Chapter Five: Rules

Time

  Real time passes moment to moment, day by day and hour by hour. But in game terms, time can be tricky. Ten years might fly by in minutes of narration, or a battle that lasts for half an hour in the game may rage on for six or seven hours of real time. The following six categories help maintain the sense of the passage of time in your game:
  • Turn — The amount of time it takes to perform a simple action. A turn can range anywhere from three seconds, which is the norm, to three minutes. It all depends of the pace of the current scene.
  • Scene — Like most plays and movies, the story is divided up into smaller segments called scenes. A scene takes place in one location and is made up of a variable amount of turns, as many as it takes to accomplish what was intended. A battle in an alleyway might count as a scene, as might the characters' effort to convince a spirit to aid their cause. A scene can break down into a series of turns or resolve completely through roleplaying as your story dictates.
  • Chapter — Just like a chapter in a book or an act in a play, a chapter in a storytelling game is an independent part of the larger story. It is made up of a number of scenes interconnected by downtime. Most chapters don't last much longer than an evening's play in real time.
  • Story — The story is the complete tale, from introduction, through build-up and to the climax. Some stories have many chapters; others can be told in only one.
  • Chronicle — A whole series of stories usually connected by the same characters, but sometimes by common links such as a city tribe or family. It is the ongoing story told by both players and the storyteller.
  • Downtime — Time that is not roleplayed, but described in one large swath rather than telling it scene by scene. The Storyteller announcing, "You drive for three hours until you reach the lab," is an example of invoking downtime to speed the story along. In this manner, downtime allows you to focus on the meat of the story.

Actions

  Over the course of the game, your character will want to do many things. Most of the time, these things are fairly simple. Walking across the street, reading a book, watching television and driving a car are all simple actions, and they require no dice rolls. They are successful automatically, for the most part. However, werewolves being what they are and living the kind of lives they lead, things are going to get more complicated.
  Attempting an action couldn't be simpler. Just tell the Storyteller what you want your character to do and how she's going to do it. The Storyteller might approve of a simple action and tell you how your actions fit in with what is going on in the scene. But if you want to do something more extreme or difficult, or if a good chance exists that your character might fail, the universal arbitrator of dice comes into play. Opening a door is a simple action, but ripping a metal emergency door off its hinges to get to the vampires on the other side calls for a roll.

Rolling Dice

  Although the Storyteller is always the final judge of whether an action succeeds or fails, it is better to let the fates decide in many situations. Fate's agent in this case is a number of 10-sided dice, available in fine book and gaming stores all across this great world of ours.
  Storytellers should have a whole mess of dice — at least 10 if not more — but players can share if they so desire. Whenever there is a chance a character might not succeed at his action, dice come into play. As a random element, they work nicely to settle the disputes and eliminate the "I got you!" "Did not!" exchanges that plagued our childhood games. Through the whims of the dice, a character gets a chance to shine, showing her pack where she really excels or a chance to embarrass herself horribly and ensure that she'll never be asked to do that again.

Ratings

  It may seem a little unfair at first to leave the fate of your character up to chance. However, a way exists to make sure that the dice take you character's strengths and weaknesses into account. Your character's personality is up to you, but his true capabilities are defined by his Traits. These characteristics measure his instinctive and acquired aptitudes and abilities. A Trait is described by a rating of 1 to 5. A rating of 1 in a Trait implies only vague skills or capabilities, while having a rating of 5 means that the character could accomplish appropriate tasks blindfolded. For most people, Traits run from 1 to 3. Having a 4 in an ability is a most exceptional person, and a 5 is far beyond rare, for normal humans. Ratings of 5 are reserved for the Einsteins and Bruce Lees of the world. It is also possible to have zero in a Trait. This abysmal rating is most common among Abilities, such as when a character has had no training in something.

