In order to play, you'll need a good pile (at least 20) of dice, all the same color. Your color. Other players need their own colors. All characters have, at all times, three pools of dice: Passion, Confidence and Insight. These represent pretty much what they sound like: The degree to which the character can (in their current mood and circumstances) be passionate, confident and insightful.

Each of the pool-types has a number permanently associated with it (usually between 1 and 6). This does not represent (for instance) how Passionate the character is. It represents how much the character projects their Passions onto others, as opposed to directing them inward. A character with a 6 Passion will push others into action, and confront them about their beliefs. A character with a 1 Passion, by comparison, will spend more time coping with his own goals and desires than influencing other people.

You will also have a pool on your sheet labeled "Misery." You don't need a Misery rating. Every character has an unlimited capacity for Misery.

And finally, you have a "pool" (if you call it that) of all of the extra dice that you aren't using. These are called spare dice.

When you want your character to do something, you'll decide how hard what you're doing is, for your character, from one to six. Say your character wants to climb a sheer wall. If she has no athletic ability and is wearing stiletto heels, you might put the difficulty at 6. If she is a ninja clad in climbing gear, and knows the secrets of Spider-Fu, you might put the difficulty at 1.

Once you know what the challenge level (for your character) is, you pick a number of dice from one of your three pools, and roll them. If nobody chooses to oppose you, your character succeeds at what they're trying, so long as you have at least one die equal to or greater than the challenge.

If somebody opposes you (either a player opposing you with their character or the GM using an NPC or the environment) then they also roll dice from one of their pools. They can choose their own difficulty, again from 1 to 6. So if the rock wall is slime-covered and decrepit then the GM might give it a 1 difficulty to be an environmental hazard. If it's a terraced brick wall, just made for climbing, then the difficulty of opposing your climbing might be six.

Your opposition rolls dice as well. Whichever of the two of you has more dice equal to or greater than your chosen challenge level determines whether the character succeeds or fails at what they're trying to do. If you have identical number of dice then the player with the greatest sum decides. If this also ties then the person who called for the roll in the first place decides.

What you don't know, yet, is what your success or failure means. Climbing a wall doesn't necessarily mean you get into the fortress: guards might spot you and try to drive you off. Losing your grip and falling on your butt doesn't necessarily mean you won't get into the fortress: you might fall right next to a sewer entrance that you'd never have found if you hadn't slipped. Each thing you attempt has two parts: what you do, and what it achieves.

The dice under the challenge level you chose tell you who determines the meaning of the action. Whoever has the highest total on those dice decides. If that is tied, whoever called for the roll in the first place decides.

Example: Jesse wants her character, Ritsuko, to climb a wall. Ritsuko is a ninja, and this would ordinarily be an easy feat, but she's recently had a messy breakup with her boyfriend, and her mind's not on the situation. Jesse sets her challenge level at 4. The GM rolls opposition for the slick, dark, wet wall at challenge 2.

Jesse rolls four dice, 2, 3, 4 and 6. The GM rolls three dice, 2, 5 and 5. The GM decides whether Ritsuko succeeds or fails (three dice to Jesse's two). Jesse decides what that means (her 2+3 = 5 against no failing dice for the GM).

Since you'll be the one deciding how challenging everything is for your character, you don't need mechanics to modify that challenge. If your character has a razor katana to make fighting easier, or is incredibly dumb to make thinking harder, you just take that into consideration as you set challenges.

What you get, instead, is a description of your characters inimitable style. These are your characters Traits. They describe your characters personality… the way that she uses her talents to deal with the world. So "Very intelligent" isn't a Trait. "Little miss smarty-pants know-it-all" is a Trait a very intelligent character might have. "Smart enough to know better, but does it anyway" is also a Trait such a character might have.

So how many Traits do you start with? How about "None"? I hope "None" works for you. You, as the player of a character, never get to define Traits for your character. Instead, other players get to offer you Traits, along with a bribe of dice. If you accept the bribe, you get the Trait. If you don't want the Trait, you don't get the Dice. Simple, yes? You get to choose whose influence you will accept, but not to grow and change as a person in isolation.

We'll get to how you offer and accept Traits in a little while. For the moment, know that you will (soon) have a number of Traits, each with a number associated with it, one or higher (potentially unlimited). Though each of your Traits appears on your character's sheet, they are each associated (forever) with the player who created them on your sheet.

