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The rules in any role playing game are their to make the game as believable as possible. They provide a realistic framework for the story to exist in. Rules provide the player with feedback, consequences for their AE's actions.

Time

Time in Haze is measured in much the same way as we measure time in our day to day lives, it passes in years, days, hours, minutes... marching by dragging us along with it. During game play there is often a need to accelerate time to skip the boring bits or cut to the chase. Equally there is often a need to slow down action scenes, allowing us to absorb each aspect of a situation and describe our responses in complete detail.

The story told by the players and the GM is divided up into a number of related and digestible chunks called scenes, a scene has no fixed chronological length, it is instead, simply a piece of the story where the props don't change! Scene's in Haze function exactly as scenes in a movie do; whole pieces of story with natural breaks before and after.

In action sequences, time is further segmented into rounds; a round is a short period of time, somewhere between one and ten seconds in total. A round represents the average amount of time it takes for everybody to perform an action.

Segmenting time any further than this serves no purpose in a game, keeping track beyond the time it takes everybody to have at least a single go has no real use.

Abilities

Abilities are the measure of your alter ego. Ability scores are split into three aspects; body, mind and soul. Each ability score represents either the power, speed or toughness of a single aspect of your AE. Their are nine scores in all; power, speed and toughness for each of the body, mind and soul aspects. The scores each have their own descriptive names as follows:-

Aspect	Power	Speed	Toughness
body	strength	agillity	constitution
mind	willpower	wits	intelligence
soul	wisdom	charisma	empathy

The ability scores are numbers ranging from 1 to 10 in humans with normal considered to be four or five.

You'll learn the detail about each ability score in the AE creation section later, this should be enough to give you an inkling into what we're talking about when we say ability until then.

Skills

Skills represent what an AE knows and is capable of, they are used in conjunction with abilities to determine if an AE can attempt a non-instinctive task.

Abilities represent the AE's potential, skills represent the knowledge an AE gains about how to use his potential. Strength is a measure of your raw potential, power-lifting on the other hand is a training regime that makes the best possible use of that raw potential strength for lifting heavy weights.

Every species is endowed with some instinctive skills. These skills are level zero to start but they still allow the AE to make action rolls with them, effectively using only the relevant ability score. These instinctive skills represent the sorts of things the particular species does on a regular basis. See ability checks later in this section for details.

Dice

Haze makes use of ten sided dice to add an element of chance to the game. Players roll dice to find out if AE attempts to do things are successful and what the effect of a successful action is.

When a player wants an AE to attempt an action he must roll a dice and attempt to achieve a result lower than or equal to his skill added to the ability score for that skill. All actions follow the same basic principle.

Ability + Skill - Dice roll = Success rate

If the result rolled on the dice is lower than or equal to the AE's ability plus his skill then he has succeeded. The difference between the dice roll and the ability plus the skill is called the AE's success rate. The better the success rate is the more effective the AE has been in achieving the desired result.

If a player rolls a 10 when attempting an action roll that roll is called a fumble. A fumble is when lady luck has dealt you a bad hand and something has gone horribly wrong. A single effect roll (one dice) should be made to see how badly wrong it's all gone.

Dice are also rolled to determine effect, a number of effect dice equal to the AE ability added to his skill then halved plus any modifiers are rolled, if tens are rolled, then they are re-rolled and totalled, thus creating open ended effect.

((Ability + skill)/2) + modifiers = Number of dice

Actions

An action is a simple task that a player wants his or her AE to perform. An action can be attempted if the AE has the correct skill required. An action is performed by rolling a dice and attempting to get a result lower than or equal to the sum of the skill used and the ability score for that skill.

E.g. A warrior attempts to hit another warrior, the GM instructs the player to roll a dice and achieve a result lower than or equal to the warrior's agility plus his swordplay score, let's assume the warrior has a strength of six and a swordplay score of two; he would need to roll an eight or less to successfully hit.

An AE may have more than one action in a round provided his health score (Constitution, Intelligence or Empathy) allows it. The first action in a round costs one exhaustion point taken from body, mind or soul. The second action costs two exhaustion points, the third three and so on. The total expenditure of exhaustion points in a given round may not exceed the AE's health score.

E.g. if an AE has a constitution of five he may do two physical actions per round (1 + 2 = 3 Body points) the third action would cost three body points and thus be too much for the AE to accomplish as he would need a constitution of six in order to attempt a third action.

Multiple actions in a single round soon become to exhausting for the AE to keep up with and rest is needed to regain some body, mind or soul. If an AE rests for an entire round, doing nothing, he regains a number of exhaustion points equal to his relevant health score.

E.g. if an AE has a constitution of four and he rests for an entire round he regains four body points.