x	Abysmal
•	Poor
••	Average
•••	Good
••••	Exceptional
•••••	Peerless

  Even so, exceptions can occur. A metis might have a deformity that drops his appearance to zero, for instance, and a human would lack Gnosis utterly.
  When you roll dice, you roll one die for each dot a character has in a Trait. For example, if your character is trying to remember a license plate number, and he has three dots in Intelligence, you would roll three dice. However, it is very rare to roll an Attribute Trait all by itself. Raw potential is modified by skill, and Attributes are added to Abilities for the most common rolls.
  Here's another example. Archibald is driving down a snow-covered road. Suddenly, a large animal leaps out of the woods and into the road. The Storyteller has Archibald's player (Kyle) make a Dexterity + Drive roll (an Attribute + an Ability) to keep the car on the road and under control. In this case, Kyle would take the three dice for Archibald's Dexterity of 3 plus as many dice as he had in Drive. Archibald's Drive is 2, so Kyle adds them to the original three, for a total of five dice. Kyle now has five dice in his dice pool, the total number of dice one rolls in a single turn. Most of the time, you calculate dice pools for only one action at a time. You can modify that total to take multiple actions in a single turn, but doing so is discussed more fully later in the chapter.
  Situations arise that allow only an Attribute to be rolled, however. For instance, no Ability will help Archibald lift a crate of guns onto the back of a truck. In this case, Kyle rolls dice equal to Archibald's Strength Attribute alone.
  You cannot add more than two Traits together into a dice pool. In addition, if your dice pool involves a Trait with a maximum rating of 10 (such as Rage or Willpower), you can't add any other Traits to your dice pool. It is effectively impossible for a normal human to have more than 10 dice in a dice pool. On the other hand, totems and the Attribute modifications of the various forms can sometimes help werewolves overcome the limitations of a mere mortal.

Difficulties

  You can roll dice all day, but if you don't know what you are looking for, it won't do you any good. It is the job of the Storyteller to assign an appropriate difficulty number to the roll and tell the player what it is. A difficulty number is always from 2 to 10 — no lower or higher. For every die a player rolls that comes up equal to or higher than the difficulty number, the player has gained a success. For instance, if the Storyteller assigns a difficulty of 6 and the player rolls a 5, 4, 8, 8, 2 and 6, then he has gained three successes. The more successes a player gets, the better his character does. You need only one success to accomplish your task, but that success is marginal at best. If you score three or more successes, you have succeeded completely. Getting five or more successes is a momentous event.
  Obviously, the lower the difficulty is, the easier the task is to accomplish, and vice versa. The default difficulty is 6, and it indicates that an action is neither impossible nor simple. If a Storyteller (or the rulebook) does not give you a difficulty for a roll, you can assume that the difficulty is 6.
  The Storyteller is the final authority on difficulty numbers. If a task seems impossible, then the difficulty will be much higher. If the task is absurdly simple, the difficulty will be on the lower end of the spectrum. Extremely difficult or simple tasks might call for a roll of 2 or 10, but such difficulties should be few and far between. A task with a difficulty of 2 is so simple that it is usually better just to make it an automatic success. A difficulty of 10 represents a task that's virtually impossible — and easy to screw up horribly.

Failure

  If you score no successes on your roll, your character failed his attempted action. He missed his shot. She couldn't break the code. He forgot the punch-line of the joke. Failure, while disappointing, is not nearly as bad as what can happen if you botch a roll.
  Example: Paper Clip, a Bone Gnawer Theurge, is attempting to hot-wire a car before the mobsters see what he did to their windshield. The Storyteller assigns Erik, Paper Clip's player, a difficulty of 7. Erik rolls Intelligence (3) + Repair (2) and gets 4, 3, 5, 5 and 6, which yields no successes. Paper Clip rubs the two wires together, but nothing happens. Maybe the battery is dead, or maybe these are the wrong two wires. Just at that moment the first of his pursuers rounds the corner. Should he try again, or get the hell out of there?

