Chapter 7 — Lens Tables
Reading Lens Results
Lens begins with a fact, not with a table.
Before you roll, something in the fiction is already true. Your RPG, module, generator, or oracle has told you what is present: a room with two exits, a guard at the gate, a locked chest, a wet field beyond the river, a corridor running straight ahead. That is the foundation. Lens does not replace it. Lens does not invent a new reality over the top of it. Lens tells you how that already-existing moment lands on a specific mind, in a specific situation, right now.
This is the mental shift the system asks for.
A result like Too Open, Wrong Fit, The room can see, or Something crossed with me is not trying to replace the room description with a more poetic one. It is showing you what this place feels like from inside the character’s perspective. It may stay at the level of suspicion, pressure, unease, or posture for several beats of play. It does not have to become explanation immediately. Often, it should not.
If you are new to Lens, trust this rule:
Add detail, not explanation.
Start with what is plainly there. Let the result sit on top of that fact. Follow the Impulse. Mark the tag. Move on.
That is enough.
Whose perspective you roll
Chapter 1 set the only bar a perspective has to clear: it can perceive, and it can have a gut. Anything that clears it can be the viewpoint you roll — and at the table that is a far wider field than your own character. Roll an NPC’s gut when you want to know how the moment lands on them and not only on you. Roll an incidental walk-on for a beat of texture. Roll a point-of-view character you adopt for a single result, purely for flavour — the goblin behind the door before it opens. The eyes are yours to choose; the method does not change.
The perceiver need not be one body. A crowd, a mob, a warband, a ship’s company, a besieged city — any collective that can be said to feel as one — rolls as a single gut: what the crowd senses, what the city dreads. You are not modelling every mind inside it; you are reading the one mood that moves through it. Whichever eyes you take, you state what is plainly true and then read how it lands on them — and the firewall holds exactly as before: what that perspective perceives is theirs, and what you the player know stays out of it.
In a large‑scale event you can roll the POV in focus and move it — a battle read first through one commander, then the other; a siege through the watch on the wall, then the captain — and the separate reads layer the texture (L14, L18).
Reading another perspective is, by default, information: it marks no clock and adds no pressure to your own. It takes Beats only when you have opened a clock for that perspective — the full routing of read‑versus‑pressure, and whose clock, is Chapter 5’s three dispositions.
How to Form a Lens Statement
When you form a Lens statement, add only three things to the table text: the viewpoint character, an optional first sign, and the Impulse turned into action.
Do not add the explanation, cause, or hidden truth.
The build is:
Objective fact → optional first sign → subjective perception from the table, almost unchanged → Impulse as action.
Before you roll, establish one plain, objective fact in the fiction: who crosses, what boundary they cross, and what is plainly true on arrival. That fact should be something a camera could show. A simple formula is:
[Character] crosses [boundary] and arrives at [place]. Plainly, [objective detail].
For example:
Rory crosses the Water and reaches the far bank. Plainly, a wide field of wet grass stretches ahead under a low, darkening sky.
Lens then answers a different question: How does this crossing strike Rory, and what does he do immediately because of it? Not: What is really hidden here? That distinction matters.
And the named domain is the literal case, not its limit. The same read fires on the figurative: the crossing can be into a realisation, not only a room (L2); the hostile environment can be your own fevered body, not only weather (L19); a fight can be an argument. State the plain fact — physical or not — and read how it lands. The tables teach one move, not twenty‑five; the one you are on is only where you meet it.
#### Using the table text
Usually, the subjective perception is just the table line, almost unchanged. If the table says Something here is out of place, though I can’t name it yet, then in play you usually only change the pronoun or tense. I / me / my becomes he / she / they if you are writing in third person, or stays as-is if you are taking direct viewpoint notes.
There are three good ways to carry a result into play.
Fast procedural form. Use the table text almost exactly as written.
Rory crosses the Water and reaches the far bank. Plainly, wet grass stretches ahead under a low sky. Something here is out of place, though he can’t name it yet.
Slightly marked viewpoint form. Add a light viewpoint marker.
Rory crosses the Water and reaches the far bank. Plainly, wet grass stretches ahead under a low sky. To Rory, something here is out of place, though he can’t name it yet.
Fully rendered FID form. Lightly reshape the wording so it reads like live prose.
Rory crossed the Water and reached the far bank. Wet grass ran out under a low sky. Something here was out of place. He could not have said what.
Any of these works. The procedural form is fine.
What the d6 Does
The d6 is not there to solve the result. It is there to give the result somewhere to catch.
If the main Lens result tells you how the moment lands on the character, the d6 tells you what that feeling catches on first. It answers questions like: What catches the eye? What carries the feeling? What small concrete thing makes this impression playable?
It does not answer: What caused this? What is really hidden here? What will the later Commit be?
The d6 gives you a first sign, not a full explanation.
#### How much to take
Usually, take one d6 detail and stop. One sign is enough to bring the result into play. Do not roll the d6 repeatedly until the answer feels right. Do not stack several details trying to solve the whole scene. Lens works best when the d6 gives you one bite of concrete detail and then gets out of the way.
#### Think “surface,” not “solution”
A good d6 reading gives you the surface appearance of the result. It shows you where the feeling touches the fiction. That may be a mark, a sound, a spacing, a rhythm, a silence, a gesture, a pattern, a trace, a missing thing, or a detail that feels slightly wrong. The player should be able to point to it and say That is what my character catches on — not That is the answer to the whole scene.
If the d6 feels abstract, translate it into one playable sign and stop. If the d6 says attention sharpens, you do not need to explain whose attention or why. You only need one visible face: heads turn as the character enters, or a conversation dips, or someone at the far side looks up too quickly.
The d6 should narrow the image, not widen the mystery. If it is making the moment heavier, step back and use less.
#### When to skip the d6
Skip it when the main result already gives you enough, when the fiction already offers an obvious first sign, when you already know what concrete detail the character catches on, or when adding more would only slow play down. The d6 is support, not obligation.
What the Impulse Does
The Impulse is not flavour text. It is not a suggestion for future planning. It is the character’s next micro-action. It answers: What do I do before I stop to think too hard?
Without the Impulse, solo play often drifts upward into author-brain. You start trying to solve the scene from outside the character. The Impulse pushes you back down into conduct.
The table says:
There is nowhere to arrive without being seen.
Impulse: I’ll enter at once and keep my pace even.
So the Lens statement becomes:
Mara steps through the arch into the courtyard. Plainly, bright stone lies open between gate and door. There is no cart, column, or shadow broad enough to break her outline. There is nowhere to arrive without being seen. So she enters at once and keeps her pace even.
