A TTRPG of horror and disaster one-shots. Easy to learn, run, and hack. Recreate your favorite cinematic horror, comic disasters, and stories where not everyone survives to appear in the sequel.
We're in Danger is a tabletop roleplaying game that pits would-be survivors against life-threatening Dangers. The game takes inspiration from an array of sources, and aims to create the tense and immediate experiences of horror and disaster stories. The term Danger describes the deadly villains, hazards, and situations players must overcome.
Want a slasher game in the vein of Halloween, Dead by Daylight, or even Jaws? Use Danger to represent Michael Myers, the Trapper and his bear traps, or even a giant shark.
Want an apocalyptic game like The Walking Dead, Fallout, or A Quiet Place? Use Danger to represent zombie hordes, radioactive mutants, alien invaders, and violent human factions.
Want a slow-burn supernatural horror game like Midnight Mass, The Witch, or Amnesia? Use Danger to represent malicious ghosts, scheming cultists, and demonic possession.
Want sci-fi in your game, like Event Horizon, The Thing, or Predator? Use Danger to represent the denizens of hell, amorphous shapeshifters, and technologically advanced aliens.
Want a disaster game like Twister, Dante's Peak, or Armageddon? Use Danger to represent environmental threats such as tornadoes, volcanoes, or planet-killing asteroids.
A nightmarish hag, one of many villains looking to put you in Danger.
We’re In Danger is scenario-based and focuses on high intensity one-shots using a unique d6 dice pool system. Think of a scenario as a movie, a short story, an arc of your favorite comic, or a video game. A scenario is self-contained and centers on the plight of characters whose odds of survival are bleak.
However, like any successful movie or video game, sequels are always an option. If you want a longer campaign, you might play a franchise. In a franchise, you run multiple, linked scenarios that include surviving characters and deadlier variations of similar Dangers.
Patty and Grace, two would-be survivors having a very bad day.
We’re in Danger casts you in the role of an average person, but someone capable of using their ingenuity and skill to rise to the occasion. You excel in some areas, falter in others, and possess a natural instinct to survive even the most horrific situations.
Character creation takes only a minute or two, and allows for all sorts of concepts. No bloated skill lists and no tome of overly situational talents and spells. The game distills your character to a handful of features that will all come into play, and could be the different between a glorious death and well-earned survival.
What remains of ill-prepared survivors.
We're in Danger has been in active development for years, and an early access version of the game is available on itch.io and RPG Trader. This BackerKit campaign is to fund a print-run of the game, custom art, and improved graphic design and layout. With your help, we'll also look to add more premade scenarios and extra tools to support GMs.
Nowhere is safe, not even your own home...
Hello good people!
I'm back with another update. Last time, I talked Dangers, and the previous two updates covered aspects related to PC creation. This time, I want to cover genre kits.
A genre kit is a collection of optional tools a GM and table can incorporate if they want to lean into a specific style or theme of play. By default, each kit includes a new Danger class, a new Danger ability, at least one new mechanism for play, and some rollable tables for generating genre-specific scenarios. Kits also re-flavor the attribute names to better reflect the types of PCs common to the genre.
I currently have five genre kits planned for the book. The names for each kit are in-progress, and could change. Each of these kits have already been drafted in full, and playtested.
Ball Season. This genre kit offers tools and resources for playing Victorian, Regency, and Gilded Age scenarios. You might want to recreate Pride, Prejudice & Zombies, or try to run a scenario centered around the fog-covered streets of London or Boston in the 1880s. The kit introduces a standing mechanism for the PCs to track their reputation, and a schemer Danger class that could be anything from a mundane socialite aiming to destroy a PCs' social status to a devious vampire looking to seduce their next victim. Rollable tables help the GM identify fictional locales to set scenarios, and provide ideas for Dangers—from folk gods and devils, to more pulpy adversaries like aliens and Atlanteans. PCs focus attributes around propriety, stoutness, and yearning.