Botches

  Fate is not always kind, and it has a strange sense of humor. It is usually at the worst times that things go from bad to catastrophically horrid. To simulate such failures, Werewolf employs the "rule of one," otherwise known as botching. When a die comes up a 1, that 1 cancels out a success. Take the 1 die and any one success, and set them both aside. Do the same for every 1 that turns up on a roll. Thus, even seemingly successful actions can be reduced to nothing.
  Even then, things can get worse. If a roll gives up no successes in the first place, yet one or more 1s show up, you have a botch. In other words, if all of your dice land with no successes showing and any of them is a 1, you have just botched that action. Even one success can cancel the botch out. If you have one success and seven Is on your roll, it's still just a failure. It is only when you roll no successes that botches occur.
  But botches do occur, and they are seldom forgotten easily. A botch is much worse than a failure — it's a cataclysm, a catastrophe. It is the worst-case scenario you had when you started to roll the dice. Let's say that your character has been fighting a Black Spiral for the better part of an hour, give and take, barely making it through the battle. After several attempts, your character finally gets the drop on him, lashes out face to face, puts a gun to the Black Spiral's head... and it jams. Or say your Glass Walker is searching for some biographical data on one of Pentex's executives. A failure would be not finding the data, but a botch triggers the internal security, locking down the system and sending a team to the house the signal is coming from. The Storyteller decides exactly what goes wrong and how bad a situation the botch has caused. It could be anything from a minor annoyance to an unforgettable incident.
  On occasion, Storytellers may find botches occurring all too often, or a string of them causing no end of trouble for the players and the story. Superstitions are superstitions, but almost every gamer can tell a tale of a night when "the dice just went bad." It is then the Storyteller's prerogative to give the players one free Get Out of Bad Karma card, or allow them to skip one botch. Usually this freebie would be the first botch of the night. This option tends to make the players sweat a little less at the winds of chance, until they start to think about their enemies having the same advantage.
  Example: The Glass Walker Ragabash Flashburn finally managed to get a hit on the Wyrm-tainted bodyguard. His last shot had gone into the woman's leg, and she had crashed to the rain soaked street with a cry of pain. Taking a cue from the John Woo movies he has been watching lately, Lee, Flashburn's player, decides to do something theatrical. He wants to run and dive onto the pavement, sliding along the wet ground to reach her. Then he will put the gun right onto the bodyguard's forehead and blow her tainted brains all over the sidewalk. Stan, the Storyteller, decides to let him try, but he assigns a difficulty of 9. Lee has a Dexterity of 3 and a Firearms of 2. He rolls a 4, 7, 5, 8 and 1. He got no successes, and he rolled a 1. Lee sits back with a stunned expression as Stan tells how Flashburn runs and dives to the pavement, only to go shooting right past the downed bodyguard. But not before his gun gets caught in the sewer grating and is wrenched from his hand. He finally comes to rest... at the boots of the Pentex First Team who came as backup. Sometimes claws just work better...

Automatic Successes

  You know how to do it, and certainly your Garou knows at least as much as you do. It is so simple, why should you even have to roll? Well, you shouldn't. Some tasks are just that basic, and your character would be able to perform them in her sleep. A dice roll is unnecessary in this case. To that end, Werewolf has a system that allows for automatic successes on these tasks performed routinely.
  If the number of dice you have in your dice pool is equal to or greater than the difficulty number, the character succeeds automatically. No dice are rolled, and the story moves on. This system does not work for all tasks, however. It does not work in combat or any other stressful situations. This success is also considered marginal. It is as if you only rolled one success on your dice roll. But for basic and often-repeated actions, the system is just fine. Of course, if you want to roll it — for instance, if you want more than one success — then you still can. You don't have to take an automatic success if you don't want to.
  Another way to get an automatic success is to spend a Willpower point. Although you still have to roll, the Willpower guarantees that you'll get one extra success. You can do so only once per turn, and you do have a limited supply of Willpower, so it's not a privilege to be overused. Nonetheless, it is a handy thing to have when the stakes are high.

