In summary
Regard begins with two questions.
What matters here?
The table defines what it is looking at with a Focus and at what scale with a Zoom.
It then looks for the elements that genuinely matter to that question. They may come from the scene, the character, their sheet, relationships, memory, past, lore, the world, or what they anticipate about the future.
The selected elements become Bets.
A Bet is an element recognized as relevant to the Focus, at this Zoom.
A Bet is not an automatic bonus. Something may be important to the character and contribute nothing here. Conversely, a detail written on no sheet may become decisive.
The Focus also determines which side a Bet weighs on.
The second question is:
How does this way of inhabiting the world transform uncertainty?
That is the role of the Prism.
In the standard configuration, the Prism is deliberately discreet: each Bet contributes one D6, each even result produces one Success, and the Successes of the two outcomes are compared.
This configuration is complete and immediately playable.
But it is not the only possible form of Regard. A game may change the medium, the reading of uncertainty, the form of the result, how several perspectives act together, or even use a Prism that produces an autonomous result.
The rest of the rules mainly keep this gesture coherent:
- Intention says what the character is trying to obtain;
- Focus isolates what remains to be decided;
- Zoom chooses the scale;
- important consequences are made visible when they need to be;
- Frame Factors close possibilities the world or situation does not allow;
- non-redundancy prevents the same reason from being counted several times;
- interpretation returns the result to fiction.
What happens can then durably transform the character, their relationships, their world, and therefore what may matter later.
Regard teaches the table to look at what matters, then lets the world answer through uncertainty.