This Isn't Happening. This genre kit focuses on post-apocalyptic scenarios. There are a variety of tables to help sort out the cause of the apocalypse, from classics like the undead rising or alien invasion, to more realistic dread like nuclear war or environmental collapse. And since every post-apocalypse story tells us that the real Danger is humans, there are tools for creating factions and landmarks to fight over. The kit offers mechanisms for collecting and spending resources, and for building barricades to help protect PCs during confrontations. The new Danger class is a demolisher, themed around destroying PC safehouses. Anything from a War of the Worlds tripod to a Left for Dead tank could work. PCs have the attributes instincts, endurance, and charity.
Second Contact. This genre kit offers ways to infuse a little sci-fi into your horror. Fans of Alien, Event Horizon, Predator, or even Mars Attacks! could find some fun tools here. Rollable tables help the GM create different aliens and stage where the scenario might take place. The new mechanism is tech, which replaces the items feature in standard runs of We're in Danger. Tech offers dice manipulation like items, but the amount of tech you carry and the bonuses you get from that tech connect to your attributes. Want to play a space marine? Take an advanced assault rifle. Want to play a diplomat? Take a universal translator. Tech can protect you from eradication by the new overlord Danger class. Attributes are reflavored to science, culture, and muscle.
Oldheart. This genre kit lets PCs play as the bad guys, or more specifically as folks led astray by a corrupting evil influence. If you like the stories of Lovecraft and Junji Ito, you can find much to work with in this kit. The new mechanisms include corruption and manifestations. If the PCs give themselves over to their evil masters, they gain benefits, but risk losing too much of themselves. The new Danger class is the defiler, who aims to inflict corruption and push PCs past their breaking points. Rollable tables help the GM create the Entity which currently has its literal or figurative tendrils buried in the PCs's minds, and a lodge the Entity uses as a playground for its foul deeds. Some PCs might lean into the opportunity to play evil, whereas others might fight back against the corruption. Either way, their attributes are hospitality, depravity, and fitness.
Heckboy. This genre kit allows PCs to play non-humans, or humans with powers. Maybe you want to do something like Hellboy, Doom Patrol, Constantine, Dresden Files, or those seasons of Supernatural when Sam was hooked on demon blood. The new Danger class is the titan, which could be anything from a kaiju to an ancient god to something akin to an Omega-level mutant from X-Men. Titans are too strong a foe for regular humans, and so the powered PCs must take on these Dangers. Rollable tables help the GM create Dangers from a variety of categories, and develop haunts—locations that can turn as adversarial as the Dangers the PCs must face. The reflavored attributes are ferocity, aberrance, and savvy.
Ancient Gods Danger Table for Heckboy
Rogue Abuman Danger Table for Heckboy
It's important to note that none of these genre kits are required for play, and there's no reason you couldn't use the base game to play them. These kits are merely if you want to be a little extra. I want We're in Danger to be flexible and hackable, which is why I've made these kits optional. Use, amend, and discard as you see fit. Or, create your own kits and variations of play. I'm planning a basic guide for building your own kits and scenarios, and for advice about how to smash different kits together.
And, I have other kits in mind for continued support of We're in Danger, including kits that could offer time-travel, Highlander-style executions, medieval fantasy horror, Jules Verne style adventure, and toys-gone-wild. But, no promises on those just yet!
If you want to see some of these genre kits in action, we have been testing them on our Adventures in Lollygagging channels:
BALL SEASON: Redcap Rampage
OLDHEART: The Pines Have Eyes
If you have questions about any or all of the genre kits, drop them in the comments, tag me on BlueSky, or better yet: Hop into our Adventures in Lollygagging Discord. And if there are topics you want me to cover in future updates, I'd love some suggestions.
Thank you to everyone who has followed the BackerKit so far, tried the game out on itch.io or RPG Trader, and shared the game with your friends and communities. My appreciation is unending!
