Playing the Game

At any point in a game of Blackout, a character may attempt to use a skill to obtain information, to affect other characters, or to change things around them. In order to determine how successful the player is at using their skill, the Game Master uses a Test.

Not all actions would require a test, and many times a Game Master can decide if the character would automatically succeed or fail depending on their skill, background and situation. The GM should only call for a test if there is real likelihood the character should be able to succeed in their attempt.

Elements of a Test

Dice Pool

Whenever a GM asks for a test, they will ask for a combination of one Attribute and one Skill. Climbing a cliff wall, for example, might be a Strength + Athletics test, whereas holding onto a rope over a ravine might be an Endurance + Athletics test. For most tests, the player will roll a number of dice, otherwise known as their dice pool. Usually, the more dice you are able to roll, the better. The amount that makes up a dice pool is a combination of several elements, namely an associated Characteristic and your character's Skill.

Additionally, there are a couple of ways to modify the amount of dice a character can have on their Dice Pool: Modifiers, Advantages, and Disadvantages.

Modifiers

Modifiers can be negative or positive, adding or subtracting dice from the character's dice pool when using any one specific skill. Modifiers are permanent, which means they will always be applied as long as the skill they are tied to is being used, and they are capped at a +4 or a -4.

Advantages and Disadvantages

Advantages and Disadvantages work much like modifiers, with a few key differences. The first is that unlike modifiers, advantages and disadvantages are not necessarily tied to any one skill. Furthermore, advantages and disadvantages are situational and not always applied; instead, they are applied when a character is in a specific situation or scenario, or using a specific weapon or specific item. Finally, advantages and disadvantages stack (or cancel each other out, respectively), but just like with Modifiers, a character cannot gain or lose more than 4 dice from all their cumulative Advantages and Disadvantages. Each advantage and disadvantage adds and subtracts a single die, while Major Advantage/Disadvantage will add or subtract 2 dice.

No matter the skill, advantages, or disadvantages of a character, they will always roll an absolute minimum of 4 dice. In a situation where a character would normally roll less than four dice for a test, they can only ever obtain a Partial Success.

Taking Your Time

Sometimes characters might want to look for ways to get an edge in some tests when they are not under pressure. When Taking your Time, a character slowly and methodically attempts to resolve the challenge in front of them, granting them an Advantage on their test. Not all tests or situations will allow a character to Take their Time, and the GM will determine if it’s possible for a character to do so and how much time they have to invest in order to gain an Advantage. Many abilities a character can get from training will require them to Take their Time. 

Out of combat, a good indicator of what taking your time would require is deciding where on the following time-scale the activity the character wants to undertake would fall, and then moving to the next time over; from 1 minute to 10 minutes, from 10 minutes to an hour, from an hour to a half day, from a half day to a full day.

In combat, a character may take their time in applicable tests by committing 1 additional action point.

Helping

Helping is something another character can do to support an ally who is making a test, granting them an Advantage. The GM determines if it is possible for the second character to support their ally for that specific test. Normally characters cannot offer support on a test if they either do not have ranks in the skill being used, or are not proficient at something directly related to the test.

Difficulty

Difficulty refers to how challenging the task or action the character wants to achieve is, how many successes are necessary to achieve it, and is usually determined either by the GM or by another character’s Passive Skill. A test of regular difficulty might require two successes, while a challenging one might require three, and an extremely difficult test might require five or six.

You can find general guidelines for test difficulty below.

Common Test Difficulty

A simple task most people should be able to handle, but which still carries a slight risk of failure.

1

A challenging task where an experienced practitioner would usually succeed.

2

A difficult task which would usually require an expert to accomplish reliably.

3-4

A very difficult task which would give the most skilled experts pause.

5-6

A nearly hopeless task where only the most accomplished would have any chance of success.

7+

Passive Skill

Passive Skill represents the difficulty of a character being beaten at any given skill. For example, in order to hit an enemy with a ranged attack, the character needs to achieve an amount of successes equal or greater than the enemy’s Passive Evasion Skill. Passive skill is 1 plus the rank of a skill. Modifiers do not affect passive skill unless specifically stated. Since characters cannot have negative skill ranks, passive skill never becomes less than 1.

