2.1 Saying What Your Character Does

There are two basic modes that you can use to describe how your character acts. You can describe in general terms what you want them to do, and let the GM figure out how to translate that into game mechanics. Alternately, you can say that you’re using a specific ability or game mechanic, and let the GM figure out how that affects the narrative universe.

Either approach is generally reasonable. Some people tend to prefer using one mode more often, and some GMs generally prefer to hear one mode. When in doubt, communicate at your table!

2.1.1 Describing Actions

With this style of communication, you describe what you want your character to do. For example, you can say that your character steps out of their room in the inn and walks over to knock on a friend’s door. Although Rise has rules that could govern some aspects of that scenario, such as an Awareness check to see if your friend notices you knocking, you wouldn’t usually reference those rules explicitly. Even in the unlikely scenario that your friend doesn’t notice you knock the first time, you can just knock again, so there’s no point in worrying about the details. If something seems reasonable, it probably is, and you don’t need to worry about the fiddly bits.

Sometimes, when you describe what your character tries to do, the action has a narratively relevant chance of failure. Instead of knocking on the door to say hi, you might only have time to bang on it once to warn your sleeping friend about an attack from assassins. In that case, there’s some chance that your friend is sleeping too deeply to notice the noise the first time you knock. You could try knocking again, just like in the first scenario, but in this scenario that failure would cost you valuable time to survive the attack. In that scenario, you would roll a die to determine whether you succeed in your action - or in this case, whether your friend would succeed in their attempt to notice you.

2.1.2 Using Specific Abilities

Instead of describing broadly what you want to have happen, you might choose one of a list of clearly defined abilities that your character can use. Every character has specific abilities unique to them, such as a wizard’s spells or a fighter’s maneuvers. There are also a number of simple abilities that anyone can use, such as the grapple or trip abilities. These universal abilities attempt to adequately describe a wide variety of reasonable improvised actions that you might try to use in combat.

Explicitly defined abilities have rules for determining what happens when you use them. Some abilities, such as attacks in combat, require rolling dice to determine how effective they are. Of course, you can use your character’s abilities at any time, not just in combat. Abilities such as the create water or distant hand spells can be used to solve other kinds of problems entirely.