Try, Try Again

  Failure builds on failure, and stress leads to more stress. When a character fails an action, he is disheartened and upset, but he will usually try again. At this point, he is not at his best; he is distracted and likely to force the issue. To reflect this condition, Storytellers can choose to increase the difficulty of a task for each failure a character makes. If the attempt is tried and failed, the next try raises difficulty by one. The second try raises it by two, and so forth, until it becomes nearly impossible to succeed.
  Some examples of where this rule could be put into effect include picking a lock, hacking into a computer system or interrogating a prisoner. If you cannot turn the tumblers, circumvent the security or get the canary you are interrogating to sing the first time out, it is unlikely you will be able to succeed try after try after try.
  The Storyteller shouldn't always invoke this rule. Many situations are stressful enough to begin with, and they would not need the added difficulties. Things like failing to claw an opponent, detect an ambush or track your prey through city streets are intrinsically stressful. These failures would not lead to frustration and failed future attempts automatically, although some might call for a Rage roll.
  Example: Western, a Black Fury Ahroun, has to scale the wall outside the embassy. It appears to have plenty of handholds, and this side of the street is cloaked in shadows. Jacey, Weston's player, rolls Dexterity + Athletics (difficulty 6) to begin mounting the wall. Jacey rolls no successes, and the Storyteller informs her that a bad step causes Weston to slide back down along the wall to the sidewalk, leaving scrapes along her forearms and knees. A little frustrated, Weston decides to take on the wall again, but the Storyteller makes the difficulty 7 this time. More scrapes and scratches later, Weston is back on the ground. She decides to assault the wall again, this time with a difficulty of 8 to indicate her mounting stress. Weston could be in for a long climb, and an even longer night.

Multiple Actions

  Sometimes a character may wish to perform more than one action in a single turn, such as firing a gun at three targets, trying to climb a tree while remaining quiet or hitting someone with a bat and then running away. In these situations, a player can roll for all the actions, but each action suffers a penalty.
  First, declare how many actions the character will take in a turn. Then, subtract a number of dice from the first dice pool equal to the total number of actions. The subsequent actions lose this same amount, plus a cumulative additional die. If the dice pool drops to zero or below because of this penalty, the character cannot attempt the action. The character simply does not have it in him at that point.
  Example: Deron wants his character, Shadow-in-the-Wood, to kick the teeth out of the guy who is threatening him, while avoiding the thugs on both sides of him. The Red Talon Ragabash has Dexterity 3, Brawl 4 and Dodge 3. Deron calculates the dice pool for the boot to the bead (Dexterity 3 + Brawl 4 = dice pool of seven). He then subtracts three dice from it (because of the total of three actions). His final dicepool for the first action is four. The first dodge has a dice pool of six (Dexterity 3 + Dodge 3), minus four (three for the three actions, and one more because it is the second action), for a final dice pool of two. The last action has a dice pool of one (six, minus three for the number of actions, minus two for being the third action). Shadow-in-the-Wood had. better pray that the one thug rolls poorly on his grappling attempt.
  Rage makes this situation a whole different story, since it can give a Garou extra actions in a single turn, at no penalty. For more information look here.

Complications

  The preceding rules are all you need to get started playing Werewolf. And if your chronicle focuses more on the roleplaying aspect of the game than rolling dice, it would be all you need to know for a successful game. But these rules do not cover everything. Situations can get a lot more complex in a game, just as they can in life, and the rules must reflect that complexity. For example, what if your character is trying to accomplish something while someone else is trying actively to stop him? Or what if one of his packmates wants to help?
  What follows are various ways to help you reflect these types of circumstances in the game and allow the story to continue unaffected. They are not mandatory, but they help add realism and suspense to the story. These optional rules are simple, effective and designed to reflect a variety of situations. More specific situations appear in the next chapter.