When you use a Trait, it allows you to reroll any combination of dice in the current action, so long as the combined total (before rerolling) is no greater than the number of the Trait. So a Trait of 5 would let you reroll a 5, or five 1s, or a two and a three, or two twos, and so on.

In order to use a Trait, you must either give one of your dice to the player who created the Trait, or put one of your dice into your Misery pool. These dice can come either from the pool you're rolling out of or from one of your other attributes. They may not come from dice already rolled.

Each time you use a Trait, you get a chance to increase its value. After each action, every player (whether they succeeded or not, controlled the meaning or not) gets to spend their success dice on increasing the Traits (if any) that were used in the action. You can assign each success die (or set of dice) that total equal or greater than the Trait to increase it by one point. You may also increase Traits on another players character by the same method (again, by assigning your dice). No die may be assigned to increase more than one Trait.

When people give you their dice, they are showing that your character has influence over them, for whatever reason. They have been changed by your character's opinions (for better or worse). This, in turn, gives you more power to influence them... a virtuous or vicious cycle, depending.

You can use these dice in several ways. First off, just holding onto them makes the other person less able to take action without help, so that's a valid strategy on its own. But there are also ways to throw the dice back into circulation:

• You can create a new, provisional, Trait on the character the dice correspond to. For instance, you could create "Hates to look stupid" and place two dice on it, as a bribe for the other player to accept that as a permanent Trait. You can also put dice on an existing Trait as a bribe to use it again, though this doesn't give you as much freedom (since you have to choose from existing Traits, rather than make one up).
  
• If the character the dice belong to is rolling an action then you can add the dice to any action roll, by yourself, the player whose dice they are, or another player entirely. You can do this whether your character is present in the scene or not… it is a powerful way of influencing events in the absence of your character, either to help or hinder the character you have influence over.
  
• You can spend dice on a one-for-one basis to spend your Misery as if it were Misery for the other player. So you reclaim a die from your Misery pool, give an influence die back to the player, and it is as if you were that player, spending a point of Misery. And the best part is, it doesn't reduce your characters effectiveness in the least. In fact, if you influence enough people, you can live a blissful Misery-free existence by shuffling your grief and trouble off onto others.

So you've given your dice away to somebody, and now they've gone and used them to make a provisional Trait. What can you do to get them back?

Well, two things: First, if you have less than ten Traits already then you can accept the new Trait. You can never have more than ten, so if you're at your limit then you can't accept new Traits until one of your ten is removed. So you have to pick fairly carefully which ones you'll accept and which you won't. You accept a provisional Trait by using it in an action where it could be useful: You roll the dice that were on that Trait, and add the Trait to your sheet with a value of 1.

Your second option, if the Trait really isn't one you want for the character, is to refuse it. Again, this is done during an action where the provisional Trait could be useful. But instead of acting according to the Trait you defy it in some way. You take all of your dice on that Trait and put them directly into your Misery pool.

So you've got this Misery pool, and when you have control of the meaning of an action you have a chance to spend it, either on your own character or (more attractive) on other characters you influence. So what does spending it do?

Each type of resource has its own rules for accepting Misery. But often you'll spend it directly on Traits. When you spend dice of Misery on Traits, you roll the dice and sum up the total. If the total is greater than the current value of the Trait then you subtract that value from the total, lower the Trait by one, and repeat. A middling roll against a high trait can fail completely to lower it. Similarly, a high roll against a low trait will often wipe it out altogether. If a trait is wiped out altogether, any dice that must be left out of the total are returned to the Misery pool.

Example: Jane has a "Quick temper" Trait of 5. She applies four dice of Misery against it, and rolls a total of 13. Five points bring it down to 8, 4 brings it down to 4, 3 brings it down to 1. So levels five, four and three of the Trait have been removed, leaving her with "Quick temper - 2".

Example: Ed has "Not too smart" at 2. He applies four dice of Misery against it, rolling 1, 2, 4, 6. He decides to spend the 1 and 2 dice, for a total of 3 which wipes out the Trait. He returns the other two dice to his Misery pool.

When you define the meaning of an action, you get to do two things: First, you can spend off your accumulated Misery in a variety of ways. Second, you can create or enhance resources that will help and hinder characters in later things they try to do. There are three types of resources that players can create within the rules:

1. You can establish Desires for your character or others, and attempt to force or entice other characters to fulfill your character's Desires.
2. You can establish Threats against your character or others, which block them from easily (or ever) achieving their Desires.
3. You can establish Promises made by your character or others, which empower and compel them to address an issue as time goes on.

