6. Varying and designing Regard
The standard configuration is enough to play.
But Regard was also designed for another possibility: when a world has a sufficiently strong logic, the mechanics can stop being generic and start expressing it.
That may require a small variation. It may also deeply transform resolution.
Two ideas at the heart of Regard
Bets: what matters here?
For a given Focus, at a given Zoom, the game and the table recognize the elements that matter.
Those elements become Bets.
They may come from the scene, the character, memory, relationships, the past, lore, the world, or what the character anticipates about the future. What matters is not where they come from, but why they matter to what the Gaze is looking at now.
A Bet is an element recognized as relevant to the Focus, at this Zoom.
Prisms: how is uncertainty read?
Every resolution must also give uncertainty a form.
In the standard configuration, the standard Prism reads D6s simply: even, one Success; odd, none.
But a game may have a strong reason to read uncertainty differently. A culture, cosmology, trope, or another way of inhabiting the world may then become a Prism.
A Prism determines how a perspective transforms the reading of uncertainty.
These are the two most characteristic parts of Regard: select what matters and, when it makes sense, make the way uncertainty is read part of the world.
Focus and Zoom naturally serve the first gesture: Focus says what the Gaze is looking at; Zoom says at what scale.
What the standard configuration decides
To be immediately playable, the standard configuration makes specific choices:
- an Intention;
- a Focus and Zoom;
- two outcomes placed in the balance;
- one D6 per Bet;
- even numbers as Successes;
- a comparison of Successes;
- a standard result scale;
- the possibility of escalation;
- an optional Fate Gauge.
Together, these choices make a complete game.
They are not all mandatory in a game designed with Regard.
A game may keep this configuration, change the medium, change how dice are read, produce another kind of result, or even avoid comparing two pools when its Prism works better autonomously.
The standard configuration is a complete way to play Regard, not a mold every Regard game must resemble.
Prisms: how a perspective transforms uncertainty
You have actually been using a Prism from the beginning: the standard Prism. Evens and odds are not the hidden reality of Regard. They were simply the default answer we needed in order to learn the resolution loop without introducing its space of variation too early.
Now is the moment to make that choice visible.
The standard Prism has no greater conceptual importance than any other Prism. It is neither the norm of reality nor the engine to which other Prisms merely add exceptions. It is a design zero point: a deliberately discreet reading of uncertainty for games that do not want perspective itself to become a particular mechanical issue.
Regard calls a Prism:
the logic by which a perspective on the world transforms uncertainty into a result the game can use mechanically.
A Prism is therefore not simply "counting the dice differently" to create an aesthetic variation.
It can modify:
- which results count;
- which patterns become meaningful;
- which dice can be rerolled or transformed;
- which results cancel one another;
- what costs are attached to certain results;
- relationships between the Bets on either side;
- the media being used;
- the very form of the result.
The concrete mechanism is the expression of a more fundamental question:
What does uncertainty mean from this way of inhabiting the world?
The standard Prism
We have already been using it to learn how to play.
The standard Prism treats every D6 identically: even, it produces a Success; odd, it does not.
It does not claim to represent the "true" structure of chance.
It simply provides a discreet reading when the game does not want perspective itself to become a particular mechanical issue.
It is a design zero point, not a norm that other Prisms should resemble.
It is also the default behavior for adversity without a perspective of its own when neither the world nor the design justifies another treatment.
Two distinct questions: which side a Bet weighs on, and how it is read
Two decisions should not be confused:
- Which outcome does this Bet favor?
That depends on the Focus and the fictional situation. - How does this Bet become mechanically readable?
That depends on the Prism of the perspective carrying it, or on the Prism the game assigns to its actualization.
The Focus determines which side a Bet weighs on. The Prism determines how it passes through uncertainty and becomes readable by the game.
The Bets favoring the same outcome therefore do not need to be homogeneous in terms of Prisms.
A collective side can bring together several Prisms
Sharing an Intention does not mean sharing a perspective.
If several protagonists contribute to the same outcome from different perspectives, their Bets remain on the same side but are processed according to their respective Prisms.