Extended Actions

  To accomplish a task satisfactorily, sometimes you need more than one success. A character might need to spend a night in a library tracing through subsidiaries to find who really owns a particular office building. That embassy wall mentioned previously can't be scaled in a single turn. When you need only a single success to complete an action, it is called a simple action. When you need multiple successes to accomplish even a marginal success, that action is called an extended action. Simple actions are the most common, but many opportunities will arise to perform extended actions as the game progresses.
  In an extended action, you roll your dice pool again and again over subsequent turns, trying to collect enough successes to succeed. For example, your character has been chasing a vampire through the city streets on foot. The Leech had just gained the lead, run into an underground garage and slammed the rollaway door closed just as your character got there. The Storyteller rules that it will take 15 successes to get through the door, but the prey gets farther away each turn and has a better chance to hide. You will succeed eventually, but where will he be then? The Storyteller is the final authority on which situations call for extended actions.
  Usually, you can take as many turns as you want to finish an extended action. However, Werewolf being the game it is, time is a luxury you seldom have. If you should botch in the course of an extended action, then it is back to square one. A botch wipes out all of your accumulated successes, and you start over with nothing. Worse yet, the Storyteller might rule that you can't start over at all because of the botch, depending on what you are doing. Accept your failure and move on.
  Because several situations call specifically for extended actions, they are discussed further in Chapter Six: Systems and Drama. It is important to note that because they call for such an extreme amount of dice rolling, they should probably be kept out of the more intense sessions of roleplaying.
  Example: The robbery didn't go well. If things go much worse, not only will Weston not make it to the Freebooters, she might not survive at all. Having escaped the building, Weston is now stuck on the grounds of the complex. From her vantage in the bushes around a corporate art statue, she can see the floodlight on and the security teams searching the area. The chalice is secure in her satchel, but she is far from safe. Her best bet is to sit tight and wait for the heat to die down.
  The Storyteller rules that she'll need to roll 16 successes on an extended Stamina + Stealth roll (difficulty 7) to stay hidden until the teams give up the search. Jacey, Weston's player, rolls once for each half hour, hoping to avoid botches that would give away her position. After four in-game hours, and eight rolls, she manages to succeed. The teams give up the search and go back to standby. Now all she has to do is make it out of the complex without tripping any more alarms.

Resisted Actions

  A simple difficulty number might not be enough to represent a struggle between two characters. What if, for instance, a character is pursing another in a car chase? Each one is doing his best to either catch his foe or to avoid such capture. In this case, the player would make a resisted roll. Each person rolls dice against a difficulty determined by one of your opponent's Traits. The person who scores the most successes emerges victorious.
  However, you score only as many successes as it takes to exceed your opponent's successes. In other words, the other person's successes cancel out yours, just as 1s would. If you score four successes and your opponent scores three, you are left with only one success: a marginal success. As you can see, it is difficult to get an outstanding success on a resisted action. Most times, you are lucky to succeed at all. Even if your opponent does not beat you, he can still diminish the effect of your efforts.
  Some actions (such as arm-wrestling or debating) may be both extended and resisted. In these cases, one of the opponents must achieve a set number of successes to triumph. Each success over the rival's total in a given turn is added to a running tally. The winner is the first to get the designated number of successes.
  Example: Ears-of-the-Wind knew without a doubt that Red-of-Teeth was wrong. He was the leader of this war pack, but Ears-of-the-Wind did not believe that charging in the front door of the medical facility was the way. But Red-of-Teeth refused to listen to their wereraven guide's plan to sneak in the back with the trash removers. Ears-of-the-Wind did not want to make a formal challenge, but he needed to do something to ensure they would not charge into certain death.
  Kelly, Ears-of-the-Wind's player, and the Storyteller roleplay much of the initial conversation, and Kelly manages to keep Red-of-Teeth's temper down and avoid a direct confrontation that would lead to a Challenge. Then the Storyteller has Kelly roll Charisma (4) + Leadership (2), resisted by Red-of-Teeth's Charisma (3) + Leadership (4). Kelly rolls six dice against a difficulty of 8, while the Storyteller rolls seven dice at the same difficulty. Kelly scores four successes, while the Storyteller gets only two. Ears-of-the-Wind manages to make her plea, and Red-of-Teeth steps aside, no honor lost, to let the wiser Garou lead the attack.

Teamwork

  No werewolf should ever work alone. The pack is living proof that strength lies in numbers. In some situations, such as trying to find a person's death certificate in a large filing room or attempting to flip a car over, characters can choose to work together for successes. If the Storyteller decides that teamwork would be appropriate for the situation, two or more characters can make separate rolls and combine the successes together. They may not combine Traits into one large dice pool, however.
  Teamwork is a very effective tool in many situations. A well-coordinated attack by an entire pack can be a much greater victory than one strong Garou going at it alone. Following prey is much easier with several pairs of eyes keeping the subject in view. Assistance can be anything but helpful on some occasions, however. Two people trying to convince someone to let them into a club can backfire, just as a group trying to fix an engine can sometimes cause more damage than repair. In other words, a botch from one person can ruin everyone's work.