However, the specific type of resources you have to choose from will be limited. You will only have a choice of two possible resources, and which two will depend upon which pool of dice you rolled from for the action. See the diagram, below:

Each attribute lets you create or modify one type of resource owned by other players, or one type of resource owned by yourself. So if you roll an action out of Passion (for instance) then you can create Promises that bind others, or Desires that drive your own character. You can't create Threats at all. Likewise, if you roll from Insight you can create Threats (to yourself) or Desires (in others), but not Promises.

The direction of the arrow you follow will also determine how your dice pools change. Whichever resource you create, all the dice you can claim back from the roll will go into the attribute pool that arrow continues on toward. So if you roll your Insight Pool, and choose to create a Desire in someone else, then your reclaimed dice will end up in your Passion pool. If you had chosen to create a Threat to yourself then they would have ended up in your Confidence pool instead.

Now wouldn't it be nice if you could just reclaim all the dice that you rolled? Yeah, you'd like that, wouldn't you? No such luck. If you are creating a resource on another character then you may reclaim a number of dice up to the value of the attribute from whose pool you rolled. All the rest go to your Misery pool. If you are creating a resource on your own character then you subtract the number of dice you left in your attribute pool from the attribute number. If it's more than zero then you move that many dice from the rolled pool to your Misery pool (if you have that many), then reclaim the rest. It's easier with an example:

Joe has six dice in his Insight pool, and an Insight value of 2. He rolls five of the dice and wins the right to define meaning. He gets to choose between creating a Desire for Eddie (his opponent in the action) or creating a Threat against himself.

• If he creates for Eddie then he puts two (his Insight value) of his dice into his Passion pool and the remaining three into his Misery pool.
• If he creates a Threat against himself he looks at the dice remaining in his Insight pool (1) and transfers the difference between that and his Insight value of two into Misery. So he would put four dice into his Confidence and one into his Misery pool. The easy way to do this is "reclaim dice until your remaining rolled dice plus the dice still in your Insight pool equal the Insight value, then dump the remaining rolled dice into Misery."

Note also: All players reclaim dice, even though not all players create resources. Whatever direction the meaning-creator chose, all other involved players (i.e. opponents) must move their dice in the opposite direction, and accept the consequences and Misery. Which can be pretty intense motivation for getting to define the meaning.

When you control the meaning of an action, you can assign your non-success dice to create one of five types of outcomes:

1. You can assign a non-success die to allow you to spend a Misery die (either on yourself or, through influence, on someone else).
2. If a resource isn't currently active, and if your non-success total is at least equal to the current value of the resource you may activate it. This makes the resource relevant to the current state of the story. A Desire can be pursued in the situation, or a Threat is causing trouble in the situation, or a Promise is being reinforced or fulfilled in the situation.
3. Exactly the same way, if a resource is active, and if your non-success total is at least equal to the current value of the resource then you may deactivate it.
4. If it is active, and if your non-success total is at least equal to the current value of the resource you may increase the current value by one.
5. Each type of resource also has rules for how it can be Addressed: in short, Desires are addressed when they are satisfied (at least in part), Threats are addressed when they are faced and (at least in part) mitigated, Promises are addressed when they are fulfilled (at least in part). A resource that is Addressed automatically becomes inactive (though if it still exists it can be activated again on the next action... e.g. the villain gets up for one last moment of terror, just when you thought he was down for the count).

Sometimes you will have more non-success dice than you need for one outcome. In that case you can assign dice to multiple outcomes, on different resources. So a huge roll could activate three resources, put a Misery die on a fourth and increase the value of a fifth. You could not, however, activate a resource and address it all on the same action.

Everybody finds happiness in different things. A Desire is something that another person can do that makes your character happy. So "Zoe wants to have friends who understand her" is a Desire. "I want Eric to know how much I hate his guts" is also a Desire. "I want people to try to make me a better person, so I can thwart them"? Desire.

So you're reading about Desires, and naturally the first thing you'll be wondering is "How can I directly satisfy my character's desires?" Wow, that came out sounding… weird. Anyway, you can't. That's not how Desires work. Only another player can satisfy them. And, yeah, the wierdness just gets worse.

Effects: When a Desire is Active, the character is penalized if they take an action with less success dice than the value of the Desire. If they still value the Desire, and want to keep it, then they transfer an extra die from their rolled dice to Misery (on top of whatever else they would be transferring). If they are denying the continuing power of the Desire then they move a number of dice equal to the value of the Desire from their Misery to their Spare pile, and reduce the value of the Desire to half its value (rounding down).