Not explanation. Not optimisation. Conduct.
Impulses sometimes use action verbs — move, step through, act, fall in line, count, follow. Read these as direction, not always as locomotion. Move can mean commit; step through, lock onto the opportunity; hold still, don’t react visibly. The character acts on whichever channel — physical, mental, postural, verbal — the situation leaves open. A chained character can still commit; a character in shock can still attend; one who can’t move can still refuse.
Some impulses are heavy — yielding, taking the loss, standing still while face is destroyed. These are the ones you will most want to resist, because nobody wants their character publicly humiliated or beaten. Resist if you must; the Beat is the price. But the moments a character takes the loss without flinching are often the most character‑defining the game will offer.
How Lens Results Become Concrete
A new player will often feel the urge to turn every result into an immediate fact: What caused this? What is really here? What does this mean? Lens does not ask for that straight away. Most of the time, it asks for less.
A Lens result becomes concrete in stages.
You have seen three of the four already, even if no chapter named them. Chapter 3 showed Felt: Kael at the cabinet, SOMETHING TUNED landing as Impression and Impulse, the Tag written on the clock and nothing yet decided about who tuned the thing or why. Chapter 4 showed Pattern: the visible tag record on the Pressure Card across multiple Lens rolls, the Dominant Tag emerging from the accumulating mix before any Commit. Chapter 4 then showed Commit: the watch sealing the corridor when Clock 1 filled, the world changing through the Commit Procedure with the Belief recorded alongside. What follows names these three stages so you can recognise them as they recur. It also names a fourth — Target — which Lens supports and the section below demonstrates with Kael. You will reach for it when you choose to act against a building dominant tag before it Commits.
#### Stage One: Felt, not fixed
At the moment of the roll, you usually only need four things: the plain fact of what is objectively there, the character’s subjective read of it, the Impulse as immediate action, and the Conflict Tag added to the clock.
If the result is Too Open, you do not need to decide who is watching. If the result is Wrong Fit, you do not need to decide what the concealed truth is. If the result is Hungry Ground, you do not need to decide whether the threat is a predator, a curse, the weather, a hidden trap, or the Shadow pressing on the character’s mind.
The result is allowed to remain what it is: a felt orientation. This is one of the main differences between Lens and more authorial solo procedures. Lens does not require you to explain every impression the moment it appears. It lets the character live inside the pressure first.
#### Stage Two: Pattern without certainty
As more Lens rolls accumulate on the clock, the Conflict Tags form a pattern. That pattern matters before it becomes literal. A sequence heavy with Exposure tells you that the situation is pushing toward being seen, identified, tracked, or remembered. A sequence heavy with Pressure tells you that strain, dread, urgency, or inner burden is building. A sequence heavy with Control tells you that options are narrowing or the character is being channelled into a smaller set of permissible moves.
This does not yet tell you exactly what concrete form that pressure will take. It tells you what kind of trouble is gathering. That is enough to shape play. The character starts acting as if the world has a grain, because it does. The tags tell you the grain long before they tell you the explanation.
#### Stage Three: Commit
When the Pressure Clock fills, the world commits. The Dominant Tag gives that change its shape. Exposure means being noticed, tracked, or identified. Cost means something was spent, lost, or closed. Control means the situation narrowed, sealed, or hardened. Pressure means strain, urgency, or dread has turned into an actual consequence.
The Commit is now a fact in the world. Record it on the Pressure Card. At the same time, record the character’s Belief about what is true. The Belief may match the Commit. It may lag behind it. It may be wrong. The Commit is what the world did. The Belief is what the character thinks happened. If they differ, play proceeds inside that difference.
#### Stage Four: Target
Sometimes a tag is building toward dominance and the player does not want to wait for it to commit. They can already feel its direction. So they choose to target it early.
They ask: What is the most plausible current source of this pressure in the fiction? Not the most convenient source. Not the one that would be easiest to beat. The most plausible one.
If the fiction supports it, Exposure might become CCTV coverage, footprints in mud, a suspicious witness, or a guard working the aisle with a torch. Pressure might become oppressive silence, a tightening deadline, or a shadowed place working on the character’s mind. Control might become a warded door, a checkpoint procedure, or architecture that channels movement into one route.
Once named, that source becomes concrete enough to act against. The player resolves the attempt with the Host RPG as normal. If they succeed, the tag is struck from the record — it can no longer become the Dominant Tag — but its Beats remain on the clock as untagged fill: the pace is untouched, the clock still fills and Commits on schedule, only in a different shape. Target a tag and the whole tag goes; several Beats of one tag are the same pressure growing, not separate sources. If they fail, the tag grows worse — add a Beat to it — and that is the only way Targeting moves the clock’s pace. If Targeting empties the record entirely, the Commit, when it lands, is shaped by Turn Spark alone.
Targeting is not guessing the answer. It is choosing to force the latent pressure into a form that can be confronted now.
Two limits keep it honest. Targeting reaches only a tag still building on the current clock — a Commit already written to the Card is a fact the world will not take back, and you live with it. And the act is real: the shot that kills the cameras is heard, the bribe is witnessed, so a Target can itself become the next Lens roll and earn a fresh tag. The world answers what you do to it.
##### Kael Targets Exposure
Rewind to Clock 3 of Kael’s run — Can I find the ledger before the sweep reaches me? It already carries [Pressure +1] from the threshold into the cabinet room and [Clue +1] from the disturbed dust that says someone has been here before him. Now a third roll lands [Exposure +1]: the watch’s sweep is fixing on the sound he made. Three tags, and Exposure is climbing toward dominance — Kael can feel where it is heading. In Chapter 4 he Resisted and let this Commit land; here, take the other branch. If Exposure tops the record, the Commit lands as the watch placing him: the sound becomes a location, the location becomes a man.
Kael targets early.
He names the source: the one sweeping lantern working back along the corridor toward the sound he made. That is the most plausible current carrier of the Exposure. Not the whole watch, not the disturbed cabinet, not the ledger already in his hands — the single light about to round the corner onto his alcove. Sam writes the target on the Card.
Sam reaches for the Host RPG. The action she chooses is a Stealth play — before the lantern’s arc swings across the cabinet alcove, Kael folds into the blind angle behind the half-open door and goes still, breaking the line the light needs to place him. The RPG handles the outcome.