Difficulty

The difficulty of an average every-day task is zero, that is to say that when making an action roll, a player need only roll equal to their target to succeed. Difficulty varies from task to task however. normal actions as mentioned simply require the AE the test their own skill, difficulty implies that their is some sort of external factor involved with the action like tool-use, extreme circumstances or perhaps high wind.

Difficulty is a success rate modifier, it increases the success rate requirement for a particular task. Indicating that the action you are attempting is more difficult than an average task of this type.

Difficulty is particularly important when arming your AE, consider how hard a weapon is to use before you buy it no matter what the damage potential is...

The GM is allowed to apply a difficulty modifier to any action that he feels is made more difficult by the environment. This is usually a point or two but can be more extreme if the scene demands it.

Arbitrary success

If your skill level alone is greater than the difficulty of an action it is possible for your AE to succeed without the need for you to roll dice, simply minus the difficulty from your skill level and the result is your success rate.

skill - difficulty = Success rate

This way of working indicates that your not really trying (see Neo blocking agent smiths blows at the end of the matrix for an example of this) but that you are indeed over- skilled for the job.

Complex actions

Complex actions require high success rate in order to be completed; when a complex action roll is called for, the GM gives the player a difficulty, this difficulty is the cumulative success rate the AE must achieve over a number of action rolls. The AE rolls one dice per round against his ability score plus his skill, the success rate of each roll is added together (Failure is negative success rate) until the AE has achieved the difficulty given to him by the GM or he has run out of exhaustion points or indeed until he has given up!

E.g. a party member is attempting to pick a lock while his friends hold off a horde of goblins in the corridor behind him, the GM tells the player that picking the lock is an extended action and that he must achieve a difficulty of twelve in order to succeed; the player then adds his intelligence (Five) and his lock smithery skill (Four) which gives him a target of nine, he may roll one dice, per round while attempting to pick the lock, provided he doesn't fumble his roll the AE keeps going until he has achieved a total cumulative success rate of twelve, then the door swings open. Obviously the more rolls it takes to open the door, the longer the party has to hold off the goblins.

Assists

Some complex actions may be shared among many AE's, in which case many AE's may roll for the action and add all of there success rates together, in order to complete the task at hand more rapidly.

E.g. an AE decides to drag a boulder to the edge of a cliff and drop it over, in order to squish the would-be attacker below. The warrior in the party helps him and they thus share the extended action roll.

Unskilled actions

It is of course possible to try absolutely anything even if you do not have the skill that the action requires. If you have a related skill then it is possible for your AE to attempt an unskilled action. This action roll is made versus the relevant ability score at a minus three penalty. Note that you must have some related skill in a closely matched field in order to attempt this. E.g. You could attempt to wield a sword if you had any other melee combat skill. You couldn't suddenly crack a code or speak in a foreign language however if you had no background in cryptography or a related language.

Ability checks

Here are a number of common ability score checks for each of the nine ability scores. This is not to be considered an exhaustive list but when you add extra ability score checks you should always bare in mind that they should be simple uses of ones aptitude without the need for knowledge in a particular field of study.

That is not to say that ability scores checks are entirely dissimilar to skills checks but it does suggest a more simplistic and indeed fundamental use of your aptitude.

All of the ability checks can be increased by gaining the skills of the same name, however it is not required in order to play the game.

Strength

Lift

The lift roll is to pick up an object. Difficulty for a lift is calculated at a rate of one point per 100 pounds of weight being lifted.

Smash

The smash check is used when you want to beat down a door or crush a can or some other destructive feat of strength. Examples of difficulty ranges include; crushing a can 1, snapping a captives neck 3, kicking in a regular door 4, kicking in an exterior door 7, tearing down a structural support pillar 10.

Brace

Bracing something using yourself is not always a wise thing to do but often it's the only way to save the day. Examples of bracing include holding a door closed while someone attempts to batter it down (Difficulty is equal to the attackers success rate), Setting your foot against the base of a spear in the face of an oncoming cavalry charge (Success indicates a number of extra dice of damage to be dealt), placing yourself in the way of a runaway hay-wagon in an attempt to stop it careening over a cliff (difficulty 10). Note that bracing often results in damage being done to the one doing the bracing. The damage can be anything up to the full amount of damage being braced for, i.e. in the example above involving a door being battered down, each point of attacker success would equate a dice of damage.

Agillity

Dodge

Dodging is the act of trying to avoid a blow or missile by moving yourself out of the way. Success at dodging reduces your opponents hitting success. If you reduce your attackers hit success to zero you completely evade the blow.

Vault

Vaulting is a measure of how high you can propel yourself, the goal being to clear a particular height. Difficulty is determined at a rate of one point per foot of height being cleared.

