Glossary

Aim

The thing the character is trying to get done right now. You set it during Ignition. It works best when it is clear, actionable, and under pressure.

Beat

A Pressure Clock fills one Beat at a time. Each Lens roll produces a Conflict Tag and a Resistance value, usually +1 or +2, and that value is added as Beats to the clock. Once the total reaches the clock’s size, it fills and the world Commits.

Belief

What the character currently takes to be true. Beliefs are written on the Pressure Card next to Commits. They may turn out to be correct, partial, or mistaken. If later events prove a Belief wrong, leave it there. The Card should preserve both what the character thought and what the world later proved.

Commit

When a Pressure Clock fills, the world changes. That change is called a Commit. It may happen in front of the character or somewhere beyond their awareness, but either way it is now part of the fiction. The Dominant Tag shapes its flavour. You can use the word as a verb or a noun: the clock Commits, and afterwards there is a Commit.

Conflict Tag

The label that tells you what kind of pressure the world is applying: Threat, Exposure, Cost, Pressure, Control, Clue, Reputation, or Uncanny. Each tag comes paired with a value, usually +1 or +2, and that value becomes the Resistance added to the active Pressure Clock.

Dominant Tag

When a clock fills, look at which Conflict Tag contributed the most Beats. That tag is dominant, and it shapes the Commit. You only ever have one Dominant Tag. If two or more tags tie, the dominant one is the most recently rolled of the tied tags — the earlier tag remains on the Card from when it was rolled, part of the situation, but it does not shape this Commit.

Felt

The first of the Stages of Concrete (see also Pattern, Commit, Target). At the moment of the roll, a Lens result remains felt, not fixed: the plain fact of what is objectively there, the character’s subjective read of it, the Impulse as immediate action, the Conflict Tag added to the clock. The result is allowed to remain what it is — a felt orientation — without being forced into explanation. Most rolls stay at Felt.

First Action

The immediate thing the character tries from their Position in the Opening Beat. It should be concrete and physical. It describes the attempt, not the result, and you set it during Ignition.

First Question

The uncertainty hanging over the First Action. This is the question the world now has to answer. It should be framed from inside the character’s experience, not from an outside, authorial view. Ignition hands over to play at this point.

First Sign

The d6 result that accompanies a Lens roll, giving the main result somewhere concrete to catch. If the main Lens result tells you how the moment lands on the character, the First Sign tells you what that feeling catches on first — a mark, a sound, a spacing, a rhythm, a silence, a gesture, a pattern, a trace, an absence. It narrows the image rather than widening the mystery. Each Lens Table provides its own d6 First Sign options. Skip it when the main result already gives you enough, or when the fiction already supplies an obvious sign.

Friction

Whatever is directly in the way of the Aim. You establish it during Ignition along with the Aim. Strong Friction feels immediate and tangible, and it should be able to worsen under pressure. It often sharpens when phrased with a constraint such as without, before, or while.

Golden Question

“Whose eyes am I behind — and what is objectively true?” The core Lens principle, asked as one question before every roll. The first half puts you behind a specific perception — usually the PC’s, sometimes an NPC’s, never a detached overhead view. The second keeps the facts clean: you may know more than the character does. Lens lives in that gap. Ask it before you roll.

Hook

The starting situation of Ignition. A Hook ties one detail from the character sheet to one fact about the setting or scenario, then makes clear why that matters now. It has two parts: the Anchor (“If I have ___, then the world has ___”) and the Trigger (“Right now, ___”).

Host RPG

The roleplaying game you are already playing: its rules, dice, procedures, and character sheet. Lens does not replace any of that. It sits over the top, shaping pressure and perspective, while the Host RPG still decides the outcomes of actions. (Also called your game or your RPG.)

Ignition

The procedure for starting play, restarting when play stalls, or re-establishing the problem after a major shift in the situation. It has three parts: Hook, Problem Setup, and Opening Beat. Problem Setup contains Aim, Friction, Stake, and Stage. Opening Beat contains Position, First Action, and First Question.

Impression

The character’s immediate sense of the moment. It covers what stands out first, how the situation lands on them, and what feeling they cannot quite ignore. Every Lens result begins here. It is always subjective.

Impulse

The gut response prompted by what the character has just noticed. Each Lens Table entry includes one. Follow it and nothing extra happens mechanically; resist it and add a further +1 Resistance to the current clock. The Impulse shows the grain of the fiction: where the moment wants to push the character.

Jumping Lenses

Superseded. Earlier drafts of Lens used this term for rolling from an NPC’s point of view. The canonical framework is now the three dispositions taught in Chapter 5: Read for Perspective (use a result to colour an NPC moment without opening a clock), Shape Behaviour Through Commit (let the world push back through the PC’s Commits without rolling separately for the NPC), or Give the Perspective Its Own Clock (open a Pressure Clock for the NPC, run it the same way the PC’s clock runs, with Commit and Belief both written from inside the NPC’s perception). Chapter 5 sets out how pressure routes in each case.

Lens

Both the name of the overlay system and the principle behind it. Lens keeps play rooted in character-centred perception. It governs what is noticed, how pressure is felt, and the way the world pushes back through lived experience rather than detached summary.

