Editing Unwritten: System Reference Document/Playing a Scene (section)

==Zooming in on the Action==

A single overcome action is sufficient to deal with a straightforward goal or obstacle—you needs to pick this lock, disarm this ancient security system, sift out a vital piece of information, and so on. It’s also useful when the details of how something gets done aren’t important or worth spending an intense amount of time on, when what you need to know is whether the character can get something done without any setbacks or costs.

Sometimes, however, things get complicated. It’s not enough to pick the lock, because you also have to avoid the falling rocks and set up the device that’s going to signal for help. It’s not enough to disarm the trap, because you also have to land the crashing blimp and keep the unconscious scientist you’re rescuing from getting hurt in said landing. It’s time to zoom in on the action.

When you want to zoom, in, you have four different ways to do so:

* Challenge - A lot of different actions all happening at once
* Contest - Characters compete over mutually exclusive goals
* Deduction - Players build an answer to a mystery
* Investigation - Characters dig for information

Deductions and Investigations are detailed in the Discovery and Investigation chapter. The other two are detailed below.

===Challenges===

A challenge is a series of overcome actions that you use to resolve an especially complicated or dynamic situation. Each overcome action uses a different roll to deal with one task or part of the situation, and you take the individual results as a whole to figure out how the situation resolves.

GMs, when you’re trying to figure out if it’s appropriate to call for a challenge, ask yourself the following questions:

Is each separate task something that can generate tension and drama independently of the other tasks? If all the tasks are really part of the same overall goal, then that should be one overcome action, where you use those details to explain what happened if the roll goes wrong.

Does the situation require different skills to deal with? Holding off the crazed animals (one skill) while pushing down a barricade (another skill) and fixing your broken wagon (a third skill) so that you can get away would be a good instance for a challenge.

To set up a challenge, simply identify the individual tasks or goals that make up the situation, and treat each one as a separate overcome roll. (Sometimes, only a certain sequence for the rolls will make sense to you; that’s okay too.) Depending on the situation, one character may be required to make several rolls, or multiple characters may be able to participate.

To conduct a challenge, call for each overcome action in whichever order seems most interesting, but don’t decide anything about how the situation turns out until after you’ve collected all the results—you want to have the freedom to sequence the events of each roll in the order that makes the most sense and is the most entertaining. Players, if you get a boost on one of your rolls, feel free to use it on another roll in the challenge, provided you can justify it.

GMs, after the rolls have been made, you’ll consider the successes, failures, and costs of each action as you interpret how the scene proceeds. It could be that the results lead you into another challenge or a contest.

If you have any boosts that went unused in the challenge, feel free to keep them for the rest of this scene or whatever scene you’re transitioning to, if the events of the challenge connect directly to the next scene.

====Advantages in a Challenge====

You can try to create an advantage during a challenge, for yourself or to help someone else out. Creating an advantage doesn’t count towards completing one of the challenge goals, but fumbling the roll could create a cost or problem that negatively impacts one of the other goals. Be careful using this tactic; advantages can help complete tasks more effectively and create momentum, but trying to create them is not without risk.

===Contests===

Whenever two or more characters have mutually exclusive goals they are attempting to resolve at the same time, they’re in a contest. Races or other sports competitions, and public debates are all good examples of contests.

GMs, answer the following questions when you’re setting up a contest:
* What are the “sides”? Is every character in the contest in it for herself, or are there groups of people opposing other groups? If you have multiple characters on a side, they roll together using the Teamwork rules.
* What environment does the contest take place in? Are there any significant or notable features of that environment you want to define as situation aspects?
* How are the participants opposing each other? Are they rolling against each other directly (like in a straight sprint race or a poker match), or are they trying to overcome something in the environment (like an obstacle course or a panel of judges)?

Now you can get started.

A contest proceeds in a series of exchanges. In an exchange, every participant gets to make one action roll to determine how well they do in that leg of the contest. This is basically an overcome action. If you are rolling against each other, you will be comparing your rolls to each other’s. If you are rolling against an environmental factor, you will be each be rolling against a passive opposition.

Players, when you make a contest roll, compare your result to everyone else’s. If you have the highest result, you win the exchange. 
* If you’re rolling directly against the other participants, then that means you have beat the result of everyone involved, and you win by how much you beat the next highest opponent.
* If you’re all rolling against something in the environment, it means you have the most shifts out of everyone after rolling against passive resistance. If no one succeeded in the exchange, this exchange is over.  

Winning the exchange means you gain a point of progress (which you can just represent with a tally mark or check mark on scratch paper) and describe how you take the lead.

* If you excel and no one else does, then you get to mark two points of progress.
* If there’s a tie for the highest result, no one gets any progress, and an unexpected twist occurs. This could mean several things depending on the situation—the terrain or environment shifts somehow, the parameters of the contest change, or an unanticipated variable shows up and affects all the participants. GMs, you should create a new situation aspect reflecting this change.
* The first participant to achieve three points of progress wins the contest and describes achieving their goal.

====Advantages in a Contest====

During any exchange, you can try an advantage action before you make your contest roll. If you’re targeting another participant or someone can interfere, they get to oppose normally. 

Doing this carries an additional risk—fumbling an advantage action means you forfeit your contest roll, which means there’s no way you can make progress in the current exchange. If you at least tie, you get to make your contest roll normally.