How to Read a Lens Roll
A Lens roll supplies the part of play a GM would normally give you: what your character perceives, what complicates it, and what pressure enters the scene. You’ve read the module. Your character hasn’t. The roll is how the table answers them — without you leaning across it to do the answering yourself.
Every roll combines four things. A Result die that gives the principal answer and its Resistance. A Pressure d8 that reads as a Complication or an Approach — never both. A concrete Tell your character experiences. And an Impression — what they take that Tell to mean.
That’s the whole kit. The rest of this section is how to use it.
When to roll
Roll when the fiction has produced a question the module doesn’t answer and your character has earned the right to an answer — a check has succeeded, or no check was needed. Your host system says whether the action works. Lens says what the action reveals, what develops around it, or how the world answers back.
Some things are not a Lens roll.
- A yes/no fact. Is the door trapped? Is she lying? That’s a hypothesis, not a question. Take it to your host rules or the Yes/No dice.
- A failed check. If the host said no, do not roll Lens to get the information anyway. A failure must never hand you what a success would have.
- Flavour. If the answer wouldn’t change what you understand, the pressure on you, or your next real choice, don’t roll. Play on.
One thing is a Lens roll that looks as if it isn’t. A serious failure the host leaves without a consequence. Most games have one — the botched sneak that just fails, the lock that just stays shut, the lie that just doesn’t land, and nothing follows. Lens treats that silence as a pressured moment. If the character was acting — an Act, Relate or Endure table — roll that table forwards and read the Result through the failure: TRACED becomes the evidence the botched entry left; TESTED becomes the guard who wants a second answer now. The tag is the price, and the dice chose it, not you. If the character was looking or asking — a Perceive or Discover table — the answer stays withheld, and you roll Reckon for what the failure costs instead. Either way the failed check never hands you what a success would have. It hands you what failing did.
Roll once for the question in front of you. A Result may raise a new question and point to another table — it never forces another roll.
Choosing the table
There are twenty-five tables in a five-by-five grid. Two questions find the right one.
What kind of answer do I need? That’s the column. What am I dealing with? That’s the row.
| What do I notice? | What do I find out? | What happens between us? | What happens when I commit? | What does it do to me? | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| the whole scene | Assess | Canvass | Navigate | Infiltrate | Survive |
| someone with a mind | Read | Consult | Negotiate | Deceive | Tempt |
| one particular thing | Examine | Question | Confront | Fight | Reckon |
| something hidden, dormant, or lost | Search | Research | Bond | Invoke | Recover |
| something as it unfolds | Watch | Track | Perform | Chase | Travel |
Don’t choose by skill name. The same skill leads to different tables depending on what you’re using it for — an Investigation check might be Examine, Search or Research, and only your purpose tells you which. Choose by what your character is trying to do. If you’re unsure, ask what would still matter if they used a different method. If it’s still about studying one thing closely, it’s Examine, whatever the dice are called.
Each table page opens with a one-line “use this when” and the nearest neighbours — “haven’t found it yet? use Search” — so you can confirm in a glance. And a scene can move between tables as its pressure changes: an intrusion becomes a lie when the guard stops you, a chase when the alarm sounds, a fight when someone blocks the door. Change tables when the central resistance changes. Never use two tables for the same action.
The dice
Five dice: two d6 in different colours, a d8, a d10 and a d12.
The Result die. Roll the d10 when the answer must stay inside the world’s rules. Roll the d12 only when this particular answer may break them — results 11 and 12 are the uncanny. Magic, monsters and starships don’t need a d12 by themselves. A familiar spell, a known creature, a ship’s drive that works the way the setting says it works: those are ordinary, and they roll the d10. The d12 comes out when the answer may exceed what your world regards as possible.
The Pressure d8. One die, two faces. Read it as the Complication — the object’s side, what makes the answer less simple — or as the Approach — the character’s side, what they instinctively do. Which face you read depends on the reading, below. You never read both in the same roll.
The two d6 are for the Yes/No dice only. One answers, one carries the Twist. They must be tellable apart.
Roll the Result die and the d8 together.
The two readings
The same roll can be read in two directions. The dice don’t change. The order you read them in does.
Forwards — when the character has earned the answer
Use the forwards reading after a successful host check, or when no check was needed. Your character has done the thing. Now the world answers.
- Read the Result. The principal answer, with its Conflict Tag and Resistance.
- Read the Complication. The left face of the d8. It belongs to the thing being perceived — the situation, person, object, place or activity — and it adds a second fact that makes the answer not simple.
- State the Tell. One concrete sign your character experiences.