If the check succeeds, the lantern’s arc crosses an empty alcove and moves on; the sweep keeps its rhythm and passes the sound off as the house settling. The [Exposure +1] tag is struck from the record — its single Beat stays on the clock as untagged fill, so the count is unchanged and the clock will fill on the same schedule. The record now reads [Pressure +1], [Clue +1]; the Commit, when it comes, lands somewhere other than identification.
If the check fails, the light finds him mid-fold. The [Exposure +1] grows to [Exposure +2] — the watch is fixing on him now, not casting about. The clock has worsened, but at least Kael knows where the pressure is now, and which threshold he has crossed.
Either way, Targeting forced the latent pressure into a form the Host RPG could resolve. The dominant tag never reached the Commit Procedure unopposed.
#### The rule
A Lens result does not become concrete just because you rolled it. It becomes concrete on two occasions: when the Pressure Clock fills and the world commits, or when the player chooses to target an approaching dominant tag and acts against it before it commits. Until one of those happens, the result may remain subjective.
Before and After
The easiest mistake with Lens is to treat the d6 like a decoder ring. Below, each pair shows the same kind of moment used two ways: one that over-explains, one that plays it right.
#### Wrong Fit
Main result: Something here is out of place, though I can’t name it yet. d6: Surface.
Over-explained: Rory crosses the Water and reaches the far bank. Plainly, wet grass stretches ahead under a low sky. The turf near the bank is pressed flat, revealing a hidden tripwire set by goblins earlier that morning. Something here is out of place, though he can’t name it yet. So he crouches and avoids the trap.
The d6 did not need to reveal the tripwire, who set it, and when.
Better: Rory crosses the Water and reaches the far bank. Plainly, wet grass stretches ahead under a low sky. The turf near the bank is pressed flat in one narrow run. Something here is out of place, though he can’t name it yet. So he crouches and lets his hand test the ground ahead.
The player has something concrete to play from, but the hidden truth remains hidden.
#### Hungry Ground
Main result: This place feels ready to take from whoever crosses. d6: Absence.
Over-explained: Rory crosses the Water and reaches the far bank. Plainly, a broad field of wet grass stretches ahead. No birds rise from it because a malevolent creature lives in a sinkhole beneath the field and has driven off all life nearby. This place feels ready to take from whoever crosses. So he drops a crust near the bank.
The d6 gave absence, not the monster, the lair, and the ecology.
Better: Rory crosses the Water and reaches the far bank. Plainly, a broad field of wet grass stretches ahead under a low sky. No birds rise from it. This place feels ready to take from whoever crosses. So he drops a crust near the bank and keeps the rest of his gear close.
The field feels wrong, the player has a sign, and the explanation can wait.
#### Thin Place
Main result: Something crossed with me, or the boundary did not hold. d6: Echo.
Over-explained: Salma steps beneath the arch into the shrine court. Plainly, the air is cooler inside. Her footsteps echo twice because a spirit has attached itself to her at the threshold and is following her into the temple. Something crossed with her, or the boundary did not hold. So she touches the wall.
The d6 suggested strangeness, not a full supernatural diagnosis.
Better: Salma steps beneath the arch into the shrine court. Plainly, the air is cooler inside. Her footsteps echo a fraction too long. Something crossed with her, or the boundary did not hold. So she touches the nearest stone and says its name aloud.
The uncanny feeling enters play without being nailed down too early.
#### Already Moving
Main result: Something here was underway before I crossed in. d6: Movement.
Over-explained: Nadia steps off the train and into the concourse. Plainly, commuters are moving toward the far exits. Something here was underway before she crossed in: a police sweep is closing the station and everyone is being redirected. So she matches the pace.
The d6 gave momentum, not the whole event structure.
Better: Nadia steps off the train and into the concourse. Plainly, commuters are already streaming toward the far exits. Something here was underway before she crossed in. So she falls into the same pace and tries not to be the pause.
It creates pressure immediately and leaves room for later revelation.
In the over-explained versions, the player jumps past the character’s perception and starts authoring the hidden structure of the scene. In the better versions, the player does only what Lens needs: state what is plainly there, add one first sign, keep the table result nearly unchanged, and turn the Impulse into action.
Use the d6 to sharpen the feeling, not solve it.
Common Mistakes
1. Treating the table result as objective fact
“The room can see” means there must literally be watchers, cameras, or magical eyes in the room.
It means the character experiences this arrival as exposed. Lens results often describe how a place feels from inside the character. A room that feels too open is still the same room your module or generator gave you. Lens has added perspective, not replaced fact.
2. Trying to explain every roll immediately
You roll Hungry Ground and immediately decide there is a buried lair, a cursed field, and a predator under the soil.
Let the field feel hungry. Let the character act accordingly. Mark the tag. Keep playing. Lens is built so pressure can exist before explanation does. It only has to become concrete when the world Commits, or when you choose to target a dominant tag early.
3. Ignoring the Impulse
You read the Impression, enjoy the mood, then go back to planning from above.
The Impulse is not flavour text. It is the grain of the moment. Following it keeps solo play moving from inside the character’s perspective. If you ignore it, Lens becomes atmospheric but inert.
4. Treating tags as facts instead of pressure patterns
Exposure +2 means “I have definitely been identified.”
Exposure +2 means the situation is building toward being seen, tracked, recorded, or remembered. Tags are how pressure accumulates on the clock. The Dominant Tag points toward the shape of the Commit later; it does not force you to decide the exact fact at the moment of the roll.
A tag is the kind of pressure entering the scene, not a label for the thing you found. ALREADY COMPROMISED on a back-room search can land as Reputation — the pressure of others knowing your trade — even when nothing in the room is literally about your name. When a tag seems not to fit what you rolled, that is the invitation to read how that pressure is entering, not a sign the table misfired. Read the pressure, not the noun.
5. Confusing Commit with success or failure
The clock filled, so the character must have succeeded or failed at the task.
The clock filled, so the world changed in response to the pressure that built while the character was in the situation. The Pressure Clock is not a progress tracker. A full clock does not resolve the threshold; your RPG handles action outcome, while the clock tells you what the world does back.
6. Giving the character information the player gained from the procedure
Because the player understands what the tag probably means, the character acts as though they understand it too.
The character only gets the external result, the felt impression, and whatever they can perceive in-fiction. A successful Lens moment may still surface the wrong thing; the character may catch the glint and miss the trap. That gap is a feature.
7. Rolling repeatedly to get the real answer
The first result feels too strange or too partial, so you stack more Lens rolls trying to force clarity.
Use one roll for one meaningful moment, then play from it. If you need one concrete hook, add one detail and move.
8. Thinking uncertainty means the procedure failed
If I do not know what this means yet, the table did not help.