Thus far I've gone over the basics for character creation, Danger creation, and the core resolution mechanism for play. Today I want to talk about premade scenarios and why I've structured them the way I do.
Three yellow nuggets: slasher and heart tree, saucer abduction, giant spider versus a trio of PCs
When designing We're in Danger, I wanted a game that stripped away some of those real and perceived barriers we ttrpg fans face when we try to play a new game. Some choices that, in my view, support this include:
Simple rules without excessive exceptions. I didn't want a rule to work "this way" in 60% of situations, "that way" in 30% of situations, and "this other way" in that final 10%.
Narrative, abstract, theater-of-the-mind action. WiD doesn't pretend to be a tactical game. No measuring distances, degrees of cover, radius of AoE effects, etc. There are many highly tactical games I love, but that kind of approach didn't work for WiD.
No essential lore or canon for the GM or the PCs to learn. At Adventures in Lollygagging, we play some lore-heavy games like The One Ring, and I've heard from countless folks who say they want to play or run TOR, but are worried they'll screw up the lore. With WiD, there is no lore. The only canon is the one you make along the way. Even with genre kits, which add new bits and bobs and flavor, there is nothing essential to learn. The creation tables and flavor text are opt-in, and are meant more as a starting point for your group to develop during play.
Plenty of premade scenarios to get you to the table as fast as possible. I've played all sorts of wonderful ttrpgs thanks to the folks within Adventures in Lollygagging. Sometimes we play prewritten campaigns and adventures, and sometimes we play adventures I write—often because we have no other choice. When thinking about WiD, I wanted to make sure prospective players and GMs have a choice. I want them to have an array of premade scenarios to choose from, content generation tables to aid in the creation of their own scenarios, and advice for how to craft a WiD scenario.
When trying to nail down the format for a premade scenario, I took a step back and assessed my own process for running and prepping games—particularly one-shots. I asked myself: What do I really need?
A basic premise
A couple NPCs
A few locations
Trouble for the PCs to face
My one-shot notes are always tight, simple, and adaptable (unsurprisingly, these are cornerstones for WiD). I wanted a scenario format that could fit on a single sheet of paper. I took inspiration from a host of pamphlet-style adventures (especially for Mothership) and Savage Worlds One Sheets. Given that WiD focuses on one-shots (even during a franchise), anything too bulky felt incongruous. I want a sheet to imply several stories, not script a single story. Conceivably, you can run a WiD scenario multiple times for the same or different groups, and have a wildly different experience depending on which NPCs the GM features, waypoints (locations) the PCs visit, and how confrontations with Dangers unfold.
I continue to iterate on the layout, but here's where the format currently stands. This is an example of a real scenario sheet for Love in the Time of Viscera, one of the premade scenarios that will come with the book. Note that the book will be A5, so this spread will fit on a singe sheet of letter-sized paper (8.5" x 11"). I plan to have print-friendly pdfs of the scenarios too.
Sample Scenario: Love in the Time of Viscera
First, Ian (aka threeeyedcat) absolutely crushed the art nugget, implying so many of the themes the scenario is shooting for—the woods, a slasher killer, weird folkish magic in the bark, and those heart bits.
Moving left to right, beneath the image I included a brief bit of prose to establish mood and circumstance. I call this the "Pitch", which I've considered using as the general term for a WiD scenario. Beneath the pitch I summarize who the PCs play, helping them thematically focus during character creation. Finally, there are key themes often featured in the scenario.
