Montage Challenge House Rules

Core Philosophy Change

Heroes always succeed at the montage’s overall goal. The montage determines how well they succeed; not whether they do. If you are crossing the fey forest, you will finish the crossing, and the montage decides what it costs you.

Threats and Opportunities (Replaces RAW Challenges)

Instead of a unified challenge list with success/failure thresholds, challenges are split into two types:

• Threats: Consequences that happen if unaddressed.

• Opportunities: Optional chances for extra benefits. Players can also propose their own.

Each challenge has a stated Outcome: the specific consequence (Threat) or reward (Opportunity) at stake. Outcomes can be mechanical (lose a Recovery, gain a treasure) or purely narrative (lose face with a household).

Structure: Fixed 2-Round Format

Montages run exactly 2 rounds.

Each round:

1. Each hero picks one challenge. Multiple heroes cannot pick the same challenge, but a hero can assist another hero’s test instead of picking their own.

2. The Director resolves all attempts (in any order).

Between rounds: Unresolved Threats and remaining Opportunities carry forward. The Director may introduce new Threats or Opportunities in round 2, reacting to the players or deploying a planned twist.

After round 2: The montage ends. Unaddressed Threats trigger their Outcome. Secured Opportunities apply their reward.

The Montage Challenge Test

Auto-success: The Director can grant automatic success (no roll) if a hero’s abilities, expendable resources, called-in favors, or a clever solution directly address the challenge.

Succeeding at Cost

On a 12 to 16, the player chooses: fail, or succeed at a cost. Succeeding at cost resolves the challenge. The Threat is countered or the Opportunity is secured, and the hero pays for it. The Director names the cost before the player chooses, and the cost is always smaller than the Threat’s Outcome. Costs take one of these shapes:

• The Outcome lands on you alone. The Threat would have hit the whole party. You take it, and the party is clear.

• A smaller Outcome. Lose a Recovery instead of arriving late. Take damage instead of a condition.

• Spend something. A consumable, a hero token, or a favor someone owes you.

• Owe something. A favor, a debt, or your name remembered by someone who now expects something of you.

• Time. The challenge is resolved, and the party reaches the next one later or in worse order.

Resolved Challenge Handling

• Threat removed on success: The party avoids its Outcome.

• Opportunity on success: Benefits apply immediately or at montage’s end, as appropriate. The Director decides whether a successful Opportunity is removed or remains available in round 2.

• Failed challenges: Can be reattempted in round 2, unless the challenge is marked One Chance.

Variants

Some montages use one or more of these. The Director says so when the montage starts or when the challenge appears.

• One Chance: A failed challenge cannot be attempted again. A failed Threat triggers its Outcome at the end, and a failed Opportunity is gone. Sneaking past a patrol is one chance: once seen, there is no second sneak.

• Round 2 Additions: After round 1, the Director adds challenges, changes existing ones, or introduces a twist that changes the situation. Round 2 covers what remains plus whatever is new.

• Secret Outcomes: The Director withholds a challenge’s Outcome, hints at it, or decides it after hearing how the hero approaches it. Ask before committing, and the Director will say whether the Outcome is open, hinted, or secret.

• Mutually Exclusive Challenges: Two challenges that cannot both be addressed. The Director names the pairs when the montage starts. Sneak past the patrols, or run to arrive on time.

• Extra Rounds: A montage written for a larger party can run three or four rounds, so a smaller party reaches more of its challenges.

Victories

Based on Threat count vs. party size, not overall pass/fail:

Designing a Montage

Total challenges (Threats + Opportunities) number at least the party and at most twice it. Each has a specific Outcome: one of the pairs below, or something particular to the situation.

Outcomes

Each Outcome has a Threat side and an Opportunity side.

• Arrive Late / Arrive Early: The heroes reach the destination after the situation has worsened, or before it and catch others unready.

• Found Out / Kept Secret: Rivals learn what the heroes are doing and act on it, or are sent after a false lead.

• Lose a Recovery / Regain a Recovery: Exhaustion, weather, and bad shelter cost a Recovery. Rest, food, and care restore one.

• Lose a Treasure / Gain a Treasure: Something valuable is taken, or something valuable is found. The treasure is named, so the table knows what is at stake.

• Loss of Life / Protect the Innocent: A named person dies, or a group in danger comes through unharmed.

• Make Enemies / Make Friends: A neutral person turns against the heroes, or a stranger becomes an ally.

• Infamy / Fame: The heroes’ standing in a place drops or rises, and a later negotiation starts harder or easier.

• Owe a Favor / Earn a Favor: The heroes owe someone, or someone owes them, to be called in later.

• Lose a Hero Token / Gain a Hero Token: A swing in the party’s luck, in either direction.

• False Intelligence / Valuable Intelligence: The heroes act on something wrong, or learn something true about what waits ahead.

• Terrain Against You / Terrain For You: The next fight’s ground is worse (a breached wall, a fire set) or better (a barricade, a trap, a prepared position).

• Suffer a Condition / Inflict a Condition: The heroes or their enemies start the next fight weakened, slowed, or otherwise hindered.

• Harder Encounter / Easier Encounter: The next fight gains or loses enemies, or one side gains allies.

• Weakness / Immunity: In the next fight the heroes take more damage of one kind, or shrug off one kind for a while.

• Extra Malice / Extra Heroic Resource: The Director starts the next fight with more Malice, or the heroes start with more of their heroic resource.

• Attack Angle Lost / Attack Angle Gained: The enemy starts the next fight in the better position, or the heroes do.

• Surprised / Surprise: The heroes start the next fight surprised, or the enemy does. Either side may instead be guaranteed to act first.