, not on a look.

Moving a rating. Only a Fact moves it — a Commit, a host result, the source, a Result’s fact, a tested Belief. One step per Fact, up if it supports the line, down if it contradicts it, and a Fact that bears on a line moves it — you don’t get to leave it. Nothing else moves a rating: not an Impression, not a Tell, not a scene ending, not a change of heart. No schedule. The world moves the numbers, and only the world. Below 1, strike it. Strike anything the story has stopped feeding. At 5 it stays at 5.

Test — when you’re ready. You call it: a confrontation, a key piece of evidence, a realisation in which the truth is laid bare. Does it feel inevitable? Then roll the Yes/No dice at the rating, Twist die alongside, and read the throw in order — answer die against the rating, doubles for decisive, twist die on a 1 or a 6 (table, R11). The Yes/No answers, always. The host gets you to the moment and resolves what the answer starts. If the source already answers, there is no roll — the source is the confirmer. A test is never repeated. Resolved either way, the line comes off the ledger and its answer joins the Facts — wrong is a fact too: the claim is false, and the world has said so. It does not go back to 1 to be built again. If the character still believes something afterwards — they just haven’t noticed yet — that is a new Belief, at 1, from the wreckage.

Convincing others. Arguing a Belief to someone — selling the theory, asking for help on its strength — test it: confirmed gives advantage on the host roll, wrong gives disadvantage. A test made to convince doesn’t resolve the line. It stays at its rating.

The one forced test. When World Pressure fills, every open Belief is tested, in the order written, as part of the confrontation. Nothing is left hanging. Otherwise nothing forces a test — Facts move Beliefs, and the player calls the moment.

R8 · The Eight Conflict Tags

Tone-neutral: the name is constant, the fiction fits your world. Threat in horror is something hunting you; in a pastoral game it is the ward wandered too far from the path.

The value is fixed by where the Result sits on its table: +1 on results 1–6, +2 on 7–10, and Uncanny +2 on 11–12. The tag names the kind of pressure a Result adds — not whether the roll was good or bad.

R9 · Ignition — three lines, three tables

Three lines, two clocks, and you roll. Each line has somewhere to pull from — the source, the sheet, a table — so none of them is written from nothing. Write them bare: no “right now I must”, no “if I fail”. Then World Pressure reads as one sentence — find the missing courier and close the case — or the captain asks me to retire.

• Aim — what I must do. One phrase: find the courier and close the case. The source almost always gives it. Blank page: Stakes Prompt, Need column (R11). It goes on World Pressure — it is the arc, not the first scene.
• Stake — the thing on your sheet this can cost you. Not a feeling and not a mood: a line you can point to — a partner, a rank, a licence, a home, a memory, a secret. Roll or choose where to look (Loss d6, R11), then name it from the sheet: the captain asks me to retire is standing; Ana stops answering is someone. This is World Pressure’s label, and when the countdown fills it comes due. It is the one line no source writes for you, and the one that makes the case yours.
• Stage — the first scene, as a question. Take the first lead — the source gives it; blank page, Lead d6 — and what presses on it — the scene itself, or the Stage-constraint d12 — and ask: Can I [reach the lead] [before / without / while] [what presses]? — Can I get into her flat before the landlord clears it? Size 4. That is your first clock. It is never the Aim as a question: if your first clock and World Pressure say the same thing, you have written the case twice.

Then roll.

If you want to write your way in, the Hook and the Opening Beat are in R11 under From a blank page. They are tools, not steps.

R10 · The Table Index

Twenty-five tables in a five-by-five grid. The column is the kind of answer you need; the row is what you are dealing with. Pick by judgement — what the character is trying to do — never by the name of a skill.

Each family — Perceive, Discover, Relate, Act, Endure — has an index page carrying its routing table, its close boundaries (“Examine, or Search?”), and how a scene moves between its tables. Each table page carries its question, its twelve Results, its tailored Pressure d8, and one worked example. If you’re unsure which table, ask what would still matter if the character used a different method — if it’s still about studying one thing closely, it’s Examine, whatever the dice are called.

