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Attempting Actions

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1. Describe in-character what your PC attempts to do. E.g., “Caroline digs into the corporation’s dirty laundry,” “Celia tries to sweet-talk her latest conquest into bed,” and so on.

2. The GM tells you what combinations of Attributes and Skills can accomplish what you’re trying to do, then assigns a Difficulty Class (DC) according to how hard it is.

Action	Examples	Difficulty Class (DC)
Easy	• Climb a knotted rope • Intimidate a weak-willed person • Seduce someone already in the mood	1
Routine	• Bypass a home alarm system • Hear someone approaching from a short distance away • Pick up someone at a bar	2
Challenging	• Bypass a business alarm system • Replace a car’s sound system • Slowly walk a tightrope	3
Formidable	• Break into a branch bank vault • Escape a pair of handcuffs • Locate the source of a whisper	4
Hard	• Break into a bank headquarters vault • Convince a cop that really isn’t your cocaine • Rebuild a wrecked engine block	5
Very Hard	• Break into a max security prison • Calm a hostile and bloodthirsty mob • Run across a tightrope while under fire	6
Almost Impossible	• Find one specific homeless person in Los Angeles in one night • Sneak into the Pentagon or a supermax prison • Swim through a raging hurricane	7
Superhuman feats	-	8+

Unnecessary Dice Rolls
Dice rolls are only used for consequential and dramatic actions. If a PC’s dice pool is more than double the task’s DC, or if failure wouldn’t lead to meaningful story outcomes, the PC automatically succeeds at the task.

3. Roll a number of 10-sided dice equal to your total dots in the assigned Attribute + Skill. This is known as your dice pool. Every result of 2-5 is a failure. Every result of 6-9 is a success. 10s count as two successes and 1s actually subtract successes. The more successes you roll, the better.

4. The GM describes the results of your roll.

NPCs and Dice Pools?
NPCs in Decanter never roll dice: only PCs do. When your character directly competes against an NPC (e.g., tells a lie to a suspicious person, or tries to shoot someone in a gunfight) the DC is equal to (1/2 the NPC’s [relevant Attribute + Skill dots], rounding down) + 1. For example, outshooting an NPC with Dexterity 3 and Firearms 3 is DC 4.

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Roll Results

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Botch: If you roll no successes, your character’s attempt fails spectacularly and leaves them worse off than before they attempted it. For example…

• You research a topic (Int + Academics) and come away with misinformation
• You try to shoot someone (Dex + Firearms) and hit an innocent bystander
• You try to seduce someone (Charisma + Socialize) and get a drink in your face

Setback: If you roll at least one success, but fewer successes than the DC, your character runs into a roadblock. They don’t necessarily fail to achieve their objective, but something goes wrong along the way. For example…

• You research a topic (Int + Academics) and find something useful, but a rival tries to abscond with your findings
• You try to shoot someone (Dex + Firearms) and hit them, but explode a nearby gas line too
• You try to shoot someone (Dex + Firearms) and miss (an example of a “normal” failure)
• You try to seduce someone (Charisma + Socialize) who turns out to be a Boggs, and wants you to join in the family’s cannibalistic depravities

Success: If you roll as many successes as the DC, your character achieves their objective. For example…

• You research a topic (Int + Academics) and find something useful
• You try to shoot someone (Dex + Firearms) and hit them
• You try to seduce someone (Charisma + Socialize) and get them to come back to your place

Extra Successes: If you roll more successes than the DC, your character achieves even more than they originally set out to do. For example…

• You research a topic (Int + Academics) and find even more information than you were looking for
• You try to shoot someone (Dex + Firearms) and take out the second gunman too
• You try to seduce someone (Charisma + Socialize) and make a long-term ally out of your fling

For some rolls, every extra success may confer a minor benefit, while other rolls may confer larger benefits for multiple successes. For example, every success on an Intelligence + Occult roll may let you ask the GM one question, while hunting for vessels as a vampire may procure an extra vessel with every extra three successes (since a complication-free deep feeding slakes 3 Hunger).

PC vs. PC: If two PCs roll dice against each other and get the same result, the PC with the higher dice pool wins. If the PCs have the same dice pool, the players re-roll their pools until the result is no longer a tie.

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Roll Modifiers

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Aiding Another: When another character helps a PC, roll their dice pool (NPCs Take Half as normal). Add their successes as bonus dice to your dice pool, up to a typical maximum of +5. Aiding characters typically must decide to Aid Another before the aided character rolls.