The Golden Rule

  This rule is the most important one, and it's the only rule worth following to the letter: There are no rules. None that you must adhere to, that is. If you don't like it, change it. We have tried to create a simple system that can be used to simulate the complex varieties of life (and obviously, we think it works fine for that). However, there's no accounting for the creativity of the human condition. Not all of our rules will work well in your stories, so mix them up. Run a whole session without using any dice. Or spread out the map and run a tactical version of the attack on the warehouse. Do whatever you like. This book is nothing more than a collection of guidelines, suggestions and ideas. The rules are ways of helping you capture the essence of the World of Darkness in a game format. But these rules are only to help, not to restrict. Whatever works best for you is the right way to go. We have given you the tools, now go make whatever you want out of them.

Try It Out

  And that's it for the basic rules. The rest are all variations on a theme. All the other rules spin out of what is contained in the last few pages. If you understood all that, have at it. Go grab some friends and start a game. If not, read it through again. Get some dice and practice a roll or two. Practice sticks in the mind better than simple visualization. Let's say that Paper Clip, our car-thieving Garou, is now on the run after having wrapped said car around a telephone pole. Having gone through so much with it already, Paper Clip decides to use his much-abused sawed-off shotgun on the thugs coming after him. The difficulty for hitting someone at this range is 6. Take three dice for Paper Clip's Dexterity of 3 and one for his Firearms Skill of 1. That adds up to 4 dice in the dice pool, which is good, but not great. So roll it. Count up your successes, but don't forget that any Is cancel out successes. Did you hit him? Did you botch? The more successes you get, the more accurate (and lethal) the shot is. Not only that, but it increases the odds that the man will not return fire.
  Now try an extended and resisted roll. Let's say that the scene is a debate at a moot, and some young pup is vying for a point of Wisdom. This debate will necessitate an indefinite series of rolls, each roll using different combinations of Traits and having different difficulties. You need to accumulate five or more successes to prove your point, and prove it wisely, to increase your Renown score. A botch eliminates all your accumulated successes, and you might just get laughed out of the discussion.
  First roll: Each player rolls Charisma + Expression, difficulty of the opponents Wits + 3. (Sometimes debates are started and finished in the opening remarks.)
  Second and Third rolls: As the debate heats up, each player rolls Intelligence + Expression, difficulty of the opponent's Intelligence + Expression.
  Fourth roll (and any subsequent rolls): Each player rolls Manipulation + Expression (difficulty of the opponent's Wits + Expression) to make the final point.

Examples of Rolls

  This system is designed with flexibility in mind. To this end, there are over 270 possible combinations of Attributes and Abilities. This staggering figure is just the beginning, as it does not take into account the additional Talents, Skills and Knowledges that might crop up as the game progresses. In this way, you have a huge variety of rolls with which to simulate the action of your story. The following examples are used to show some of the situations that might crop up during a game.
  • You want to conduct yourself with all the respect you can around the high-ranking elder of your tribe. Roll Wits + Etiquette (difficulty 8).
  • You are standing watch while the rest of your pack sleeps all around you. Make a Stamina + Alertness roll (difficulty 7) to see how awake you are when the vampires finally attack.
  • You try to distract the security guard with your left hand while slipping your knife out of your belt with your right. Roll Dexterity + Subterfuge (difficulty of the guard's Perception + Alertness).
  • A Black Spiral Dancer is creeping up on you, along the ceiling! Roll Perception + Alertness (difficulty 9) to hear its approach.
  • The mob is angry and out for the blood of your Kinfolk. Roll Charisma + Leadership (difficulty 7) to give an off-the-cuff speech, and hopefully save someone's life. You will need four successes to convince them to move along.
  • Your arch-rival is about to tell his side of the story to the assembled elders at the moot. Roll Perception + Performance (difficulty 6) to evaluate how well he is doing at turning the council against you.
  • After being questioned for hours, roll Stamina + Acting (difficulty 8) to keep to the story you made up. With five successes, you just might convince them that you are telling the truth.
  • You threaten the mouthy young pup by lifting him off the floor by his collar. Roll Strength + Intimidation (difficulty 8) to get him back in line.
  • Suddenly, a man pushes a cow out of the back of the cattle truck you have been chasing. Roll Wits + Drive (difficulty 6) to swerve out of the way in time.
  • Can you distract the man's trained Dobermans long enough to slip in? Roll Manipulation + Animal Ken (difficulty 8).
  • Is the doctor lying about when his patient actually came in to get patched up? Roll Perception + Investigation (difficulty 7).
  • You try to pull alongside the fleeing truck so your friends can leap aboard. Make an extended Dexterity + Drive roll, resisted by the truck driver's Wits + Drive. If you accumulate five total successes more than his total successes, you're in position. If he accumulates a total of five more successes than you get, he causes you to swerve.
  • In order to stop the engine from blowing up, you have to rip that red thing off that gray thing. Roll Strength + Crafts (difficulty 6).
  • Human expression can be so hard for a lupus to figure out. What exactly does that face mean? Roll Manipulation + Empathy (difficulty 6) to try figure it out.
  • You try to follow the paper trail to the company that manufactured the poisonous chemical originally. Roll Intelligence + Investigation (difficulty 9).
  • What language is she speaking? Roll Intelligence + Linguistics (difficulty 6) to figure it out.
  • You must keep running if you are going to outdistance your pursuers. Make an extended Stamina + Athletics roll. If you collect 15 successes, you've outlasted them.
  • What sort of alarm system does the college library have? Roll Perception + Security (difficulty 6).
  • You attempt to get his attention by driving your knife through his hand and into the oak bar. Roll Strength + Melee (difficulty 6).