If the roll changed how the character reads the moment, what they do next, or what pressure is building, it worked. A Lens result can succeed even when it remains unresolved. That unresolved state is often where the tension comes from.
What Lens Does Not Do
Your RPG resolves outcomes. Attack rolls, skill checks, saves, damage, healing. Persuasion checks, intimidate rolls, Charm spells. Travel mechanics, fatigue tracks, rest recovery. Social subsystems like One Ring’s Councils, Burning Wheel’s Duel of Wits, Pendragon’s Trait-driven conflicts, V:tM’s Disciplines. Lens generates perception and pressure. They run in parallel. A Lens roll does not replace a skill check. A skill check does not replace a Lens roll. The host RPG handles the transactional outcome; Lens reads the experiential and psychological texture the outcome doesn’t cover.
Where the host has narrative-shape mechanics that already read character texture — Burning Wheel’s Beliefs, Ironsworn’s Bonds, FATE’s Aspects — Lens fires more selectively, only when the host’s mechanics don’t already cover the moment. The overlap is real, and the rule is: do not double up. If your host system already handles the inner read for a moment, let it. Lens covers what the host leaves uncovered.
Lens does not roll for every moment. It fires when a moment has pressure — when the character’s perception of the situation matters, when the gap between what the player knows and what the character sees creates tension, when the world is pushing back through something other than a dice roll. If nothing is pressing, narrate and move on.
Lens does not tell you the truth about the world. It tells you the truth about how the character experiences the world. The Pressure Clock will commit the world’s truth in its own time.
The d10 / d12 Toggle
Each Lens table can be rolled on a d10 or a d12, and which you reach for is a per-roll, situational call. The d10 is the grounded read; rolling the d12 instead opens results 11 and 12 — the uncanny range — for that one roll. You are not fixing the world’s nature once at the start; you are deciding, this roll, whether the uncanny may enter this result. It is the same moment-by-moment judgement as choosing a table or Following the gut, and it cuts both ways: a thing can read uncanny here and ordinary again a breath later. Reach for the d12 when the moment could admit the impossible, the d10 when it could not.
L21: The Unseen Moves carries uncanny results throughout its range, not just at positions 11–12; L20: Invoke Power turns uncanny only in its upper range, when the power answers wrong. Their family intro explains why.
Impressions and Emergent Detail
Each table’s result generates an impression — a psychological orientation that colours how the moment reads from inside. The impression can also surface emergent details: a footstep echo, a held silence, a memory in the wrong moment, a hand’s tremor. These add to the established facts; they do not correct them. The Host RPG resolves what is true in the world; Lens reads what is true in the character’s gut and lets honest details surface from that read.
The impression colours the read; it never corrects the plain fact. A hooded stranger with a dagger can still read as no threat; a smiling diplomat can still read as hostile. It can colour what is felt or surface an emergent detail, but it never overwrites the text or invents a motive. This holds even when the module writes the truth onto the page: the module knows what is there, the character knows only what they read in this moment, and Lens gives you the read. When the two disagree, play the read — and let later play decide what the truth costs.
The Recovery Rule
If you get stuck at any point, come back to this:
What is objectively here?
Through whose eyes am I looking?
What does the result make this feel like?
What does the Impulse make them do next?
Then stop.
You do not need more unless the fiction demands it.
Fact first. Feeling second. Action next. Explanation later.
Or even shorter:
Read it. Do it. Mark it. Move on.
When Lens Fires
Mythic and its kin tell you when to roll by handing you a question: you want to know something, you ask, and the asking is the cue. Lens does not ask — it states. Plainly, the room is bare; a vent breathes in the corner. A statement carries no built-in “now roll,” so the cue has to come from you, and that worries new players: when am I meant to do this — am I getting it wrong?
You are not. This is the one place in Lens with no wrong answer, because Lens is not a toll you pay to play — it is the voice leaning in to help you. It is the GM’s before you leave, you notice…, and you reach for it whenever you want what that voice gives. Three moments call most often:
When the moment has weight — stakes, a threshold, a held breath; the places a GM would lean in. The pressure has to be present, not ambient — roll when the watching sharpens, not for the cameras you always walk past.
When your own knowledge pulls at the reins — you read the page, you know what waits behind the door. The instant you feel the urge to act on what you know, that pull is the cue: roll, and let what the character perceives decide what reaches them.
When you just want to know what they notice — you’ve taken in the plain fact and you want the texture under it. That is you asking the GM what you see, and the answer might be steam off a vent no one scripted. That unscripted thing is the surprise the whole system exists to give you.
When the thing Lens hands you is genuinely new — not texture on a written page but a fact that was not there before — it is a proposal, not a ruling. With a source in front of you, the source confirms it; with only a setting, your Yes/No does. See Where to Start: Lens proposes; the world disposes.
Trust this: the leaner the scene, the more Lens hands you. A sparse, finished room — boxed text, done — is not a poor place to roll; it is the best place, because Lens supplies the texture the page left out. You roll to find the picture, not only to react to one.
So roll freely. Every roll marks the clock — but that mark is not a cost. It is the creeping countdown, the tightening stakes, the tempo you came for; Beats are how a quiet scene gathers weight until the world has to answer. If you find you’re rolling often and the clock fills faster than the scene wants, you’ve done nothing wrong — your clock is simply small for how you play. Make it bigger. That is the whole adjustment.
Size to the domain’s tempo, too, not only your own habits: violence burns fast, so its clock runs small and hot (L14); deep cover gathers over weeks, so it wants a large one (L17). The table’s pace tells you the clock it wants.
The clock, then, is always there — a standing question above your play, even in calm. It moves only when you roll, so a quiet stretch barely stirs it and a tense one races. You never switch Lens off, and you never have to decide whether to “have” a clock: you have one, always, the way the character always has a next breath. When one fills and the world Commits, you name the next.
And if you are ever simply stuck — not stalled by the clock, but unsure what your character would even do — that is not a clock problem. Re-ignite: run Problem Setup from where you now stand, and it hands you a fresh Aim and a new question to chase. The clock you were carrying is untouched; it commits in its own time. Two different tools for two different troubles.
A note on the tables themselves. The Reading and Engaging tables fire on the named moment — you roll as you arrive, take stock, or face someone. The Executing and Forces tables read a situation that unfolds over time — a fight, a chase, deep cover, a vigil, a journey, a working — and the rhythm for all of them is one: roll at the opening, at each turning point, and at the end, never every beat. One read frames the gut until the situation’s shape changes; a year of routine fires once, not once a month. (L14, violence, is the sharp case — the first blow, the moment the fight turns, the end; not every swing.) So if a table tells you when to roll, follow it; if it doesn’t, the moment itself is the cue.