Addressing: When your character satisfies the Desire of another character as part of the outcome of an action, you can Address the Desire. You move a number of your non-success dice equal to half the value of the Desire (rounded up) to your Spare pile. So, yes, now you have less total dice in play. Then you take a number of influence dice over the other character, equal to the value of the Desire, from that player's Spare dice. So you achieve influence over somebody, but you also increase the sum total of dice that they have in the game. The level of the Desire rises by one after you do this.

Threats are anything that could stand in the way of the character being satisfied in their Desires. So a huge, looming battle-station bent on destroying their planet, that can be a Threat. Their own arrogance, that can also be a Threat. Their honor, and good nature? Threat.

You'll have noticed, above, that there's no real way to thwart someone else's Desire by addressing it (though you can make them miserable by giving them what they thought they wanted). That's what Threats are for! Thwart, thwart, thwart!

Effects: When a Threat is activated, you roll unaligned dice, one at a time, until their total is equal to or greater than the value of the Threat. These are its blocking dice. When the rolled dice of the player the Threat applies to are counted for any action, dice that match any of the blocking dice don't count.

Example: Troy, young school-girl incarnation of the power of Thor, has a Threat "Must conceal my powers from my parents" at level 6. It is activated and rolled, for a 2 (2 total), 2 (4 total) and 4 (8 total, and done). He then takes an action, trying to make up a clever excuse for why his hair is standing straight up from his head (actual reason? Electrical charge.) He gives it a difficult of 5, and rolls a massive six dice: 1, 2, 3, 4, 4 and 5. However, after Threat-blocking that only nets him 1, 3, 5, barely a success, and not likely to win the meaning of the action away from concerted opposition.

Addressing: The player who is facing the threat may assign non-success dice of total at least equal to one of the blocking dice to remove that blocking die. This may be done several times in the same action, if you have that many dice to assign. If you remove the last blocking die then the Threat has . Roll dice from your Spare pile until their total is at least equal to the current value, claim all those dice into your pool, then reduce the value of the Threat to half its previous value (rounding down).

Example: Troy wins the meaning of the action above, and assigns his 1 and 3 to remove the 4 blocking die from the Threat. It will now block only 2s.

You may also assign non-success dice to apply Misery dice, one-to-one to the Threat. This is done the same way you would for a Trait (i.e. the Misery dice are rolled, and if they total the value of the Threat then that value is changed) except that you increase the level of a Threat, rather than decrease it.

Example: Instead of removing blocking dice, Troy elects to use his 1 and 3 to spend two Misery dice on the Threat. He rolls 4 and 5, for a total of 9 (greater than the six value of the Threat.) The Threat value rises to seven.

Promises are anything where an issue starts to become unavoidable. The future is going to have to resolve around doing something about this issue. So "Yeah, seven o'clock at the theater, I promise I won't be late" could be the start of a Promise. "Darth Vader… a pupil of mine until he turned to evil," is the start of a Promise, as is "You must come with me to Alderaan, if you are to learn the ways of the Force." They are pacts, and karma, and destiny.

Promises give you power when you are trying to achieve them, but they also can create a lot of Misery when you fail. A double-edged sword, as so many things are.

Effects: When a Promise is activated, you roll unaligned dice, one at a time, until their total is equal to or greater than the value of the Promise. These are its aid dice. When the rolled dice of the player the Promise applies to are counted for any action, any aid die that matches a die already rolled in the dice pool is added to the relevant total. They may not however, be assigned to either increase Traits or purchase resources. They only influence who succeeds and who defines meaning, they don't make the success or the meaning more powerful.

Example: Jacob has sworn that he will always defend Renata. He has a level 12 Promise. It activates, and he rolls 5 (total of 5), 4 (total of 9) and 4 (total of 13, and done.) He then takes an action, rolling four dice and getting 1, 2, 3 and 4. This is, effectively, 1, 2, 3, 4, 4, 4, because both of the fours match to the four he rolled.

For each die that is not matched by a rolled die, the player takes an extra die of Misery during the reclaim phase.

Addressing: If every single Promise die is matched, and the player the Promise applies to is defining meaning, then they may declare that the Promise was (at least in part) fulfilled by the action. They take the Promise dice, as if they had rolled them themselves (replacing unaligned dice with their own color) and add them to their rolled pool. Then they reduce the value of the Promise by one half, rounding down.