Game Terms

  Defined here are some terms that first-time players, new Storytellers and a few ignorant veterans might not be familiar with.
  Ability: These Traits describe what a character knows and has learned, rather than her physical and psychological make-up. Abilities are Traits such as Intimidation, Firearms and Occult.
  Action: An action is the performance of a deed that is a consciously willed physical, social or mental activity. When players announce that their characters are doing something, they are taking an action.
  Advantage: This catchall category describes a character's mystical abilities (such as Gifts and rites) and Backgrounds.
  Attributes: These Traits describe a character's inherent capabilities. Attributes are such things as Strength, Charisma and Intelligence.
  Botch: 1) A naturally rolled 1 that cancels out a success die. 2) A disastrous failure, indicated by rolling one or more 1s and no successes on the 10-sided dice rolled for an action.
  Character: Each player creates a character, an individual he roleplays over the course of the chronicle. Although this term could apply to any individual, we use it here to describe the player's character.
  Dice Pool: The dice you have in your hand after adding together your different Traits. The number of dice you can roll for that action.
  Difficulty: A number from 2 to 10 measuring the difficulty of an action a character takes. The player needs to roll that number or higher on at least one of the dice in his dice pool.
  Downtime: The time spent between scenes, during which no roleplaying is done and turns are not used. Actions might be made, and the Storyteller might give some descriptions, but time generally passes quickly.
  Extended Action: An action that requires a certain number of successes, accumulated over several turns, for the character to actually succeed.
  Health: A measure of the degree to which a character is wounded or injured.
  Points: The temporary score of a Trait such as Willpower or Rage — the squares, not the circles.
  Rating: A number describing the permanent value of a Trait. Most often, this number ranges from 1 to 5. Some ratings range from 1 to 10.
  Reflexive: A situation in which dice might be rolled, but that does not count as an action for the purpose of calculating dice pools. Examples of reflexives are soak rolls and Willpower rolls to resist mind control.
  Resisted Action: An action that two different characters take against one another. Both compare their number of successes, and the character with the most wins.
  Scene: A single episode of a story. A time and place in which actions and events take place moment by moment. A scene is often a dramatic high point of the story.
  Score: The temporary value of a Trait or combination of Traits used in a single roll.
  Simple Action: An action that requires the player to get only one success to succeed, although more successes indicate a better result.
  Storyteller: The person who creates and guides the story by assuming the roles of all characters not taken by the players and determining all events beyond the control of the players.
  System: A specific set of complications used in a certain situation; rules to help guide the rolling of dice to create dramatic action.
  Trait: Any Attribute, Ability, Advantage or other character index that can be described as a number (in terms of dots).
  Troupe: The group of players, including the Storyteller, who play Werewolf: The Apocalypse, usually on a regular basis.