The second column on the left side of the spread includes the title, followed by groups of simple tools for the GM to use. The list of scenes is not exhaustive or necessarily sequential, but rather starter prompts the GM can use to frame a situation. They get the conversation going, and can imply obstacles and objectives. The next list includes six NPCs, each with a name or label, and with an important detail. The detail normally identifies an NPC motive or how other folk perceive that NPC. I find those details more useful than physical descriptors. "Tracy is a real estate developer" implies why they are on Black Bark Mountain, and given the premise of the scenario, why the Bride and Groom might be after Tracy as much as they're after the PCs. I also include six waypoints the PCs can visit, knowing full well that most of the time they'll only visit half of these during a scenario. Again, I try to include a useful, succinct detail. "The Ranger Station can help" might turn into a destination the PCs try to reach once the Groom begins stalking them. Finally, there are six obstacles. I elaborate on obstacles more in the full book, but the basic concept is this: an obstacle is something the PCs must overcome to achieve an objective, but likely doesn't prove as lethal a threat as a Danger. It might require a task or a single test, rather than a full confrontation. "Locals shun transgressors" could imply a social encounter where the PCs must apologize after a faux pas if they hope to gain help.
The right half of the spread lists details for three Dangers. The default suggestion in WiD is to have your PCs encounter three Dangers, with the third encounter serving as the finale. This is flexible, of course, and the book offers some tools and advice for how to adjust pace. For the Danger "stat block", I wanted all details to be right where you need them. No having to flip to a page in a monster manual, and then to another page in the core book to cross reference how a certain talent works. The top line gives a name for the Danger, its class, and the calculations for hits and threshold. The middle section includes a quick flavor detail, along with descriptors the GM can use to color the Danger's various abilities (e.g. harass, scare, kill). The bottom section provides the three d6 tables the GM uses to choose ability, target, and defense attribute. There is also a chart the GM can use to track threshold progress. With Dangers in a premade scenario, I try to have at least one very flexible Danger. In this case, the Possessed can serve a few different purposes. In one play of the scenario, the PCs might flee into the woods and need to face off against possessed wildlife. In another play, the PCs might head for the public campgrounds and fight possessed campers. In yet another play, the PCs might lock themselves in their cabins, hoping to ride it out until morning, only to find the objects in the building have turned against them. I also make sure there's at least one boss or mega for the GM to use as the finale.
In the end, this sheet looks much like the notes I might make for myself when running a one-shot of any game—some narrative flavor, a few locations and NPCs, a couple ideas for how to stir trouble, and any stat blocks I might need.
In the book, I'm planning to have at least eight premade scenarios. I've written and tested plenty, so it's now a matter of settling on which make the cut. Love in the Time of Viscera, Maws of Death, Virgil's Summit, and WRIP in Ypsilanti are confirmed right now. If you're interested in seeing Love in the Time of Viscera or WRIP in Ypsilanti, I've posted our test APs on the Adventures in Lollygagging YouTube channel:
I've rambled for long enough. Hope that was interesting and informative! As always, I'm open to any questions you might have. Post them here, tag me on BlueSky, or better yet: Hop into our Adventures in Lollygagging Discord to chat about the game. If there are specific topics you want me to shed light on, please do let me know!
We're at around 250 followers now, which is a great number for how far out we are from launch. But, we need your help to push that number even higher. So, share this with your friends, on your social media, and in the various Discords and communities that you take part. This is a spunky, indie venture, and word-of-mouth means a great deal.
Thus far I've talked about making PCs and the various ways players can manipulate their dice rolls. For this update, I'm going to switch it up and talk more about the GM side of things. Specifically, let's talk about making Dangers.
Trio of nuggets: a blue stalker outside a window, a pink graveyard with the dead awakening, a green hallway with tentacles
Danger is my all-purpose term for the things that can kill a PC in a scenario. It could be a monster, an animal, an earthquake, a panicked mob, a sinking ship, and so on. The mechanism behind-the-screen that runs and paces these Dangers, regardless of their theme, are the same.
When you want to make a Danger, you need to make two decisions: What is its class? What is its difficulty? Those decisions establish the core mechanisms and stats.
Class defines a Danger's general theme and implies how the Danger threatens PCs. There are four basic classes, but more classes can be found in various genre kits (more on genre kits in a future update).
Brute. A brute is any Danger that focuses on strength and brutality, and cares little for subtlety. It could be a giant shark that bites you in half, a chainsaw murderer who chases you through fields, or a renegade tank storming through main street.