Leap

Leaping is a measure of how far you can jump without touching the ground, this is used jumping over streams etc. Difficulty is determined by

Balance

Balancing is managing to remain on your feet in adverse conditions. Adverse conditions include ledge-walking at altitude, staying upright in an earthquake etc. Difficulty is calculated based on how much room for movement you have, and how much the environment is moving to thwart you.

Constitution

Resist Poison

The resist poison check measures your bodies ability to deal with toxins. This roll is made to reduce the effects of a poison on the body each success counts against the strength of the poison, if you have more success points than the poison has strength then the poison is resisted.

Resist Disease

The resist disease check measures your bodies ability to fend off bacteria and viruses. Each disease is rated in terms of infectiousness and severity, your resist roll is checked against the infectiousness of the disease.

Resist Shock

Massive damage to your body will often result in a state of disability as pain overloads your senses. This state of shock is responsible for the physical roll penalties applied during combat. A resist shock roll can directly reduce these penalties for the duration of a round by a number equal to the success rate of a resist shock roll.

Intelligence

Powers of deduction

Powers of deduction allow your mind to come up with answers that others just can't seem to associate with the problem at hand. In game terms, the powers of deduction ability check gives hints to your player when his AE is confronted with a problem that is too hard for the player to solve.

Willpower

Concentrate

The mind can be focused on a task only for as long as an AE can concentrate, concentration checks are made to stay awake when on guard duty, when you're trying to absorb knowledge in a boring lecture or when trying to ride past a pretty elf maid without hitting any low hanging branches.

Wits

Initiative

Your AE's initiative is a basic measure of their reaction speed.

Insight

Your quick wits allow you to find meaning in a situation where others draw a blank, this thinking outside the box or parallel thought is a rare talent that often grants insight when problem solving. In game terms successful checks give hints when confronted with mental problems.

Charisma

Befriend

You can attempt to befriend any creature you are capable of communicating with that is of human-like intelligence and similar culture. This rules out most non-human species with a few exceptions like Fae and Trolls. If you manage to befriend a creature then you gain a bonus equal to your success rate to all future social rolls involving that person that don't directly contradict that persons preferences.

Wisdom

Anticipate

Your past experience tips to off as to what is about to happen next...

Remember

Your manage to recall facts from memory

Empathy

Sympathy

Sympathy is your ability to perceive the feelings of others. This can be used in conjunction with the befriend check (see charisma) in order to ascertain what sort of things you could get your new friend to agree to.

Melee

Melee attacks work identically to regular action rolls, however they are modified by the difficulty of the weapon being wielded. In addition, the Melee combatant is further penalized for each point of strength short of the requisite they are for the weapon they are using.

Ranged combat

Ranged combat functions as Melee, with the following important addition: Weather counts a lot for the accuracy of a ranged shot, a cross wind can add up to five to the difficulty of a shot as conditions and range become more extreme.

Spells

Spells function using the Magickal ability scores and the level achieved in the spell itself. Spells are so hard to master that they are basically individual skills of their own. Spells of a particular difficulty can only be learned by those who have a score in the school the spell is from that is higher than that spells difficulty. The spell difficulty also effects the action roll as one would normally expect.

Prayers

Prayers function identically to spells.

Re-actions

Actions can often be countered by other actions i.e. if one AE attempts to hit another, the intended victim could attempt to dodge the blow, or perhaps even block it with his shield or weapon at hand, these are called re-actions and are most often found in combat. When re-actions are possible the success of the defender counts against the success of the attacker as difficulty.

E.g. if one warrior tries to hit another and has a target roll of eight, the defender can roll to attempt to dodge the blow, if the defender has a higher success rate than the attacker then the blow is effectively dodged.

Initiative

Initiative is a measure of an AE's basic reaction speed in an emergency. During combat or any other scene where an action sequence takes place all players roll Wits plus the initiative skill (wits + initiative). The ones with the highest success rate get to react first. In an ambush situation only the ambushers have an initiative roll in the first round provided of course that their ambush is successful, this involves relevant ability checks for stealth.

The success rate of an attackers initiative roll counts against the re-action rolls made by the defender. Thus if one player rolls a success rate of 4 for initiative and another rolls a success rate of five then the one with a success rate of four would have a minus one penalty to dodge or block re-action rolls against his attacker for that round (5 - 4 = 1). In the case of an ambush, the success rate of the ambusher is everyone's penalty for the first round of combat.

Initiative is rolled once at the start of every action sequence unless the action sequence is an ambush, where it is rolled by the ambusher only as combat begins and then again after the first round of attack, whereupon combat resumes as per normal.