Dice Qualities: Contextual factors can make a character’s action more likely to succeed or fail. For example, if your PC tries g to find something in a dark building without a flashlight, their roll might take Disadvantage, as can rolling some Skills without any dots or an appropriate Specialty (e.g., trying to fly a plane without the Piloting Specialty). The GM can simply raise or lower the DC to reflect that, but applying any of the following qualities to a PC’s roll is usually more fun:

• Major Advantage: Re-roll any dice that turned up failures. Add any successes to your original successes.
• Advantage: Roll twice and use the better result.
• Disadvantage: Roll twice and use the worse result.
• Major Disadvantage: Re-roll any dice that turned up successes. Only use your successes from your re-roll.

Dice qualities can stack or cancel one another out. For example, if your character has Major Advantage and then takes Disadvantage, roll at just Advantage.

Downgraded Rolls: If you want to, you can download a dice roll by one step (success to setback, setback to botch, etc.) and gain 1 Story Point. You can do this multiple times for multiple Story Points. See below for what those do. The GM may not allow all dice rolls.

Extended Contests: Sometimes the GM may want to resolve an action through more than just a single dice roll. Multiply the DC by anywhere from two to five: your character gets to make that many extra dice rolls, and adds up their total successes to determine if they beat the adjusted DC or not. The GM will often spice up extended rolls by calling for different dice pools at various points, or requiring rolls for things besides meeting the required total successes. “Roll spamming” is usually boring.

Story Points: Characters can spend Story Points to add extra successes to their roll result. See Story Points, below, for more information.

Take Half: If your character isn’t particularly rushed, stressed, or distracted, you can forgo rolling dice and declare you get a number of successes equal to one-half your dice pool (round down odd numbers).

If you have Advantage or Disadvantage when you Take Half, you roll normally once, and get a number of successes equal to one-half your dice pool for your other “roll.”

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Story Points

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Story Points are a spendable resource usable on a number of benefits detailed below. The GM awards Story Points to players on an ad hoc basis for a variety of things: accomplishing goals, overcoming challenges, discovering secrets, writing particularly inspired posts, and taking actions that are especially bold, decisive, smart, or true to your PC’s character even when suboptimal.

Story Points have a cap of 10 and any earned over this amount is lost. Use them or lose them.

Declaration

You can declare a new detail about the game world, such as “This house is haunted by a ghost murdered by my pursuers,” “I set my phone earlier to record this incriminating conversation,” “I know a guy who can get rid of this hot car,” etc. Declarations can be very powerful, as they let you declare helpful facts into being, leverage Backgrounds you don’t have, or retroactively take actions that didn’t occur to you earlier.

Declarations that require a dice roll (e.g., “I stole his phone when he wasn’t looking”) take one as normal. Actions that take multiple dice rolls take multiple Declarations or may work better as a flashback, particularly if it’s unclear how many dice rolls they might take.

Your PC has to be aware of any Declarations you make as a player: that is, you can’t say “X event happens in the background without my PC’s knowledge” as a Declaration. The GM will veto Declarations that are implausible, boring, or contradictory. You also can’t directly declare an NPC’s current or future behavior.

Cost: 1-5 Story Points or 2-10 XP depending on the Declaration’s scope.

Get Advice

Pitch the GM a plan you’re considering with your PC. The GM will give you advice on what’s good about the plan, what’s bad about the plan, and whether there are any details you’re overlooking. The GM will only reference facts your PC already knows or could reasonably deduce. (Normally, the GM only gives advice to players when it’s not immediately applicable, as he doesn’t want to influence player decision-making.)

Cost: 1 Story Point or 2 XP per Discord message of GM advice. If the GM feels he could give no useful advice, you get the Story Point or XP back.

Get a Clue

Tell the GM a goal you want to achieve with your PC. The GM will give you a clue on how to achieve that goal. A clue may not always make sense in the moment, and will never directly reveal secrets your PC hasn’t discovered, but a clue will always give you some kind of new lead to pursue.

Cost: 1 Story Point or 2 XP per clue given. If the GM feels a clue isn’t applicable, you get the Story Point or XP back.

Hold Debt

You can retroactively declare that an NPC owes your PC a Debt. The GM may veto implausible Debts without a flashback (see below).

Cost: 1 Story Points or 2 XP per debtor’s highest Status, plus an additional 1 Story Point or 2 XP per previous Debt you’ve purchased from them in the same story arc.

If your PC shares multiple types of Status with the debtor, the Debt costs 1 Story Point or 2 XP per debtor’s lowest shared Status.

Initiate Flashback

You can play out a scene-long flashback at a time and place of your choosing, or extend an ongoing flashback into another scene. Events during a flashback cannot contradict established facts in the present, but can establish new facts helpful to your PC in the present. For example, if you’re harassed by a rival in Elysium, you could initiate a flashback where you attempt to dig up dirt on them.