R11 · Mini-tables

Turn Spark (d6) — shapes a Commit when the change isn’t obvious.

No Dead Ends — Lead (d6) — when a Discover-family clock commits without the answer, give a Lead and a Consequence (apply the Dominant Tag as a cost).

Stage constraint (d12) — when a Stage doesn’t actively push back, roll for one. (How many: roll d6, halve, round up; then roll that many d12.)

Loss (d6) — where on the sheet to look for the Stake. Name the actual line; the table only points.

Yes/No Dice — for an objective binary the fiction doesn’t already settle. Frame the question so yes is the leaning answer; set a likelihood 1–5; roll the answer die; ≤ likelihood = yes. A 6 never says yes. If the answer is certain, don’t ask — roll the Twist die alone if you want texture on a known fact.

Belief test — Yes/No dice at the Belief’s rating (R7). Read in order: answer die against the rating; doubles = decisive; twist die 1 = and, 6 = but. 1-1 and 6-6 compose. Belief tests only — on a plain fact question the Yes/No stays a two-second tool.

Stakes Prompt (d12) — a premise for prep, when you’re building from nothing. Read across: “To [Need], you must risk [Cost], because this world runs on [Truth], and right now you are a [Perspective].” Need is your Aim, Cost points at your Stake (name it from the sheet), Perspective is your character’s angle; Lead d6 and the Stage-constraint d12 give the Stage.

From a blank page — optional tools for when there is no source and you want more than three lines. Neither is a step of Ignition.

• Hook — Anchor: “If I have [detail], the world has [implied fact].” Trigger: “Right now, ___.” Keep it about who you are, not the objective. Skip it for anything with a source.
• Opening Beat — Position + First Action + First Question, written as one present-tense paragraph at eye level, ending on the unanswered question. The first paragraph of the session, if you want one.

R12 · Starting from your source

The flow is always the same (R2, and How to Read a Lens Roll); only the prep changes. The richer the source, the lighter your work.

Lens proposes; the world disposes. A Result establishes its fact — the table promises it, and it is true. What it does not establish is what the fact means. That is the Impression, the character’s read, and it is a candidate until a confirmer agrees: the source, the host outcome, a Yes/No, a later Result, or a Commit. You never confirm your own read. With only your three sentences and no other oracle, Lens’s own Yes/No is the minimum confirmer — set the likelihood from the fiction, not the answer you want. Hold every read felt, not fixed, until confirmed.

Host mechanics that overlap. If your host has a bargain mechanic — a bonus now for a consequence later — take the consequence as a Beat under a tag: domain known, form deferred to the Commit. Lens never touches the host’s odds. It only holds the price. If your host has player-facing rolls, use them. If it doesn’t, that is the host’s design, and not Lens’s to convert.

R13 · Worked example — the planted lure

The single scene where player-knowledge, character-belief, the firewall, the priced choice, and the host hand-off are all visible at once.

The module says the checkpoint inspector has been tipped off — she is waiting for a courier with a red seal. The player knows this. Mara, the courier, does not. Clock: Can I clear the checkpoint? 0/4.

The roll. Mara is holding a cover story under the inspector’s attention, so the table is Deceive. Nothing here could turn uncanny: the d10. The player knows what Mara doesn’t, so the roll is read backwards. The dice show Result 7, d8 1.

Read the Approach first — CAREFUL. The Impulse: hand over the papers and say nothing she isn’t asked. The player is tempted to make Mara hide the seal — because the player knows. That would be taking the pen: a Resist, choosing a different Approach. It is allowed, and when the Result is revealed its tag will be one higher for it. But watch the firewall: whatever Mara does, the Belief must come only from what she felt — never “she’s been tipped off about a red seal.” Here the player Follows. Mara, who knows nothing, slides her papers across as if bored.

The host resolves the discrete thing. Mara’s game runs a Composure check as the inspector studies her. That roll — not Lens — decides whether the bluff holds. It does.