- State the Impression. What they take it to mean, in one plain sentence.
- Record the Resistance and play on.
Result + Complication = the GM’s answer. ORDERED + CONCEALED: there’s a clear chain of command, and the part that matters is out of sight.
There is no Impulse in a forwards reading. No Follow, no Resist. You legitimately know the new information — you earned it — and you choose freely what your character does next. That’s the whole point of having earned it.
Backwards — when you know something the character doesn’t
Use the backwards reading when player knowledge could improperly decide the character’s next action. You’ve read that the tile is hollow. Your character is searching a locked room. If you let them tap that tile first, you’ve just played the module for them.
The backwards reading needs a real point of contact — a door being opened, a room entered, a person approached, a strange thing handled. Don’t roll at a secret your character can’t touch.
- Read the Approach first. The right face of the d8. It belongs to the character. Turn it into one immediate, concrete action using only what they presently perceive.
- Follow or Resist. Take the rolled Approach, or choose a different one.
- Resolve the action with your host system — success, failure, or a consequence of its own.
- Now read the waiting Result. Interpret it through what that action, and that outcome, allowed the character to experience.
Approach + your game’s outcome + Result = what the character experiences.
Do not read the paired Complication. Do not roll Lens again after the action — the waiting Result belongs to the same roll.
The Approach doesn’t reveal the secret. It decides what the character does, and that gives your host system an honest reason to make its check. A METHODICAL approach walks the clerk through the night one log entry at a time. A RECKLESS one presses the sore point. Either way, the check that follows is the character’s, not yours.
How the outcome shapes what they get. The Result doesn’t alter the host outcome — the host outcome decides how the Result reaches the character.
| Your game says | The Result is experienced as |
|---|---|
| Success | Useful understanding, in time to act on it. |
| Failure | Partial, mistaken, inconclusive — or too late to prevent the consequence. |
| No check | Something that only becomes apparent through the action, or through what happens next. |
A failed check must not provide the same useful information as a success. Keep that line. It’s the one that makes the firewall real.
Never read both faces of the d8 in one roll. The Complication complicates the answer, generatively, when the answer is earned. The Approach controls what the character does before your knowledge can intrude. Which one you read is decided by one question: has the character earned this yet?
Follow and Resist
These exist only in a backwards reading. In a forwards reading you’ve earned the answer — there’s nothing to resist.
Every Result carries a Resistance: a Conflict Tag and a number. Control +1. Threat +2.
Follow the rolled Approach — make it the character’s next real action — and when the Result is revealed, record its Resistance as printed.
Resist — choose a different Approach instead — and when the Result is revealed, raise its Resistance by one under the same Tag. Control +1 becomes Control +2. Threat +2 becomes Threat +3. Resistance never loses its Tag.
You never pay to rewrite a Complication. That would put you back in the author’s chair — deciding what’s true about the world rather than how your character meets it. Resisting changes only how the character comes at the moment. It does not change the Result. It does not turn a failure into a success. It does not remove an obstacle, hand over knowledge the character hasn’t earned, or decide how the next action turns out. The host game resolves what follows.
The Tell
Turn the Result — and the Complication, in a forwards reading — into one concrete sign your character experiences. The Result and Complication say what’s true. Your character’s skill, action, equipment or means of perception decides how they meet it. A scan measures. A face-read sees an expression. A battle-eye reads formation.
Say what they see, hear, feel, smell or taste — measure, or read from an instrument — or notice moving, changing, or absent.
The Tell is evidence, not explanation. State what’s there before what it means. Keep any unseen cause, intention or motive out of it — that’s the Impression’s job, and later the Yes/No dice.
Weak: Someone planted the chip. Strong: The chip lies above the dust line, on top of the older papers.
If nothing suggests itself, ask: what changes in the character’s senses, body, equipment or surroundings? Then state the Impression separately.
Tell, Impression, Belief
Keep three things apart. They are the whole discipline of the game.
- The Tell is what your character directly experiences.
- The Impression is what they take it to mean, right now.
- The Belief is what they carry forward as true.
You may know more than they do. Write the Belief using only the Tell, the Impression, and your host system’s outcome. A Belief may be correct, incomplete or wrong — and that gap, between what you know and what they believe, is where Lens lives.
Beliefs live on a ledger, rated. An Impression with backbone — one the character would act on, or fear — goes on at 1 for a hunch, 2 when there’s reason to think it, 3 for a conviction. A thing you are deliberately not deciding — is she lying? — goes on as a Question, unrated, and stays unanswered until play answers it. The ratings move only when a confirmed fact bears on them — a Commit, a host result, the source — and you test a Belief when you judge the moment has come. The Pressure chapter and R7 carry the ledger — this page only asks you to notice when an Impression has earned a line.
