Sense

Keep your eyes (and your heart) open. Sense encompasses your perception of the world around you—including discerning the motivations of the people you meet. Sight, hearing, taste, and touch is part of it, but so are your instincts and feelings. When danger lurks, Sense is the difference between a fair fight and a Surprise Attack. Sense is also a measure of your empathy, and allows you to detect (and potentially exploit) personality Traits in those around you. Spotting details with your eyes or hearing them with your ears are regular uses of Sense.

Sense Checks

• Comfort: Unlike physical damage, mental strain does not heal on its own. You can ease Stress by taking two days to relax. After one day the Exhausted condition recovers, just like taking a Rest. After the second roll a Sense Check, and on a Good roll remove one Stress. If you have no Stress eliminate a Temporary Trauma instead. If you have multiple Traumas the one associated with the highest Danger roll recovers first. A Style Bonus can be a big help, so use that as an excuse to carouse, have a deep conversation, or share your introspection as best fits the situation. You can use Comfort to Support someone else’s roll, but they have to take the lead, spend the time, and roll for themselves.
• Follow: Subtly shadow a target’s movements to see where they’re going, or who they work for. A short trip is just a single Check. Longer treks are a Mission and could take days! On a Bad roll you lose sight of your target or they detect that you are following them—your choice. On a Good roll you keep up without giving yourself away. Your target Opposes you with a Notice Save, so being Hidden is helpful. Support is useful too, allowing you to fall back out of sight while an ally takes over for a while. The terrain may provide a Penalty if it conceals your target or offers nowhere to observe from.
• Forage: When you don’t have enough food you can hunt, gather, or scavenge from the surrounding area to survive. Use two days and Check. If you succeed you find enough food and water to subsist on for the week or to eliminate the Haggard Condition from one person. Harsh environments without water, game, or appropriate resources apply a Penalty or make Foraging impossible.
• Interrogate: When you have someone captured or otherwise invested enough to have a long conversation you may interrogate them as a Manipulation. First, play out the conversation normally, asking any questions you want or replying as desired. After the conversation, roll the Interrogator’s Check. On a Good roll the interrogator knows whether the answer to one of the questions from the conversation (questioner’s choice) was true, false, or evasive (partially true, but misleading), then allows one yes or no follow up question which must be answered truthfully. If the prisoner honestly doesn’t know “I don’t know” is also a valid answer. Each Pair scrutinizes an additional answer and allows another follow up question. The target being questioned may resist the interrogation with a Save: Convince to answer believably or Reject to say nothing at all. Winning means the interrogator gets no special read on the truthfulness of any statements and no follow up questions.
• Search: A Search represents actively exploring and investigating a space. A few minutes is enough to scour a small room, but two days is required to thoroughly probe a multi-room estate or a mile of wilderness. If you don’t have enough time for the amount of space you want to cover the Referee may apply a Penalty. Just looking reveals any important clues or descriptions—the kinds of things necessary to move the story forward. A Good roll on the Sense Check uncovers optional hidden items, traps, or extra information to provide context to what you did find. A Bad roll summons someone to catch you snooping, triggers a trap, or just leaves the possibility that you missed something useful. Even on a bad roll you at least see anything crucial to move the adventure forward, that there is something to find, or routes to other places to Search.

Sense Saves

• Notice: The Referee may ask for a Sense Save to spot an important detail—or register the significance of something you otherwise automatically perceive. Notice applies during many Encounters. This happens when foes are setting up an Ambush, and you must Save to start the Exchange normally. A success may even abort the ambush entirely—some foes won’t attack if their approach is noticed. If you potentially reveal a character’s Trait during a conversation a Good Notice Save confirms your suspicion. On a Bad roll you know you missed something, but don’t know why the Referee asked you to Save unless it becomes obvious later. You do still have a feeling, so it’s legitimate to actively probe for what you may have missed, assuming you have time to.

Sense Masteries

• Smell: It’s not hard to detect a powerful odor, but it is difficult to determine the exact ingredients are or the direction it comes from. If you have both the Smell and Track Masteries they compliment one another. Your sense of Smell is developed enough to follow trails several days old and miles away once you have a scent to follow.
• Track: You know how to detecting signs of movement on the ground, and follow those disturbances back to their source. You don’t need Track to notice a set of footprints in the mud, but you do need it to figure out where they came from or follow them through rocky hills to a distant destination.
• Telepathy: Some beings possess this ability their entire lives and never use it. There are ancient forces in the ether which touch upon extra-sensory awareness, and only someone with a particular talent may attempt to interact with them. With this Mastery, you can communicate silently with anyone else in line of sight who also has Telepathy. You can also hear when two telepaths are speaking to one another, although you aren’t privy to the contents of the conversation, just that it is happening.

Version 3.0.0
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