At the GM’s discretion, some flashbacks have “life or death” stakes. If a PC dies in these flashbacks, the flashback immediately ends and the PC dies in the present through a story-appropriate means. The GM will inform players when a flashback has life or death stakes.

Cost: 1 Story Point or 2 XP. Flashbacks offered by the GM are free, as are flashback you only want to use to flesh out your PC’s history.

Know Secret

You can declare you know a secret about an NPC or group of NPCs. The secret is worth a single Debt, depending on how you leverage it. The GM might volunteer a secret or leave you to come up with one. The secret has to be plausible and narratively interesting. Secrets worth more than a single Debt take an Initiated Flashback to retroactively discover.

Cost: 1 Story Point or 2 XP per NPC’s highest Status, plus an additional 1 Story Point or 2 XP per previous secret you’ve purchased from them in the same story arc.

If your PC shares multiple types of Status with the NPC, the Debt costs 1 Story Point or 2 XP per NPC’s lowest shared Status.

Roll Bonus

Your PC pushes themselves beyond their limits. Add an extra success to any dice roll you’ve just made. You can spend as many Story Points as you like until the GM reveals your roll result.

Cost: 1 Story Point per extra success, plus pick one of the following costs per Story Point. Some costs may be inappropriate for some rolls.
• You incur +1 Stain
• You take Injured -1 (mortals and ghouls only)
• You take +1 Hunger or Craving (vampires and ghouls only)
• You pay 2 XP
• You incur a Condition that costs equal Story Points to resist.

If an action is in line with your PC’s Virtue, you can choose to only pay a Story Point or XP cost. If an action is line with your Vice, you can choose to only pay a Stain or XP cost. You still can’t add more successes than your remaining Story Points.

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Conditions

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Conditions represent ways in which the story’s events affect your character. Conditions use a carrot-and-stick approach, rewarding your character for taking certain actions while penalizing them for taking others. Getting injured in a gunfight, driven insane by a Malkavian’s psychic attack, or seduced by an alluring Toreador are all scenarios where your character might take a Condition. You typically only gain a Condition when you’ve gotten a botch or setback on a dice roll.

Conditions have three basic features:

Penalty: Conditions impose some kind of penalty on your character, such as Disadvantage on a type of roll or having to spend Story Points to take (or not take) certain actions. They can also impose a dice penalty on certain rolls, but these are usually harder for players and the GM to remember than Disadvantage.

Story Point: Conditions can pay 1 Story Point when they offer your character a choice between doing the convenient thing and the inconvenient thing, and you choose to do the inconvenient thing. Some Conditions may pay Story Points under other circumstances, and some may not pay Story Points at all.

Resolution: How your character can end the Condition, if applicable. Some Conditions may go away on their own. Conditions are short-term and usually only last a scene or a night. Conditions which last a long time are Flaws.

Many Conditions use a simple format: take a penalty or pay a cost equal to (DC – rolled successes) if you don’t take certain actions. For example, if a Toreador tries to seduce you, and you roll 2 successes against a DC of 4, the Condition might be “+1 Story Point if you give in to their advances, -2 Story Points if you want to resist.” Some further example Conditions are given below:

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Time

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When you’re playing out stories in the World of Darkness, time in the story can speed past or slow to a crawl compared to time in the real world. Weeks or months might pass in the space of a few words, while a tense negotiation plays out in real time—or takes even longer.

In addition to years, nights, and hours, the World of Darkness also uses five units of dramatic time. These build on one another, from shortest to longest.

• Scene: Much like a scene in a play or movie, a scene is the time spent dealing with a single, specific event. The GM usually frames the scene, describes what’s going on, and it’s up to the players to resolve the event or conflict. A scene is over when the player or GM posts three asterisks (* * *) in the relevant PC’s Discord channel. Many supernatural powers have durations tied to scenes.

• Chapter: A chapter is the collection of scenes that make up one posted adventure log. From the moment the first scene opens to the point where the GM posts a new adventure log and asks for feedback, you’re playing out a chapter of your story.

• Story: A story tells an entire tale, following the dramatic arc of a related series of events. It’s compromised of multiple chapters, though exactly how many can be fluid. It has an introduction, rising tension, a number of twists, and a climax that brings things to a conclusion. A story is akin to a season in a TV show or a book in an ongoing book series.

• Chronicle: The big picture; a chronicle is the collection of interlinked stories that involve your characters. They might be linked by a common theme or overarching plotline, or they may only share characters and locations. As your story progresses, the players and GM work together to create an ongoing chronicle.