5. What maintains coherence
At first glance, Regard may seem dangerously permissive: if what matters can come from the character, the scene, lore, the past, or elsewhere, why couldn't the table simply invoke everything until Bets accumulate without limit?
The answer is not one single mechanism.
Regard relies on several layers of coherence that act at different points:
- The table contract defines how the group plays together and what authority is entrusted to each participant.
- What the game teaches the table to notice directs attention toward some elements rather than others.
- Frame Factors close off some possibilities.
- The Focus and its Zoom determine what the resolution is looking at here and now.
- Relevance and non-redundancy determine what can actually become a distinct Bet.
- Framing guarantees that what is closed is closed before the roll and that what is genuinely put into resolution can happen.
- Opposition and counter-Bets reveal the counterweights already present in the fiction.
- The Fate Gauge, when used, remembers the imbalances that persist across successive oppositions.
These tools do not perform the same job and should not be confused with one another.
Frame Factors: what closes the space of possibilities
The Focus selects what matters, but it cannot abolish fundamental constraints of the world or situation.
A Frame Factor expresses a proposition strong enough to alter the very space of possible Intentions, available means, or admissible Bets.
It does not provide a bonus or penalty.
It closes a possibility or makes a means inadmissible until the fiction changes.
World-level Frame Factor
Time travel does not exist in this world.
This is not a very difficult action. It simply does not belong to the normal space of possibilities.
Structural Frame Factor
You cannot kill a dragon with a toothpick simply by accumulating relevant Bets.
The problem is not the number of Bets. The proposed means does not allow this resolution to be opened in that form.
Local Frame Factor
This reception requires formal dress. In shorts, you are not getting through the front door.
The character can change plans, find another entrance, acquire suitable clothing, or transform the situation.
A Frame Factor therefore does not necessarily block play.
It requires the fiction to change before some Intentions or means become admissible.
Framing commits the table
Regard must clearly distinguish fictional adjudication from arbitrariness.
A possibility closed by the world, the history, the scenario, a previous consequence, or a Frame Factor must be closed before resolution.
Conversely, if the table genuinely accepts a Focus, its possible outcomes must be admissible.
What is closed by the fiction must be closed before the roll. What is genuinely put into resolution must be able to happen.
Framing commits the table.
If a Dragon cannot yet be killed in the fiction, the table should not accept the Focus:
Do we kill it?
and then downgrade a Victory into a mere scratch.
It should honestly frame what remains open: survive, reach a weakness, drive it back, accomplish a necessary step, or transform the situation enough for another question to become possible.
Once killing the Dragon genuinely becomes possible and that Focus is accepted, resolution must be able to produce that outcome.
Regard does not promise an objective numerical difficulty independent of all adjudication. It can, however, make that adjudication traceable: Focus, Bets, Frame Factors, and important consequences are made visible before uncertainty decides.
What the game teaches you to notice
A game does not need an exhaustive list of allowed Bets.
It can, however, teach the table where to direct its Gaze.
A game centered on relationships will naturally make oaths, debts, loves, and rivalries visible. Another may draw attention toward customs, taboos, magic, institutions, places, genre motifs, or consequences accumulated through play.
The character sheet may remember part of this. Lore, non-player characters, places, rules of the world, or genre conventions may carry another part.
These elements do not automatically become Bets.
They become Bets when they genuinely matter to the Focus, at this Zoom.
The game teaches you where to look. The Focus determines what matters now.
Adjudicating a Bet
The table shares responsibility for bringing forth what matters, but it must know how to decide when there is disagreement.
In a classic configuration:
- players propose the elements they see as relevant;
- the GM embodies adversity and the world;
- the table tests those proposals against the Focus, Zoom, Frame Factors, and what the game has taught it to notice;
- the GM makes the final call if the table contract gives them that responsibility.
That validation should not rest on the adjudicator's personal preference alone.
A good adjudicator is not the person who decides whatever suits them. A good adjudicator maintains the coherence of the world, the game, and the shared Focus.
The Fate Gauge: remembering imbalances
Oppositions do not need to be balanced one by one.
A character who is genuinely advantaged in the fiction should benefit from that advantage.
For tables that nevertheless want to keep track of successive imbalances, Regard offers an optional Fate Gauge shared by the group.
It can be represented by:
- blue dice in favor of the protagonists;
- red dice in favor of adversity.
Before the roll, if the number of Bets differs from one side to the other, the difference feeds the Gauge in favor of the side currently at a disadvantage.
The protagonists have 5 Bets and adversity has 3.
The opposition remains 5 versus 3.
The Gauge receives 2 red dice.
Later:
The protagonists have 2 Bets and adversity has 5.
The Gauge should receive 3 blue dice.
One blue die and one red die cancel first: if 1 red die remained, the Gauge now contains 2 blue dice.
The Gauge therefore does not immediately correct each imbalance.
It preserves a mechanical memory of the way the fiction has leaned.
Available dice can be spent later according to the authority agreed upon by the table. In a configuration where the GM controls adversity, for example, they can draw on red dice to strengthen a future opposition.
They do not have to spend them on the next obstacle, nor use them automatically.
The Gauge is particularly useful for a table that wants a visible safety net. A table sufficiently confident in its adjudication can choose not to use it.