In that case:
- Bets remain grouped according to the outcome they favor;
- they are processed in coherent subsets according to the Prisms of the perspectives carrying them;
- comparable outputs are brought together for that outcome before comparison.
The side determines which contributions are brought together. The Prism determines how each becomes a mechanically comparable contribution.
This rule avoids artificially imposing the leader's Prism, the majority Prism, or a mechanical mixture with no fictional meaning.
If the fiction establishes that one perspective genuinely dominates collective action, a game can of course represent that. It then becomes a property of the situation, not a general tie-breaking rule.
Making several Prisms work together
In the standard configuration, several Prisms can contribute to the same outcome because they all produce Successes that can be added together before comparison.
That is not a general requirement of Regard.
If several Prisms act together, the game simply needs to say how their results combine.
Another game may use a different shared result, or provide a specific rule when its Prisms produce different kinds of results.
Adversity without a perspective of its own
The Bets favoring the adverse outcome may be elements such as:
- vertical wall;
- extreme cold;
- unstable terrain;
- violent wind;
- accumulated fatigue;
- distance to cover.
These elements do create opposition, but they do not necessarily possess a perspective on the world.
Regard recommends reading them in the following order.
1. The adversity has its own logic
Before treating it as neutral, ask whether the world, place, entity, or situation already gives it a mechanically operative logic.
If so, it uses the corresponding Prism.
Before treating adversity as neutral, ask whether the world already gives it a logic capable of becoming mechanically operative.
A sacred mountain, a spirit world, a magical institution, or a cosmological reality may therefore impose its own way of actualizing uncertainty.
2. Mirror Mode
Mirror Mode is a canonical Regard mechanism.
It is not a Prism. It is an attribution rule: adversity without a perspective of its own is resolved using the Prism of the perspective from which the test is experienced.
The Mirror does not give the obstacle a worldview. It makes the protagonist's worldview the way the entire test becomes readable.
Self-overcoming is a strong example of its use, but it does not universally define the Mirror.
The choice of scenes or situations in which Mirror Mode activates belongs to the implementation's game design. Regard provides the mechanism and its meaning; each game decides its activation policy.
With several protagonists:
- individual Focus: each protagonist can encounter a Mirror corresponding to their own Prism;
- collective Focus, shared Prism: adversity can reflect that common Prism;
- collective Focus, several Prisms: there is no longer a single perspective to reflect; the protagonists use their respective Prisms and abstract adversity uses the standard Prism.
A mirror can reflect a single perspective only if there is a single perspective to reflect.
A logic belonging to the world or the adversity itself takes precedence over this default rule.
3. Standard Prism
When adversity has no perspective of its own and no design choice justifies Mirror Mode, it uses the standard Prism.
In the standard configuration:
- D6;
- even = Success;
- odd = no Success;
- no additional effect.
Here, the standard Prism is a reading zero point, not an artificial philosophy assigned to the obstacle.
When should you create another Prism?
A particular Prism becomes relevant when changing resolution lets the player feel something that description alone would convey less effectively.
A game might want:
- divine favor to transform some failures;
- spirits to make patterns or repetitions meaningful;
- a logical discipline to aggregate results rather than count them;
- a mystical path to cancel an apparently secured Success;
- cyclical thought to make forms emerge rather than independent successes.
The right design question is therefore not:
What original mechanic can I invent?
but:
What relationship to the world genuinely deserves to transform the way uncertainty is experienced?
Designing a Prism
1. Begin with a relationship to the world
Before choosing a mechanic, identify the logic the game wants to make perceptible: accumulation, transcendence, intervention, balance, sacrifice, contamination, reciprocity, prediction, symbiosis, determinism, chance, or something else.
What logic of reality should become perceptible when the player resolves uncertainty?
2. Ask what the player should feel or notice
A good Prism does not merely represent an idea.
It influences what the player hopes for, fears, watches, or seeks during resolution.
Does playing this Prism push the player to look at the world the way their character does?