Reading the Situation
The four tables in this cluster belong to the moments before commitment — the beat of time in which a character arrives somewhere, takes stock, forms a first read of the people in front of them, or holds a sharp suspicion about what is true. Roll here when attention is active but action has not yet been decided.
Lens works whether your fiction is precisely drawn or barely sketched. A character moving “into the foothills” is enough; the table will tell you what kind of foothills these become for this character. The impression doesn’t need a detailed scene to colour — it can supply the colour itself when the scene is loose. Roll Lens to find the picture, not just to react to one.
When to Use Which Table
L1: Suspicion — the character holds a hunch, a gut-leaning, a thing they suspect to be true. L1 reads how the suspicion lands.
[Character] holds a suspicion: [the suspicion]. Plainly, [what is visible].
Before you roll, check the suspicion is the character’s own — anchored in expertise, a sensory cue, context, or role. If it exists only because the player read it in the GM text, that’s metagame: use the Yes/No Dice instead. L1 leans toward yes (suspicions lean toward themselves); for an unfiltered fact about the world, use the Yes/No Dice — “Is this ancient?” is Yes/No, “my gut says this is ancient — am I right?” is L1. The plain fact should raise the suspicion two ways, innocent and sinister, before the roll; if the fact alone answers it, don’t roll.
L2: Crossing a Threshold — the character has just crossed into a place, physically. L2 fires on arrival, the moment they are in the place.
[Character] is at [place]. Plainly, [objective detail].
L2 also fires on ideational crossings — arriving at a thought, a suspicion, a memory, a realisation, a conclusion. A private realisation can read as TOO OPEN when it exposes the character before they’ve spoken; a line of reasoning can read as HOSTILE GROUND when following it feels dangerous or already marked by harm. Same stem, with “a realisation” in place of a place.
L3: Read the Situation — the character pauses to assess. Reading the room, sizing up the situation, taking stock — including from a held, woken, or static position.
[Character] holds in [situation] and reads it. Plainly, [objective detail].
L4: Disposition — the character is reading a person. How do they feel toward them? What is their posture, their intent?
[Character] meets / addresses / faces [person]. Plainly, [objective detail].
If you are not sure, ask: am I testing a held suspicion (L1), arriving in a place (L2), reading a situation (L3), or reading a person (L4)?
Engaging People
These five tables cover active social interaction — the moment a weighted move is made, terms are bargained, status is tested, scrutiny is applied, or performance is delivered. Where the Reading cluster is about taking in, this cluster is about engaging. The character is no longer observing from the threshold. They are in the room, and the room is reacting to them.
Social encounters in TTRPGs often dissolve into a single Persuasion roll and a GM ruling. Lens gives them the same mechanical texture as any other pressure situation: Impressions that tell you how the social space feels from inside, Impulses that push you toward a character-shaped response before your player brain can optimise, and Conflict Tags that accumulate toward a Dominant Tag just as they would in a dungeon or a chase.
The danger in this cluster is rarely physical. It is reputational, financial, emotional, or structural. What you lose in a negotiation gone wrong is leverage, standing, trust, or options — and those losses carry forward on the Pressure Card just as concretely as a wound or a spent resource.
In every case, what the table produces is the character’s read — not a verdict on what the other party is truly thinking. The visible facts of the encounter stay whatever the fiction said they were; the impression is what this character makes of them right now. The two can disagree. When they do, play the read.
Tables in this cluster often fire together. A negotiation might roll L6 on the bargaining-state and L5 on each weighted offer. A political speech might roll L4 on the audience, L5 on the line meant to land, and L9 on the performer’s body holding the room. A confrontation in a court might roll L7 on the social ground and L4 on the elder’s disposition. The five tables aren’t competitors; they’re angles on the same encounter, each answering a different question.
The Impulse is the firewall between what the player knows and what the character does. Following it commits the character to acting on their gut, regardless of what the player has read in the module or worked out about the NPC. Resisting it costs a Beat — the price of taking the pen and steering the character against the grain. Either way, the next action is grounded in the character’s read, not yours. The deeper guard is not this Beat but the Belief: whatever you steer the character to do, what you record as their Belief must still come only from what they perceived. One table tightens this further — L16, Temptation — where resisting the gut needs an in-fiction reason as well as the Beat, because refusing your own want for no reason the character holds is not a beat the table will fund.
When to Use Which Table
L5: Make the Move — making a deliberate move into engagement. Opening contact, raising the stakes mid-exchange, naming what was unspoken, asking the question that shifts the conversation, the line in a speech meant to land.
[Character] approaches / addresses / confronts [person, group, or force]. Plainly, [objective detail].
L6: Terms and Leverage — bargaining as the live situation. L6 reads the negotiation as a whole; for the moment of making a specific offer, see L5.
[Character] negotiates / offers / threatens [person, group, or force]. Plainly, [objective detail].
L7: Masks and Status — reputation, hierarchy, face, scandal, dominance. Social reality as battlefield, where the social frame itself is being tested.
[Character] enters / speaks / acts within [social situation]. Plainly, [objective detail].
L8: Under Watch — surveillance, suspicion, interrogation, tests of loyalty. Attention tightening around the character; they are the subject. L8 fires when watching becomes a present pressure, not on ambient surveillance.
[Character] is checked / followed / questioned / observed at [situation]. Plainly, [objective detail].
L9: Performance and Spectacle — performing is the primary action. Oratory, ritual, entertainment, artistic expression, or holding a performed role under scrutiny (cover identity, undercover work, witness statement).
[Character] performs [act] before [audience]. Plainly, [objective detail].
If you are not sure, ask: am I making a weighted move into someone (L5), inside a bargaining state (L6), navigating social ground (L7), facing scrutiny as the subject (L8), or performing as the act (L9)?
Finding Things Out
These three tables cover the search for hidden things — hidden mechanisms, hidden presence and place, hidden knowledge. Together they form the Finding Things Out cluster: the mechanical handling of what does the character notice that they didn’t already know.
Each table is a suspicion-generator. The character enters a domain where hidden content is plausible; the table reads their gut about what their senses, attention, or instincts are surfacing. Fail-states return clean — the character moves on, the hidden thing stays hidden. Hit-states cue varying degrees of something is here with appropriate impulses for what to do about it.
