Editing Unwritten: System Reference Document/Running the Game (section)

===Hazards===

Environmental hazards are a common hurdle for explorers to face. A simple passive opposition will often be enough. Situation aspects can be used for invocations and compels. A forest age may have aspects like Dangerous Predators or Poisonous Mushrooms Everywhere, for instance.

However, hazards can be viewed as ‘characters’ with aspects and even skills. Playing a hazard like this makes it an active participant in the scene—the environment (or elements in the environment) can actively do things to characters. They become participants in scenes like contests.

The environment may have an attribute that will affect the characters the longer they are exposed to it. A contest that is run through the scene can model this. The environment uses its skill against the characters and each characters resists with appropriate skills in return. If the hazard gets a three-victory lead over a character, then the character takes an appropriate consequence. If the character takes the same lead, they have bypassed the hazard and no longer have to deal with it. Remember that this is a contest between the hazard and each character. One character overcoming the hazard may not mean the others have as well.

A scene that is just a contest versus a hazard has some possibilities, but combining the contest with other actions will be more fun. Interspersing contest exchanges with other activities (even other contests, such as running from an angry mob) adds another level of worry to the situation. A contest could be run across several scenes to reflect a pervasive threat that affects the characters the whole time they are in the area.