Whenever you roll dice, the difference between your effort and the target difficulty or opposition is measured in shifts. A shift has a value of 1. There are four possible outcomes:

• If your effort is less than the target difficulty or opposition, you fail.
• If your effort is equal to the target, you tie.
• If your effort is one or two shifts more than the target, you succeed.
• If your effort is three or more shifts more than the target, you succeed with style.

Some outcomes are obviously better for you than others, but all of them should advance the story in interesting ways. You started with fiction first (page XX); make sure you end with it too, to maintain focus on the story, and to ensure you interpret the results in a way that fits the fiction.

Ethan isn’t an adept safe-cracker (though he has the tools), and yet he’s in a sinister cult’s guarded secret headquarters, with a steel door between him and the ritual book he desperately needs. Can he get in?