3. Translate that relationship into a mechanical operation
Only then choose what can make that logic perceptible:
- even or odd results;
- sums;
- patterns;
- cancellations;
- rerolls;
- die sizes;
- cards, colors, or symbols;
- interactions between the Bets on either side;
- changes to adversity;
- another uncertainty medium.
The medium comes after the meaning it is meant to produce.
4. Decide what form of result to produce
If several Prisms must take part in the same opposition, their outputs must be able to become comparable when they are brought together. Regard currently uses Successes for this role.
But a light game can use a standalone result if that better serves the intended experience.
5. Check that the mechanic is not merely decorated with lore
A Prism is not "6s explode because that is fun."
Sixes explode if that property expresses something about the reality lived by the character and produces the intended experience at the table.
A useful test is to mentally remove the theme: if the mechanic could be arbitrarily reskinned without losing anything in how it feels, the link between Prism and fiction probably needs to be strengthened.
The mechanic is not decorated by the lore: it becomes an operation of the lore.
6. Check its cognitive cost
A Prism can be strange without becoming opaque.
The goal is not to move attention away from complex modifiers only to replace them with another equally intrusive form of technical manipulation.
Ideally, the Prism should make its perspective more perceptible than its procedure is cumbersome.
The media can resonate too
A Bet does not have to be represented by a D6 identical to every other one.
A game can use:
- dice of different sizes;
- colors with fictional meaning;
- cards;
- tokens;
- coins;
- stones or beads;
- particular objects;
- any other medium whose manipulation serves the intended experience.
Changing the medium is not interesting in itself.
The medium becomes relevant when it extends something the character or world already makes the player feel.
The goal remains the same:
reduce the distance between what the player manipulates and what their character experiences.
Materializing Successes
Regard does not define a universal procedure for physically materializing Successes.
Set-aside dice, objects, tokens, a digital counter, or a particular table area may be useful depending on the implementation, but those are matters of ergonomics and the chosen medium.
The generic requirement is simpler: as long as a Prism or mechanical interaction still needs the full roll, that roll must remain readable.
A Success does not need to be physically assigned to the Bet that might have produced it. Resolution remains global.
When the table apparatus enters into resonance
Regard can go beyond the choice of medium: the actual apparatus of play at the table can sometimes resonate with a property of the fiction.
This possibility is an advanced opening of the framework, not its new center. It should not become a catalogue of immersive gestures, accessories, or gimmicks.
The question remains the same: does this correspondence make something of the world more perceptible in the act of play?
Embodied Bets
Embodied Bets are a canonical optional tool of diegetic design. They are not part of Regard's mandatory standard configuration.
A Regard game may choose to include them. When a game does not decide for itself, a table may also choose whether to use them in its table contract.
You do not gain a Bet by performing better. You embody a Bet that already mattered.
When a table uses this rule:
- the Bet must first be relevant and non-redundant for the Focus;
- its embodiment must make the fictional element it expresses immediately intelligible;
- the Bet remains among the Bets on its side and is processed normally by its Prism;
- its embodiment contributes 1 additional Success on the same side;
- at most one Embodied Bet on each side per resolution;
- the GM can embody a Bet from adversity under the same rules.
Embodiment adds one Success without changing how the Prism processes the corresponding dice.
This wording matters. Removing the die for an Embodied Bet could artificially change the behavior of a Prism based on a sum, doubles, patterns, explosions, or other internal relationships in the roll.
Resolution remains global: after the fact, the table does not try to establish which specific Bet "succeeded" in the roll.
If both sides systematically seek embodiment, the additional Successes may tend to cancel one another and the gesture may become automatic.
That is not necessarily a flaw for a game deliberately seeking a ritual, performative, or strongly embodied practice. But Regard does not impose that aesthetic on every implementation.
Synchronizing table time and fictional time
By default, the time players spend thinking has no consequence.
Accumulated time becomes fictional only if something in the scene actually waits, evolves, or reacts while the table deliberates.
Deliberation is not punished. The world simply continues when it already had a reason to continue.
The link can sometimes be imposed or authorized by a Frame Factor, but it is not reducible to one: an impatient character, an approaching threat, or a deteriorating situation can emerge directly from the evolution of the scene.