Investigation in solo play has a unique problem. The player has read the module. They know where the secret door is, they know the chest is trapped, they know the witness is lying. Their character doesn’t. Finding Things Out solves the cheating-feeling that comes from being unable to forget what the player knows: when you roll L10, L11, or L12 on entering a relevant scene, the table — not your metaknowledge — decides what your character notices. If the table returns a fail-state, the character genuinely missed it. The player watches them walk past, knowing what’s there, and that’s the Hitchcock-tension the system is built to produce.
Lens generates the cue. The host RPG resolves the outcome. When L10, L11, or L12 returns a hit-state, the character has diegetic reason to make a host RPG perception, investigation, search, find traps, cryptography, forensics, sensors, or equivalent skill check. The skill check determines what the character actually finds. Expertise lives in the host RPG. L10/L11/L12 read gut access — roughly equal across characters — and the host system resolves what training translates into. Where the host system has no relevant skill, the impulse alone drives action.
The three tables fire on either side of any encounter. When the player-character searches, the relevant table reads their gut. When an NPC searches the player-character (the bounty hunter approaching a trap, the detective examining planted evidence, the alien hunting through the corridor), the same table reads the NPC’s gut. Fail-states preserve Hitchcock from either side — sometimes the searcher misses, sometimes the hunter walks past. Roll honestly for either side.
Granularity. Roll once per scene of domain-engagement. The result frames the character’s gut for the duration of the scene. Subsequent host RPG checks within the scene operate inside the frame. Re-roll only when the character moves to a different domain (from forensic crime scene to interrogation transcripts; from approaching a trapped door to entering the room beyond it) or returns to the scene after a significant break. Don’t re-roll for every individual piece of evidence within a single scene. The scene-frame holds.
When to Use Which Table
L10: Hidden Knowledge — examining material that might contain hidden information. Documents, records, ledgers, manifests, archives, captured evidence, encoded artefacts, forensic scenes. The truth lives in the material’s content rather than its placement.
[Character] examines / studies / decodes / researches [document, scene, artefact, or material]. Plainly, [objective detail].
L11: Hidden Mechanism — approaching a place, object, or area where engineered danger might be present. Traps, alarms, snares, wards, anything designed to activate against approachers.
[Character] approaches / examines / probes [object, location, or threshold]. Plainly, [objective detail].
L12: Hidden Presence and Place — entering or settling into a space that might be concealing something. Hidden objects, hidden compartments, hidden creatures, hidden access, environmental wrongness.
[Character] enters / surveys / settles into [space]. Plainly, [objective detail].
Picking the right table. If you’re not sure, ask: am I examining material for what it contains (L10), checking whether something is rigged (L11), or surveying a space for what’s concealed in it (L12)? The same situation can sometimes fire two tables in sequence — a trapped chest containing a coded document fires L11 first (the trap), then L10 (the document). Different beats, different rolls. The same character can also fire two tables in sequence — examining a forensic crime scene fires L10 (reading the evidence) and might fire L12 if the room itself becomes the question (is something hidden here beyond the visible?). Pick the table that matches the character’s primary concern this beat.
Connection to passive perception. Where the host RPG has passive perception (D&D Investigation, V5 Awareness, CoC Spot Hidden), it runs alongside Lens. Both work as perception layers. The host system’s passive check might surface the trap; Lens reads what the character’s gut makes of it. They sometimes agree, sometimes disagree, and the disagreement is its own drama — the sensors say clean, captain, but my gut won’t let me commit. Where the host RPG has no passive perception, L10/L11/L12 alone determine whether the character has cause to act on what their gut surfaced.
No Dead Ends
Solo investigation can stall. L10/L11/L12 may return fail-states across multiple scenes; host-RPG skill checks may not surface what the player needs; the Pressure Clock’s Commits deliver consequence, not necessarily answer. To prevent dead-ends, this rule applies to all investigation play.
When a Pressure Clock commits and you still don’t have the answer, do both:
Lead. A concrete direction for the next beat — a person, place, item, knowledge, faction, or time window. Choose what fits, or roll d6: 1–2 Person, 3 Place, 4 Item, 5 Faction, 6 Time window.
Consequence. The world pushes back. Apply the Dominant Tag as the cost — update an existing Pressure Card entry or add a new pressure if needed.
A Lead is not the answer. It’s what you do next. The investigation moves forward, and it costs you something for taking this long.
Executing
These six tables cover plans in motion — the moment commitment happens and the world starts reacting. The character is no longer reading or engaging. They are running an operation, fighting, fleeing, being tempted, maintaining a lie, or waiting for something that may not come. The common thread is forward momentum under resistance.
This is the largest family in Lens because execution takes many forms. An infiltration, a sword fight, a rooftop chase, a poisoned chalice, a deep-cover identity, and a stakeout are all execution — plans meeting reality, with pressure accumulating whether the plan holds or collapses.
The six tables share a small set of architectural rules. Each reads psychological shape, not outcome — the host RPG handles the operation’s success, the fight’s hit points, the chase’s distance, the offer’s terms, the cover’s surveillance test, the wait’s payoff. Lens reads what the moment surfaces from inside. Each table fires on either side of the action: when the player-character executes, fights, flees, is offered, deceives, or waits, the table reads their gut; when an NPC is on the other side of any of these, the same table reads the NPC’s gut. Solo play especially needs this — the player can’t honestly author NPC psychology without bias, and the dice generate it.
Lens does not replace your RPG’s mechanics in any of these domains. Your RPG resolves attacks, stealth checks, chase rules, social rolls, surveillance tests, perception; Lens reads the psychological shape alongside, never the outcome. (When Lens Fires gives the rhythm for rolling a situation that unfolds over time.)
When to Use Which Table
L13: Operation and Infiltration — executing a plan through resistance. Sneaking, conning, heisting, bypassing security.
[Character] executes [step of plan] at [location]. Plainly, [objective detail].
L14: The Shape of Violence — violence present or imminent. The character’s or creature’s psychological orientation in the fight.
[Character] faces / fights / confronts [opponent or threat]. Plainly, [objective detail].
L15: Pursuit and Chases — active chase. How the pursuit feels, environmental pressure, momentum.
[Character] chases / flees / runs through [environment]. Plainly, [objective detail].
L16: Temptation and The Offer — obvious advantage presents. Loot, shortcuts, deals, bribes, recruitments, easy solutions. L16’s impulses are all biased toward acceptance; resisting costs a Beat and requires in-fiction grounding.
[Character] is offered / finds / encounters [opportunity]. Plainly, [objective detail].
L17: Sustained Deception — maintaining a false identity over time. Deep cover, masquerade, the continuous cost of being someone else.