Swarm. A swarm Danger is one that overwhelms with numbers and wears PCs down. It could be a school of piranha, a horde of brain-eating zombies, a flock of rabid birds, or even crazed paparazzi with no respect for boundaries.
Nightmare. A nightmare Danger looks to demoralize, frighten, and terrorize the PCs. It could be a ghost haunting an old mansion, a revenant cowboy out for revenge, or a devil trying to unravel your mind and morals.
Disaster. A disaster Danger is often more environmental, focusing less on personal motives and more on indiscriminate destruction. It could be a series of tornados, an erupting volcano, acid raining from the sky, or a blizzard that cuts off an island from the mainland.
Class is merely a starting point for theme. It's a way to quickly categorize Danger tendencies and behavior.
Difficulty is simply how strong the Danger is, or rather, how hard the Danger is to overcome. It establishes how many hits a PC needs to pass a test against the Danger, and the threshold PCs need to reach to survive the encounter. Threshold is like a combination of HP and clocks from other games. It's what measures PC progress during a confrontation. There are four tiers of difficulty:
Petty Dangers are fairly weak. They might strain a group of PCs, but won't often wound them.
Competent Dangers are more capable. They are tougher to bring down, and more likely to wound a group of PCs. If they're truly lucky, or if the PCs are unlucky, they might even take a PC out.
Boss Dangers are strong. They will likely wound PCs, and could easily cause a death or two if the rolls skew poorly for the PCs. They can serve as the final Danger for a scenario.
Mega Dangers are as powerful as they get. They are very hard to overcome, will certainly wound PCs, and it's not likely all PCs will survive a confrontation with one. Megas are best suited for finales.
You are free to mix and match class and difficulty, creating Petty Brutes, Mega Nightmares, Boss Swarms, and so on. Depending on the scenario, you might even have the same class all throughout, escalating the difficulty with each new encounter. If you want to recreate Halloween and Mike Myers, for example, you might have the first encounter set to Competent Brute, the second to Boss Brute, and the third to Mega Brute. Or, you could have multiple classes of Danger, either to reflect the evolving strategy of a single Danger, or to introduce multiple Dangers.
Mechanically, the choice of class and difficulty finalizes what kinds of abilities a Danger uses in a confrontation. By default, there are three abilities (but genre kits add more):
Harass: This ability inflicts strain on PCs, wearing them down.
Scare: This ability frightens PCs, reducing the size of their dice pool.
Kill: This ability inflicts wounds on PCs, and can quickly defeat a PC if they roll poorly.
All Dangers have an ability loadout. This describes how many of each ability they have access to. In total, a Danger always has six ability options, which map to the results of a d6 roll. During a confrontation, a GM rolls randomly to see which ability they use to harm the PCs.
Harass (default)
Scare (default)
Kill (default)
Defined by class
Defined by class
Defined by difficulty
So, when you make decisions about the Danger's class, you add two more ability options. A brute, for example, gets two more kill options. Because brutes lack subtlety, they really just want to kill PCs. Nightmares, on the other hand, get two more scare options. They're more interested in terrorizing PCs, feasting on fear before the kill.
Difficulty provides the last ability. Petty and competent difficulties focus on wearing PCs down, so they get an extra harass option. Megas, being the strongest and most likely to defeat PCs, get an extra kill ability. Here are two sample loadouts:
Mega Brute:
Harass (default)
Scare (default)
Kill (default)
Kill (brute class)
Kill (brute class)
Kill (mega difficulty)
Competent Nightmare:
Harass (default)
Scare (default)
Kill (default)
Scare (nightmare class)
Scare (nightmare class)
Harass (competent difficulty)
For the Mega Brute, two-thirds of the time the GM will use kill attacks to take out PCs. Maybe this is a giant kaiju destroying the city, or a robotic killing machine from the future. For the Competent Nightmare, half the time the GM will try to scare the PCs, debuffing them and whittling them down before killing them at their weakest. Perhaps this is an arsonist and murderer terrorizing the dreams of teenagers, or a devious hag taking revenge on those who shunned her.
