Reading Reality's Answer
Once the balance is fixed, the table sets it in motion with the roll, then lets Worldview undo the idea that the same number should mean the same thing everywhere.
This phase gathers steps 5 and 6: Life for the roll, Disorder for reading it.
5. Life
Roll the dice
Roll the dice corresponding to the Bets on each side.
The roll animates the constellation of what was put into the balance, but it is not yet a universally readable answer. The same faces may take on a different meaning depending on the Perspective that receives them.
The dice do not need to remain individually associated with Bets. Resolution answers the whole of what was put into the balance, not a series of independent little causes.
When several distinct viewpoints contribute to the same side, however, keep their rolls separate until they are read. The mere fact that two contributions share the same Worldview is not enough to merge them.
6. Disorder
Read according to Worldview
How a roll is read depends on the Worldview that applies to it:
An obstacle without a Worldview of its own may be read in two ways:
- Mirror: it uses the same reading as the Protagonist when the trial mainly represents their own overcoming;
- Middle World: every even die is a Success and every odd die produces none when the obstacle is simply material or external.
Place can change that reading. Climbing an ordinary mountain is not the same as climbing a mountain that is itself a sacred power.
When one side contains several viewpoints
A single side may be hybrid, especially when several Protagonists contribute to the same outcome without bringing the same viewpoint to the Situation.
There is no need to choose one dominant Worldview for the whole side.
Each contribution keeps its own roll. Read it according to the Worldview that applies to it, then add together the Successes produced by all contributions on the same side.
That sum is reality's answer for that side.
A contribution is not a new kind of Bet. It exists only to preserve the unity of one reading when several viewpoints take part in the same resolution.
Two contributions therefore do not merge automatically merely because they share the same Worldview. Such pooling could produce effects specific to that Worldview—transmitted divine support, Spiritual Pacts between participants, increased logical efficiency, collective draconic patterns—and therefore belongs to a possible cooperation rule, not to the general procedure for hybrid sides.
Worldviews and Influences that explicitly act on another roll intervene after each roll has first been read in its own way. Apply those effects, then read every changed roll again to establish its final answer from reality.
A reroll or other transformation already performed is not retroactively undone. This does not mean its fictional effect necessarily occurred: the character may have experienced its presence through their Worldview and then seen it dissolve when Perspectives met. But a die that has been removed, a pair that has been broken, a changed total, or a pattern that no longer exists no longer contributes to the final answer.
If several actors want to affect the same die in a distant roll, resolve those effects in the order the table brings them into play. Once a die has been removed or transformed, it is no longer available in its former form.
Worldviews that explicitly act on the opposing roll therefore continue to interact with it according to their own rule.
For example, one side contains a theist and an animist. The theist's contribution rolls:
2 · 3
for 1 Success.
The animist's contribution rolls:
4 · 5 · 5
for 2 Successes: one from the 4, one from the Spiritual Pact formed by the two 5s.
Reality's answer for their side is therefore 3 Successes.
The roll and its reading provide, for each side, reality's answer. In most Worldviews, that answer can be expressed as a number of Successes comparable to the other side.
Reading does not yet decide which outcome prevails. It produces the answers the table will now compare.