[Character] maintains [cover identity] in [situation]. Plainly, [objective detail].
Clock sizing — long‑arc cover benefits from a larger Pressure Clock (size 6–8): sustained deception accumulates pressure across weeks or months, and the larger clock lets multiple Commits land, each reshaping the cover without ending the assignment.
L18: The Waiting Game — active patience with something at stake. Stakeout, holding position, awaiting contact or rescue, vigil. L18 fills the silence — the texture of waiting that a GM would narrate in group play.
[Character] waits / watches / holds position at [location]. Plainly, [objective detail].
In sieges, fleet engagements, and other large‑scale vigils, L18 fires for the POV currently in focus — commander, junior officer, individual soldier — and multiple rolls across different POVs layer the texture of the wait.
If you are not sure, ask: am I running a plan (L13), in a fight (L14), in a chase (L15), being offered something (L16), maintaining a lie across time (L17), or waiting for something specific (L18)?
Lens and Combat: Extended Worked Example
Lens does not replace your RPG’s combat mechanics. Your RPG handles initiative, attacks, damage, and saves. Lens handles how the violence reads from inside, what it costs beyond the stat block, and what the world does when pressure peaks.
The rule is simple: roll Lens at the opening of violence, at turning points, and when it ends. Not for every swing. Between Lens rolls, your RPG runs the fight.
But what does that actually look like? Here is a fight played through, showing exactly when Lens fires and when the RPG handles things alone.
Setup
Kael, a sword-and-shield fighter, is wounded from an earlier encounter — half his hit points gone. Two bandits step from the treeline onto the trail ahead. One carries a short bow at range. One carries an axe and is closing. Nowhere obvious to run.
Clock: Survive the Ambush 0/4.
Opening: Lens Fires
Violence is imminent. Before any RPG dice are rolled, Lens fires on L14 to set the emotional shape of the fight.
Fact first: Kael is on a forest trail, wounded, facing two armed men. The bowman is at range, the axe-man is closing.
L14 roll: 6 — CORNERED. First Sign: Absence.
Nowhere left. Retreat gone. Desperation sharpening into something dangerous.
Impulse: I’ll take one with me.
Through Kael’s eyes: the trail behind is open ground — the bowman can pick him off if he runs. The axe-man is already closing. What’s absent is options. Kael is wounded and he knows what that means against two. He doesn’t plan to die here, but if he does, one of them comes with him.
Clock: Survive the Ambush 2/4. Threat +2.
Lens has done its job. It set the shape: desperation, no exit, the willingness to trade. Now the RPG takes over.
RPG Handles Rounds 1–2
No Lens rolls here. The RPG runs the fight.
Kael wins initiative. He closes on the axe-man — the nearer threat, the one he can reach before the bowman fires. Attack roll: hit. Good damage. The axe-man staggers. Axe-man swings back: miss. Kael catches it on the shield. Bowman fires: critical failure. The bowstring snaps. The arrow goes nowhere.
The fight’s shape just changed. The bowman is out. It’s now one-on-one with Kael holding momentum.
This is a turning point. Lens fires again.
Turning Point: Lens Fires
A turning point is any moment where the shape of the fight changes: someone drops, a weapon breaks, reinforcements arrive, the environment shifts, the odds visibly tilt. The bowstring snapping changed the fight from two-on-one to one-on-one. That earns a Lens roll.
Fact first: the bowman’s weapon just failed. The axe-man is wounded but still fighting. Kael is wounded too but has initiative.
L14 roll: 7 — OUTMATCHED. First Sign: Eyes.
The gap is real. This isn’t a fight — it’s an execution waiting to happen.
Impulse: I’ll find the door.
Golden Question — whose eyes, and what is objectively true? Kael’s eyes. Objectively, the RPG says he’s winning — he landed a hit, the archer is out. But Lens says OUTMATCHED and the impulse says find the door. That’s not victory. That’s Kael looking at the axe-man’s eyes and seeing something wrong. The wound isn’t slowing him. The pupils are dilated, fixed, not reading pain. He’s drugged. And Kael is at half health with no backup.
Clock: Survive the Ambush 4/4 — fills.
The Clock Fills Mid-Fight
The clock is full, but the fight isn’t over. The axe-man is still standing, still swinging. The RPG does not stop because a Lens clock filled. The clock filling changes the situation inside the fight. The RPG keeps resolving rounds.
Dominant Tag: Threat. Four Beats, all Threat.
Turn Spark: 6 — Revelation. A hidden truth surfaces.
Threat + Revelation: the danger was worse than it appeared, and now it’s visible.
Commit: “The axe-man is drugged — berserk root or something like it. He won’t stop until he’s dead or Kael is. The bowman, despite the broken string, is drawing a long knife and circling.”
Belief: “I hurt him. The archer’s bow is broken. I can finish the axe-man if I’m fast.”
Look at the gap. The Commit says the axe-man is drugged and the bowman is back in the fight. The Belief says Kael thinks he’s winning. The Impulse said find the door. Kael ignored it.
World Pressure advances +1.
RPG Resumes Combat
The RPG picks up. The Commit changed the fiction — the axe-man is drugged, the bowman has a knife — but the combat mechanics keep running.
Kael attacks again: hit. More damage. But the axe-man is still standing. He should be down. The drug is keeping him up. Axe-man swings: miss, but close.
Now Kael has a choice shaped by the Impulse he ignored. Lens said find the door. Kael pressed instead. The fiction is telling him the Impulse was right. The bowman is circling with a knife. The axe-man won’t drop. Kael is at half health and one good hit ends him.
He runs. The RPG resolves the disengage — Kael smashes the shield into the axe-man’s face, turns, and sprints. The fight ends through flight, not victory.
After the Fight
The fight is over. Does Lens fire again? Only if a new moment of pressure exists. If Kael is simply running down an empty trail, narrate and move on. If pursuit begins, that’s L15, not L14 — and it’s a new clock.
Lens steps aside when the moment doesn’t earn it. The fight ended. The Commit is on the card. Kael is running with a Belief that doesn’t match reality. That’s enough.
The Pattern
Lens fires at the opening. L14 sets the emotional shape. Kael is cornered, desperate, willing to trade his life. Threat +2 goes on the clock. Then Lens steps aside.
The RPG handles combat rounds. Initiative, attacks, damage, saves. No Lens rolls. No clock ticks. Two full rounds resolve through the RPG alone.
A turning point emerges from the RPG fiction. The bowstring snaps. The fight’s shape changes. Lens fires again. The clock ticks.