In the full game, there will be other Danger classes and abilities featured in different genre kits. And, for GMs that like to tinker and customize, there will be extra Danger traits they'll be able to use as well. All of that is optional, of course. I want WiD to play fast and easy, but to have extra depth for folks who want bells, whistles, and variety.
Let me know in the comments, or in the Adventures in Lollygagging Discord, if you have any questions, and what you'd like me to talk about next! Also, tell your friends, your neighbors, those old high school friends you avoid on Facebook, and even your lifelong nemesis you swore to destroy. Every bit of sharing helps the project.
Jeff here, back with another game preview update as the days tick down to launch. Another big thank you to everyone who has followed the teaser page!
"I hardly think a few birds are going to bring about the end of the world."
Last time, I wrote about the core resolution mechanism (4d6 dice pool), and a little about attributes (athleticism, composure, reasoning). For this post, I wanted to go over some ways PCs can help shift the odds of a test more in their favor. I briefly mentioned these last time, but let's talk more about expertise, items, and assisting.
When you make a character (PC) for We're in Danger, you not only rank your attributes, but you also pick an expertise. An expertise is a specific skill or field of knowledge that your PC can always count on, even in the most dire of circumstances. It's the ability that your PC is known for, the type of thing other people might come to you about. Some examples:
Automotive Repair. Maybe you work as a mechanic at a local body shop.
Skateboarding. Maybe you've played every edition of Tony Hawk's Pro Skater, and have a dozen scars from your skatepark days.
Poetry. Maybe you pissed off your parents by studying literature instead of engineering in college, and now you're a local celebrity at open mics.
There is no exhaustive list to choose from, and PCs are encouraged to devise their own expertise to help flesh out their character. Mechanically, an expertise can contribute one automatic hit on a test where the attribute applies. Since the core resolution mechanism is about balancing hits and fumbles, having that extra hit even before rolling can be hugely important. Plus, it's always a fun time to hear players "make a case" for why their expertise should apply!
Items are another tool a PC can use to bend the odds in their favor. During character creation, a PC identifies two items they always have at their disposal. One is appropriate and the other is inappropriate. An appropriate item could be something they need for their job or school. Mechanics might have a toolbox. A skateboarder has their board. An inappropriate item doesn't have to be illegal, but it should be something that a friend might judge you about, could cause a little trouble if the cops found you carrying it, or it's simply something you keep secret for fear of ridicule. It could be a bag of weed or a switchblade; it could be spray paint cans for tagging; it could be the writings of Kierkegaard that you're hiding from your meathead friends. Items, just like expertise, should say something about who your PC is, and how they function in life.
Mechanically, items let you manipulate the result of a single die after you roll. For each item that applies to the nature of your test, you can increase a single die result by +1. That means you could turn a 4 into a 5, and score a hit. Or, it could mean turning a 3 into a 4, and avoiding a fumble.
The final tool a PC can use to bend outcome is assisting. On a test, a fellow PC can elect to help you, assuming they can explain how and justify it in the scene. If a friend assists you, that means you get to roll 5d6 instead of 4d6, AND it means you count any rolls of 4, 5, or 6 as hits. It's quite powerful, but can be a little risky at times since rolls equal or under your attribute rank still count as fumbles. Also, assisting isn't free. Your assistant has to voluntarily take 1 strain to do so. Well-timed cooperation can be the key to turning around confrontations and overcoming obstacles.
Items and expertise don't just help with the roll, they also define your PC. They ask you to think about who your character is, and how others see them. And, assisting is a tool to bring the party together to overcome difficult obstacles. Who do you help? When do you help them? And are you willing to strain yourself to do so?
Hope that was interesting! In another 10 days or so, I'll drop a new update and go over another aspect of the game. Remember, you're welcome to drop into the Adventures in Lollygagging Discord to ask questions, or just post them here. And, let me know if there are particular topics you'd like me to cover!