Impossible Tests

It is entirely possible for a character to be faced with a situation in which they simply do not have enough dice to succeed in a specific test. In such situations, the GM and player can use any of the following options;

  • Look for an edge; Characters can attempt to stack advantages or mitigate disadvantages by taking their time, consuming resources, finding an object in the environment they could use as a tool or getting help from an ally.

  • Change the scope; Under the guidance of the GM, a character can break up a highly difficult test into several less challenging tests that may use different skills. Alternatively, the character can attempt to prime the pump, so to speak, taking an action that will lower the difficulty of the test easier before attempting it, if they have the time.

  • Change the method; Blackout allows for a variety of skill and attribute combinations to be applied to the same situation. You can describe your character taking a different approach to the test and ask your GM what other skill and attribute you could use with this new approach.

  • Mitigate failure; A character can simply accept failure- you can choose to fail any check and ask the GM what your character can do or roll to mitigate the consequences instead.

Range of Success/Failure

Total failure - the character fails but also creates a complication for the group.

3 Under the Difficulty

Critical Failure

The character fails at what they were trying to achieve and the situation changes, but not necessarily for the worse.

2 Under the Difficulty

Failure

Partial success, the character creates a complication, but may still move forward towards their stated goal.

1 Under the Difficulty

Partial Success

The character achieves what they were trying to, in the manner in which they were trying to achieve it.

Match the Difficulty

Success

The character achieves all of their objectives and their situation improves, making subsequent events more favorable.

2 Over the Difficulty

Critical Success

Failing Forward

Something to keep in mind as GM is that each test should ideally change the character’s current situation in some way. Success or failure simply represent different paths in which the story could move forward.

Success and Failure

When rolling dice for a test, each result of 5 and above is considered a success. Before a player makes a test which the player or the GM think may have particular significance, it is good practice for the GM to be aware of what the character is attempting to do, how they are attempting to do it, and what they are hoping this will lead to. The GM can use this information to set the difficulty of the test, and based on the amount of successes compared to the difficulty of the test, determine the results.

Drives and Inspiration

Drives and Inspiration are mechanics within the system designed to both mitigate the sting of failure and reward roleplaying out character traits.

The Inspiration Pool is a shared pool of D6s that can be spent by the party as advantages on tests. Dice can be added to the pool whenever a character is wounded or receives stress, or at the GM’s discretion whenever a character critically fails a test.

Any dice not used at the end of a session are discarded, the players then create a new pool of Inspiration dice for next session, adding 1 die for each Drive they've managed to accomplish.

Types of Tests

Challenge Test

The most basic and common type of test, where a player simply rolls an amount of D6 determined by their character’s characteristics, skill and other modifiers, and attempts to obtain an amount of successes equal or higher to the Difficulty set by the GM or another character's Passive Skill.

Opposed Test

An Opposed test takes place when two characters are in direct competition. In an opposed test, each player uses however many dice correspond to their character’s most applicable characteristic and skill and the character with the most successes will best the other.

If a tie is impossible due to the situation which prompted the test, then the character that initiated the confrontation or was the active party is the winner, as the other character is setting the difficulty. If both parties were equally active in the confrontation, Player Characters trump non-player characters.

Skill Challenge

Sometimes the characters may run into a situation which would require several skill tests over a period of time or would play out in an abstract way that would be difficult to represent in game. In those situations, the GM may declare a Skill Challenge. Skill Challenges are a variety of tests which, together, represent a complex situation which the characters work together to overcome.

The GM will describe the situation and one of the party members may use one of their skills to try and resolve it. The group may use any characteristic and skill combination as long as they are able to explain how their character would use it to navigate the situation to the GM's satisfaction; the GM the sets a difficulty for the test and the player rolls for their character.

Once a character has attempted one of the tests in the Skill Challenge, whether the character was successful or not, that character may not attempt another test until all other characters have attempted one as well, though one other character may help, granting an advantage, if they have ranks in the associated skill. Whether or not the character is successful, the group moves on to the next step of the challenge, but the overall situation of the group should be affected by the success or failure. This can mean anything from gaining advantages, gaining or losing credits or gear, or even taking injuries or wounds!

If the group accumulates a number of successful tests equal to more than half the tests in the challenge, they have succeeded in their attempt. On the other hand, if they accumulate a number of failures equal to half the total tests in the challenge, they have failed and the situation will be resolved in a way which is usually dangerous or disadvantageous to them.