The clock fills mid-fight. The world Commits. The situation changes inside the fight — the truth about the drugged berserker surfaces. But the fight continues. The RPG keeps resolving.
The RPG resolves the end of the fight. Kael flees. The RPG handles the disengage. Lens doesn’t roll again because no new pressure moment exists.
Three things to hold onto:
Lens does not roll for every attack. It rolled twice in this fight. The RPG handled everything between. Most combat rounds are pure RPG.
The clock can fill mid-fight. When it does, the world Commits and the fight continues. The Commit changes the situation inside the fight, but the RPG keeps running. A filled clock does not end combat.
A turning point is a change in the fight’s shape. Someone drops. A weapon breaks. Reinforcements arrive. The environment shifts. The odds visibly tilt. If the fight is going the same way it was a round ago, no turning point has occurred and Lens does not fire.
Clock sizing. L14 runs hotter than other tables. Five of ten grounded results carry +2 tags. A size-4 clock can fill in two Lens rolls. That is intentional. Violence in Lens is punishing, fast, and changes the world quickly. If you want a longer fight sequence, size the clock at 5 or 6. Mass combat and major battles default to 5–6, since multiple turning points across both sides will fire L14 more often. The default size-4 clock says: skirmishes are pressure spikes, not endurance tests.
POV in mass combat. L14 fires for the POV currently in focus — embedded fighter, commander reading the field, or alternating between commanders on opposing sides. Each POV’s turning points are separate. The host RPG’s mass-combat mechanics resolve unit-level outcomes; L14 reads the people inside the battle. Both run together.
Forces and Consequences
These tables cover forces larger than the character and the aftermath of what those forces produce. The environment as opponent. Power invoked and answered. The otherworldly pressing in. Consequences landing, debts forming, heat rising. Travel as pressure. Rest as vulnerability. Relationships as both strength and liability.
Two tables — L20: Invoke Power and L21: The Unseen Moves — turn on rule-changing forces. L21 is inherently uncanny: its results press the otherworldly in throughout its range, not just at positions 11–12, and it sits on the d12 whenever it fires. L20 is the act of reaching for that power — its lower range is the ordinary cost and consequence of using a capability, turning uncanny in its upper range when the power answers wrong. They fire wherever the host RPG provides rule-changing capability and rule-changing response — magic in fantasy, Disciplines in V:tM, psionics in classic sci-fi, emergent AI in cyberpunk, alien xenobiology in Mothership or Coriolis, hyperscience in Mage, the Mythos in CoC. The architecture is genre-neutral; the in-fiction interpretation follows the setting. If your game is grounded without rule-changing forces, you will not need L20 or L21. The cluster still functions through the remaining five tables — force and consequence reading without supernatural elements.
Three tables in this cluster carry their own intent-statements naming specific gaps in solo play they were built to fill. L22 names that consequences are hard to adjudicate without bias. L24 names that rest mechanics tell you what you recovered, not what the rest did to you. L25 names that bonds are tempting to flatten into easy reciprocity or NPC-as-function. Read those intent-statements when you reach those tables — they explain why this cluster sits where it does in the system.
When to Use Which Table
L19: Exposure and Hazard — the environment is the opponent. Weather, terrain, void, crowds, contamination, exhaustion.
[Character] moves through / endures / confronts [environment]. Plainly, [objective detail].
The environment can also be the character’s own body — fever, a poison working through the system, a curse’s toll, withdrawal, radiation, transformation, dissociation, chronic pain: when the body itself is the hostile space, L19 reads what enduring it feels like from inside. At d12, L19 can also read the environment’s own gut — a forest that doesn’t want you here, a city under cosmic dread, a battlefield holding the dead.
L20: Invoke Power — using a capability that changes the rules locally. Spells, tech, psionics, miracles, relics, rites.
[Character] invokes / casts / activates [power] at [target or situation]. Plainly, [objective detail].
L20 and L21 pair: L20 fires when the character acts with power, L21 when the supernatural answers — in extended encounters they alternate. Power need not be supernatural; a device that changes the rules locally (an EMP, a hacking tool, weird science) is an invocation. One roll per working.
L21: The Unseen Moves — the otherworldly presses in. Ghosts, omens, possession, dream-logic, reality editing, alien xenobiology, the aberrant.
[Character] encounters / senses / is touched by [disturbance]. Plainly, [objective detail].
If the world is wrong, roll L19; if something in the world is reaching for the character, roll L21. It fires at any timescale — a presence tonight, a haunting across months, a lifetime of cohabitation. Entities with agency have their own gut: a ghost rolls PRESENCE FELT when it notices the character (see Chapter 5).
L22: Escalation and Fallout — things intensify or dust settles. Consequences land, debts form, heat rises, factions react, verdicts arrive.
[Character] faces the consequences of [action or event]. Plainly, [objective detail].
Roll after significant actions or events (a fight ending, a working completing, an offer accepted, a vow broken), at time‑jumps to read how things have evolved, when judgement is rendered against the character, or when an off‑screen decision produces consequences they walk into.
L23: Journeys and Travel — moving between locations. Road complications, journey beats, what emerges during passage.
[Character] travels [route] toward [destination]. Plainly, [objective detail].
Roll when the passage itself is the situation, not mere transit — any mode (foot, mount, vessel, vehicle, starship, projection) and any timescale. A journey crossing significant boundaries can be one arc or one roll per crossing; if the character is unconscious for the journey, L22 fires at the waking instead.
L24: Rest and Recovery — downtime, camp, healing, preparation, active rest between campaigns. How rest feels, what surfaces during recovery.
[Character] rests / camps / recovers at [location]. Plainly, [objective detail].
Roll when the rest is the situation, not mere transition — any scale from a night’s camp to a five‑year retirement, including active rest (garrison duty, running an estate, a quiet domain period). A multi‑phase rest can fire per phase or once. Companions sharing the rest have a gut too (see Chapter 5).
L25: Bonds and Trust — relationships deepen. Trust forming, vulnerability shown, loyalty tested, oath sworn.
[Character] shares / endures / confronts [moment] with [person]. Plainly, [objective detail].
Roll when the relational beat is what matters — a bond formed, tested, deepened, or broken — not every conversation. L25 can fire twice, once for each character’s experience; only the active perspective’s roll adds its Beat, the other is a read whose Tag is noted and set aside.
If you are not sure, ask: is the environment the threat (L19), am I using power (L20), is the supernatural pressing in (L21), are consequences landing (L22), am I travelling (L23), am I resting (L24), or is a relationship deepening (L25)?