When time matters in the world, table time can enter into resonance with it.
When that evolution is not already obvious, its effect should normally become perceptible in the fiction before it becomes mechanical.
Time may then:
- bring forth a new Bet;
- transform an existing Bet;
- change the Frame;
- or, if the situation changes qualitatively, transform the Focus.
The principle is therefore not "thinking too long gives you a penalty."
It is that the world may continue to exist while the table deliberates when the fiction already had a reason not to wait.
Designing what the game teaches you to notice
Prisms are only one of Regard's design points.
A game must also decide which elements it wants to make visible and naturally available to the table's attention.
That attention can be organized around:
- cultures of the world;
- magic;
- social relationships;
- institutions;
- character states;
- genre motifs;
- tropes;
- consequences accumulated in the fiction.
This is not a closed list: the game mainly indicates where it is worth looking.
Two games can use exactly the same Prism and still produce very different experiences because they do not teach the table to look at the same things.
Designing a Regard game therefore does not consist only of writing a random procedure.
It means deciding what the game teaches players to notice.
Trope and relevance
A game can produce a genre not only by giving mechanical structure to certain actions, but also by giving particular importance to the reasons that can weigh in the fiction.
Powered by the Apocalypse games provide a useful point of comparison.
Many PbtA games bring forth their genre by giving privileged mechanical structure to particular fictional triggers, consequences, Playbooks, or archetypes.
Regard can act at another level: it can leave the space of actions broadly open while orienting the elements the game teaches players to treat as significant.
The trope can then emerge because the game teaches the player what to look at, what relationships to recognize, and what reasons to let carry weight in their own actions.
This difference does not mean that Regard is "freer" than PbtA in every circumstance. It points to a different design lever:
orient what matters without necessarily prescribing what the character should attempt.
Designing character evolution
Because evolution also happens through persistent elements of the character, designing progression in a Regard game does not necessarily mean drawing a level curve.
The game designer should instead decide:
- which kinds of elements can appear on the sheet;
- how an experience can create a new one;
- when an element can be reworded, replaced, or removed;
- who has authority to write those transformations;
- which changes require a resolution and which simply follow from an established fictional event;
- how the game makes important transformations visible.
The character's story progressively transforms what may matter for them.
Two characters who began with similar sheets can therefore diverge dramatically without either one being "higher level" than the other.
Three levels not to confuse
Regard
The framework.
It provides its resolution concepts and their main points of variation.
The standard configuration
A fully playable reference implementation.
It lets you use Regard immediately without any prior game design work.
A game designed with Regard
An implementation that chooses what to keep and what to transform in order to produce an experience specific to its world.
It can define, among other things:
- what the game teaches players to notice;
- the form of its sheets and fictional memories;
- its Prisms;
- its Frame Factors;
- its media;
- its game economies;
- how its characters evolve;
- its coherence or regulation tools;
- how it interprets consequences;
- its policy for activating Mirror Mode;
- any forms of resonance between the table apparatus and the fiction.
Design questions
When designing a game with Regard, ask in particular:
- What does this world or genre teach players to notice?
- How do the sheet, lore, and other media make those elements memorable without turning them into automatic bonuses?
- What makes two Bets genuinely distinct rather than redundant?
- Which possibilities does the world close before resolution even begins?
- Does the Focus concern a genuine uncertainty, and does the Zoom match the scale the fiction wants to distinguish?
- Which outcomes are genuinely possible, and which elements matter for each one?
- If several Prisms act together, how do their results combine?
- Does adversity deserve its own Prism, a Mirror, or simply the standard Prism?
- Which consequences must be known before a player exposes themselves to them?
- Is the standard configuration enough? If not, what would another Prism, medium, or form of result make the player perceive or feel more directly?
- What should durably transform the character, their sheet, or the world?
- What safeguards maintain coherence and prevent the search for Bets from becoming mere optimization?
Every variation should be able to answer one simple question:
What does this rule let the player perceive, understand, or feel about the world?