Editing Unwritten: System Reference Document/Aspects and Fate Points (section)

===Recovering from a Consequence===

In order to regain the use of a consequence slot, you have to recover from the consequence. That requires two things—succeeding at an action that allows you to justify recovery, and then waiting an appropriate amount of game time for that recovery to take place.

The action in question is an overcome action; the obstacle is the consequence that you took. If it’s a physical injury, then the action is some kind of medical treatment or first aid. For mental consequences, the action may involve therapy, counseling, or simply a night out with friends. For social consequences, you may need to do some ‘damage control’ to counteract the consequence.

The difficulty for this obstacle is based on the shift value of the consequence. Mild is Fair (+2), Moderate is Great (+4), and severe is Fantastic (+6). If you are trying to perform the recovery action on yourself, increase the difficulty by one.

Keep in mind that the circumstances have to be appropriately free of distraction and tension for you to make this roll in the first place—you’re not going to clean and bandage a nasty cut while an out-of-control fire rages around you. GMs, you have the final judgment call.

If you succeed at the recovery action, or someone else succeeds on a recovery action for you, you get to rename the consequence aspect to show that it’s in recovery. So, for example, Broken Leg could become Stuck in a Cast, Scandalized could become Social Damage Control, and so on. This doesn’t free up the consequence slot, but it serves as an indicator that you’re recovering, and it changes the ways the aspect can be used while it remains.

Whether you change the consequence’s name or not—and sometimes it might not make sense to do so—mark it in some way at the end of the current scene, so that everyone remembers that recovery has started. 

Then, you just have to wait the time.

* For a mild consequence, recovering consequences go away at the end of a scene.
* For a moderate consequence, recovering consequences go away at the end of a session.
* For a severe consequence, recovering consequences go away at the end of a chapter.