First, a big thank you to everyone who has hopped on board the We're in Danger train, followed the AiL BackerKit account, and subbed to the WiD teaser page. I appreciate all of you, and I cannot wait to show off more of WiD and get a book into your hands. Consider this, then, the first of what will be many substantive posts about WiD's mechanisms, features, art, and inspiration.
For this post, I want to talk a bit about the core resolution mechanism of WiD. It feels like a good place to start.
What's that giant shadow in the water?
All PCs in WiD have three attributes: athleticism, composure, and reasoning. Athleticism speaks to physical actions, composure to social actions and emotional equilibrium, and reasoning to knowledge and comprehension.
During character creation, a player assigns a rank to each of these attributes. Their best attribute is 1, their second best is 2, and their worst is 3. The rank doesn't directly affect the chances of passing or failing a test. More accurately, the rank affects how cleanly they pass or fail. Meaning, do they get tired, frustrated, or hurt in the process? Someone with good athleticism is more likely to climb a rockwall without harming themselves or growing too winded. Someone with average or below-average athleticism can still accomplish the same feat, but might be out of breath or covered in scrapes by the time they reach the top.
WiD uses a d6 dice pool to resolve tests. By default, a PC rolls 4d6 and then assesses individual die results. Each die result will score a hit, a miss, or a fumble.
Results of 5, 6, and (when assisted) 4 count as hits. These are good.
Results that are equal or under the tested attribute count as fumbles. These are bad.
Results that are above the tested attribute but below a hit result are misses. These neither help nor hurt.
On most tests, fumbles cause the PC strain—the term used to describe non-lethal, non-permanent damage. It could be anything from bruising to fatigue, embarrassment to confusion. Of course, taking too much strain can lead to lethal and permanent damage in the form of wounds. More on strain, wounds, and death in a future update.
After rolling, the PC counts their hits and their fumbles. Most tests require only one hit to succeed, but there are situations (such as confrontations with strong Dangers) that might require more. If a PC rolls more hits than they need to succeed on the test, then they can use those extra hits to cancel out their fumbles.
Ashley makes a reasoning test. Her reasoning is rank 2, and she rolls 1, 3, 5, and 6. The 1 is a fumble, the 3 is a miss, and the 5 and 6 are hits. Since she needs only one hit to succeed on the test, she can use the extra hit to cancel the fumble and avoid taking strain.
Steven makes an athleticism test. His athleticism is rank 3, and he rolls 2, 2, 3, and 5. The 2s and the 3 are fumbles, and the 5 is a hit. While he succeeds on the test, he doesn't have any extra hits, and therefore takes 3 strain in the process.
The PC doesn't have to rely only on good dice luck. They have other features that can help manipulate the roll in their favor.
Each PC has an expertise. This is a learned skill or knowledge set that is always reliable. If it's applicable to the test, it automatically grants an extra hit to the roll results.
Each PC has two items. If an item is useful to the situation, it allows the PC to increase the result of one die by +1. Meaning, they can turn a 4 into a 5, granting a hit. Or, they could turn a 3 into a 4, avoiding strain when testing their rank 3 attribute.
Another PC can assist the active PC in their test. When assisted, the active PC rolls an extra die in their pool, and they can count all die results of 4 as hits. Assisting isn't free, however. The assistant must take 1 strain for their efforts.
And that's the core resolution mechanism. During play, PCs roll most often during confrontations with Danger, and more sparingly in scenes when a Danger isn't present. In future updates, I'll talk more about confrontations, and also about scenes, obstacles, and pacing tools for the GM.
I'm open to suggestions on post topics, and am happy to answer questions. Consider hopping into the Adventures in Lollygagging Discord to chat more about the game, offer suggestions for update topics, and maybe get into a pickup game of WiD. And, if you're interested in trying out WiD right now, it's available in an early access PDF form on itch.io and RPG Trader.