Lens Result

What you get from a Lens roll: an Impression, an Impulse, and a Conflict Tag with its Resistance value. In effect, it tells you how the character experiences the moment by filtering the existing fiction through their point of view.

Lens Table

One of the 25 tables used to generate a Lens Result for a particular kind of moment: entering a place, reading a room, making contact, searching, fighting, travelling, and so on. The tables are grouped into five families: Reading the Situation, Engaging People, Finding Things Out, Executing, and Forces and Consequences.

Opening Beat

The moment the character steps into the Ignition Problem. It is built from Position, First Action, and First Question, and written as a short present-tense paragraph at eye level. It should end on the uncertainty that launches play. This is the first paragraph of the session proper.

Palette

A genre-facing reading layer for Lens results. A Palette has four parts: the Dial, a per-roll grounded/heightened toggle that is the one part able to change a table’s mechanics (it opens or closes the d12’s 11–12 results for the genre); Tag Reconciliation, how each Conflict Tag reads and commits in the genre; the Translation Guide, what each of the 25 Lens Tables tends to mean in the genre; and Specialist Notes. Apart from the Dial, a Palette changes only the sound, texture, and tone of a result, never the table’s outcome.

Pattern

The second of the Stages of Concrete (see also Felt, Commit, Target). As Lens rolls accumulate on a Pressure Clock, the Conflict Tags form a pattern. The pattern matters before it becomes literal — a sequence heavy with Exposure says the situation is pushing toward being seen; heavy with Pressure, that strain or dread is building; heavy with Control, that options are narrowing. The pattern tells you the kind of trouble gathering before it tells you the explanation.

Position

The character’s exact physical placement right now. Unlike Stage, which gives the broader scene context, Position puts them somewhere concrete and immediate. A good Position leaves them close to the Aim and in contact with at least one piece of Friction or Stage.

Pressure Card

The running record of what has solidified during the session. Each time a Pressure Clock fills, note two things here: the Commit, which records what truly changed in the world, and the Belief, which records what the character currently thinks is true. Commits are facts. Beliefs are the character’s working understanding.

Pressure Clock

The local tracker for mounting consequence around whatever the character is doing right now. Name it from the character’s point of view, set its size, and then add Beats from Lens-generated Resistance until it fills. What it measures is not progress toward success, but movement toward consequence.

Resistance

This is the mechanical output of a Lens roll: a Conflict Tag plus a number, usually +1 or +2. That number becomes Beats on the current Pressure Clock. In fictional terms, Resistance is the world pushing back. If the player resists an Impulse, add another +1 on top.

Stage

The wider scene context: where this is happening, when it is happening, and what active conditions surround it. Stage is established during Ignition. It is more than scenery. It should be capable of noticing the character, interrupting them, or making the Aim harder to achieve.

Stake

What the character stands to lose if the Aim fails, drags on, or exacts too high a price. You set it during Ignition. The strongest Stakes are concrete, personal, and capable of changing the world when they land. Very often, the best one grows out of the Friction rather than the Aim itself.

Target

The fourth of the Stages of Concrete (see also Felt, Pattern, Commit). When a tag is building toward dominance and the player does not want to wait for it to commit, they can target it early — naming the most plausible current source of that pressure in the fiction and acting against it through the Host RPG. Targeting is choosing to force the latent pressure into a form that can be confronted now.

Tell

The result-name of a Lens roll — the short capitalised phrase that names the result, such as SOMETHING TUNED or NOTHING HERE or HOSTILE GROUND. Each Lens Table entry has four parts in order: the Tell (the result), the Impression (how the moment lands), the Impulse (what the gut says to do), and the Conflict Tag (the kind of pressure entering the scene).

Turn Spark

A d6 prompt for shaping a Commit when a clock fills but the consequence is not yet obvious. On 1–2, think Commitment: options narrow. On 3–4, think Escalation: the situation worsens or intensifies. On 5–6, think Revelation: something hidden comes to light. If the fiction already makes the outcome clear, there is no need to roll.

Uncanny

Both a Conflict Tag and a results-range. As a tag, Uncanny names pressure from the otherworldly, the impossible, or the universe behaving at the edge of comprehension. As a results-range, uncanny refers to rolls of 11 and 12 on Lens Tables — gated behind the d12 toggle so they only appear in games that permit the uncanny in their fiction. L21: The Unseen Moves carries uncanny results throughout its range, not just at 11–12; L20: Invoke Power turns uncanny only in its upper range.

World Pressure

The scenario-level confrontation timer. Every time a local Pressure Clock fills, World Pressure advances by +1, whether that local clock ended in success or failure. Set its size according to how long you want the scenario to run. When it fills, confrontation arrives, shaped by everything that has accumulated on the Pressure Card.

Yes/No Dice

An oracle for objective binary facts your RPG, module, or setting does not already supply. Ask a clean yes/no question framed so that yes is the expected or leaned-toward answer. Set a likelihood from 1 to 6 by how likely the yes is. Roll a d6: if the roll is equal to or less than the likelihood, yes; if higher, no. An optional Twist die adds and (reinforces) or but (complicates) modifiers. Lens is about pressure and perception, not fact-finding — use Yes/No Dice when facts matter and the existing fiction is silent.