Many of the difficulties your characters face can be handled with a single roll in the course of a scene—disarm the bomb, find the tome of eldritch lore, or decode the cypher. But sometimes things are more fluid, more complicated, and it’s just not as simple as finding the tome of eldritch lore because the yacht you’re searching is careening through Hong Kong harbor while a monsoon rages outside and the boat’s library is on fire—which is totally not your fault.

In complicated circumstances with no opposition, you’ll want to use a challenge: a series of overcome actions that tackle a bigger issue. Challenges let the entire group work together in a scene, and they keep things dynamic.

To set up a challenge, the GM considers the situation and picks a number of skills that can contribute to the success of the group. Treat each action as a separate overcome roll. Teamwork actions are allowed, but may introduce costs or complications, such as running out of time or other inefficiencies.

GMs, do your best to give each character in the scene an opportunity to contribute—aim for a number of skills equal to the number of characters involved. Downsize if you expect to have some of the characters pulled away or distracted by other priorities, or if you want to make room for teamwork. For more difficult challenges, build the challenge with more needed actions than there are characters, in addition to adjusting the difficulties of the actions.

After the rolls have been made, the GM will evaluate the successes, failures, and costs of each action as they interpret how the scene proceeds. It could be that the results lead into another challenge, a contest, or even a conflict. A mix of successes and failures should allow the characters to move forward with a partial victory as they face new entangling complications.