Interpreting Results

When you roll the dice, you’re trying to get a high enough roll to match or beat your opposition. That Opposition is going to come in one of two forms: active Opposition , from someone rolling dice against you, or pasive Opposition , from an obstacle that just has a set rating on the ladder for you to overcome. (GMs, you can also just decide your NPCs give passive opposition when you don’t want to roll dice for them.)
Generally speaking, if you beat your opposition on the ladder, you succeed at your action. A tie creates some effect, but not to the extent your character was intending. If you win by a lot, something extra happens (like doing more harm to your opponent in a fight).If you don’t beat the opposition, either you don’t succeed at your action, you succeed at cost or something else happens to complicate the out come. Some game actions have special results when you fail at the roll .
When you beat a roll or a set obstacle, the difference between your opposition and your result is what we call Shifts . When you roll equal to the opposition, you have zero shifts. roll one over your opposition, and you have one shift. Two over means two shifts, and so on. Later in the book, we’ll talk about different instances where getting shifts on a roll benefits you.