Now the waiting Result — TESTED. The deception is accepted, but continued trust requires an immediate answer, proof, or demonstration. Read through the success. Tell: the inspector glances up a second time, a half-beat too soon, and asks Mara to name her consignor aloud. Impression: this one’s paying attention — she wants to hear me say it. Control +2, as printed. Clock → 2/4. The Belief that goes on the Card is the Impression and nothing more.

A later beat — Targeting. Two rolls on, Exposure is climbing and about to dominate; the Commit would land as identified. Mara doesn’t want that shape. The player names the rising Exposure concretely — the duty-log the inspector keeps glancing at — and Mara “accidentally” knocks the inkwell across it (a host Sleight check, success). The Exposure tag is struck from the record; its Beats stay as untagged fill, so the clock still fills on schedule — but now it will commit as something other than they have your name. The spilled ink is real, though: the gasp draws a guard, and the next Lens roll may earn a fresh tag.

Commit (clock fills). Dominant Tag now Control (Exposure gone). Commit: the inspector waves Mara through but holds her papers a beat too long — she’s clearing the courier she expected, not the one she got; the tip said red seal, and Mara’s is black. Belief: “Close. She bought it. I’m through.” The gap between what the world did (a tipped-off inspector, briefly wrong-footed, who will realise) and what Mara believes (a clean pass) is the scene the player can already feel coming — and Mara cannot.

The ledger, through the same scene. Back at TESTED, Mara’s Impression — this one’s paying attention, she wants to hear me say it — had backbone, so it went on the ledger: She was expecting someone · 1. The Commit is a Fact, and it bears on that line — the held papers — so it moves, to 2. Mara forms a new Belief from the wave-through — I’m through, she bought it · 3. World Pressure ticks. Two scenes on, at the inn, another clock fills — Commit: a rider in the checkpoint’s colours dismounts in the yard. A Fact that bears on both lines: I’m through contradicted, 2; she was expecting someone supported, 3. Mara is in the loft with the trapdoor open and the rider asking questions ten feet below. The player calls it — this is the moment — and tests I’m through at 2. Answer die 5: wrong. Twist die 6: but — a Lead. The rider asks for “the courier with the black seal,” and Mara hears every word. The line comes off the ledger and its answer joins the Facts: the checkpoint has circulated the black seal. New Belief from what she now knows: They know the seal, not my face · 1. And she was expecting someone sits at 3, untested, until Mara has a way to ask — or the countdown fills and asks for her.

R14 · Run-mode terms

The terms you need mid-roll. The Glossary carries the full set.

• Result — the row you rolled: a name, one fact, a tag, a Resistance. True by the table’s promise.
• Complication — the d8’s object face — a second fact that makes the Result not simple. Forwards only.
• Approach — the d8’s character face — how they instinctively act. Backwards only, read first.
• Impulse — the one concrete action rendered from the Approach. Follow it or Resist it.
• Tell — the one sensory sign the character experiences. Evidence, never explanation.
• Impression — what the character takes the Tell to mean. Subjective, and may be wrong.
• Belief — what they carry forward as true, written from experience alone. On the ledger, rated 1–5, moved only by Facts, tested when you choose. The firewall.
• Question — a thing deliberately left unresolved, on the ledger unrated. Becomes a Belief when the character leans; answered only by play.
• Resistance — the tag and number on the Result, added as Beats. +1 on 1–6, +2 on 7–10, Uncanny +2 on 11–12.
• Follow / Resist — take the Approach, or choose another for +1 under the same tag. Backwards only.
• Dominant Tag — the tag with the most Beats when a clock fills, ties to the most recent. It shapes the Commit.
• Commit — the world-state change when a clock fills. A Fact, on screen or off — and a Fact is anything confirmed on the world’s side: a Commit, a host result, the source, a tested Belief.
• World Pressure — the clock one level up. Each local Commit feeds it +1, tagged. Nestable — and it never moves an authored timeline.