Resistance and the clock
The Resistance you record is the Beats you add to the Pressure Clock — the Tag’s number, under the Tag’s name. The clock, the Dominant Tag, the Commit and World Pressure work exactly as the Pressure chapter describes. Nothing about reading a roll changes them. The roll feeds the clock. The clock does the rest.
The Pressure d8
Every table uses the same eight paired directions, in the same order. Each table rewrites their descriptions for its own activity — but the names and the pairs are fixed, and this is what they mean in general.
| d8 | Complication — the object’s side | Approach — the character’s side |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | DELICATE — a small disturbance could change or destroy it | CAREFUL — protect position, preserve, test the way forward |
| 2 | VOLATILE — contact or pressure could trigger a sudden consequence | RECKLESS — enter danger, provoke, ignore the safer option |
| 3 | CONNECTED — it extends beyond its immediate subject | STRATEGIC — improve position, control timing, bring in help |
| 4 | FLEETING — it is changing, closing, fading | URGENT — act before the opportunity passes |
| 5 | CONCEALED — an important part remains hidden | SECRETIVE — hide presence, intention, or discovery |
| 6 | OVERT — it is visible, declared, or public | DIRECT — go straight to the clearest route, problem, or person |
| 7 | LAYERED — the apparent answer has another part beneath it | METHODICAL — deal with one part before the next |
| 8 | EXPLOITABLE — it can be turned to an immediate advantage | OPPORTUNISTIC — use an immediate opening or weakness |
A Complication modifies the Result. It never introduces an unrelated event. An Approach produces a concrete next action — and a Resist must produce a materially different one, or the Approach wasn’t doing its job.
Playing a written adventure
The adventure stays in charge of everything it establishes — locations, creatures, difficulties, timers, solutions, behaviour, consequences. Lens adds compatible detail around those facts.
Add “and” or “but” — never “instead.”
Lens may add a sensory sign, a visible pattern, a connection, a weak point, how something activates, a knock-on consequence, or why a thing matters. It may not replace or cancel an authored fact.
If a Result or Complication flatly contradicts the page, first attach it to another open part of the scene. If no honest reading exists, reroll the conflicting die. That isn’t a Resist and carries no cost.
The order of authority: the written scenario says what exists. Your host game says what succeeds, fails, and what it costs. Lens says how your character encounters and understands those facts. Belief records only what they experienced.
More than one character at the table
When more than one player character is present, the character whose action the roll answers is the active character. Read the Tell and the Impression through them alone. The others get only what the active character shares, or what is plainly observable to anyone present.
Roll once for the moment — never once per character. A scene has one Lens roll for one question, whoever is standing in it. If two characters’ responses to the same moment are uncertain and both matter, resolve the first, then ask whether a second question remains.
Two readings, worked
Forwards. Torvald stands on the battlements and studies the approaching army. His host-system check succeeds. He rolls Assess — Result 3, d8 5 — and reads it forwards.
- Result 3: ORDERED. A clear pattern reveals a routine, rule, or chain of command.
- Complication 5: CONCEALED. An important part, cause, or source remains hidden.
- Resistance: Control +1.
Tell: Three companies change direction on the same horn-call, although no visible officer gives the signal.
Impression: This is not a mob. Someone out of sight is directing the assault.
Control +1 goes on the clock. Torvald’s next action is the player’s to choose.
Backwards. The scenario tells the player that the maintenance crew moved a shipment during a forty-minute gap. Novak, questioning a freight clerk, doesn’t know it. He rolls Question — Result 5, d8 7 — and reads it backwards.
Read the Approach first. METHODICAL: take the clerk through the night one log entry at a time, and stop wherever the account skips. The player Follows. Novak walks the clerk from the unloading log to the inventory log — and that gives the host system an honest reason for its check. It succeeds.
Now the waiting Result. OMISSION: a clear part of the subject’s account is absent.
Tell: The clerk describes the unloading at 23:40 and picks up again at 00:20. Asked about the forty minutes between, he says Maintenance had the bay but never gives a name.
Impression: Something involving the maintenance crew occurred during the missing interval.
Pressure +1 goes on the clock — as printed, because the Approach was Followed. OMISSION added only the gap and its edges. It did not hand over what the player already knew, and Novak’s Belief may record only the gap.
That’s the firewall doing its work: the player knew, the character found out, and the dice — not the player — decided what the character got to see.