The GM creates settings and situations. You decide what your character does with them. That is not a small distinction — it is the engine of the entire game.
Your character’s responses to those situations are what make the story. The GM builds the burning building. You decide whether your character runs in to save someone, stands back and watches, or uses the distraction to pick a pocket. All three are valid. All three create a different story.
You are not a passenger along for the GM’s ride. You are a co-creator of the narrative. The GM brings the world. You bring the person living in it.
Situation: The GM describes a mysterious stranger offering gold to investigate the old mine. The party has been talking about heading north to find a missing friend instead.
What you do: Thank the stranger, decline politely, and head north. The mine is still there. The stranger remembers your refusal. The friend matters more to your character than gold from a person they do not trust.
What the GM does: Adjusts. The world keeps turning. The mine situation develops without you. Maybe it gets worse. Maybe someone else handles it. Your choice had weight either way.
The GM will present hooks, threats, and opportunities. You are free to pursue them, ignore them, or invent your own goals entirely. The world responds either way — not because the GM is punishing you for going off-script, but because a living world does not pause when you look away from it.
This means your choices matter even when they are quiet ones. Choosing to help the merchant rather than chase the thief. Choosing to sleep instead of standing watch. Choosing to forgive someone when the rest of the party wants revenge. These are not interruptions to the story. They are the story.
The
The description is the mechanical input. Without it, the GM cannot judge whether a pairing is valid, and the floating system collapses into “always pick your highest number.”
What you say: “I carefully aim the point of my blade at the gap between his pauldron and breastplate — the spot where the armor does not overlap.”
What the GM hears: Precision, not strength. The approach is analytical.
What “I attack with my highest stat” gets you: A polite request to try again.
You are not asking permission to use a stat. You are describing an approach. The stat follows from the description. Get the description right and the
A Gift at 1
Low numbers are not problems to solve. They are scenes waiting to happen.
Situation: Bran (
What happens: Bran rolls his single Appeal die. He gets a 6 — that is −1 success. He has somehow made the merchant raise the price. The table is delighted.
Why it matters: The merchant raises the price. Bran announces he will “consequently” be taking his business elsewhere. He seems to think this settles the argument in his favour.
Lean into the weakness. Describe the attempt. Let the dice confirm what everyone already suspects.
The temptation: always pair your highest Gift with whatever you are doing. Body 4? Everything is a Body roll when you describe it right.
The better approach: choose the pairing that fits the moment, even when it means rolling fewer dice. The expected value difference between 2 and 4 dots is real. The story difference is bigger.
The optimized version: “I use my physical toughness to... apply the poultice... harder?”
The creative version: “I close my eyes and try to picture the diagram in the herbalist’s journal. Third page. The one with the coffee stain.”
Result: The GM says yes to Wits 2 without hesitation. The Body 4 pitch earns a long pause and a raised eyebrow.
The floating pairing system is designed to reward creative descriptions, not to let you funnel everything through your best Gift.
Soltherra is cooperative. The spotlight is shared, not fought over.
Situation: The party faces a heavily armored captain. Bran cannot get through the defense alone.
The play: Tharis spends 2
Why it matters: Tharis dealt zero damage and had the best moment of the fight. Supporting is playing.
Simultaneous combat means your plan will collide with everyone else’s plan. The enemy moved before you got there. Your ally is standing where you wanted to swing. The thing you prepared for did not happen.
A
The plan: Tilly flanks left. Bran holds the center. Tharis prepares a healing word from the rear.
What happens: Both enemies advance to the center. Tilly flanks into empty space. Bran now faces two enemies alone and rolls a 6 on his defense. Tharis’s healing word immediately has somewhere useful to go.
The story: Bran gets hit, Tilly pivots, Tharis heals flawlessly and then walks into the doorframe on the way back. Nobody executed their plan. Everyone remembers the fight.
Do not fight the chaos. Narrate it.
See Fumbles for the full mechanic.
The Prepare mechanic adds a third die to your pool, turning 2d6 into 3d6. Scouting the ambush site, studying a target’s habits, researching a creature’s weaknesses — these all count.
But preparation takes time, and time is a resource. The interesting decision is not “should I prepare?” but “do I have time, and what am I giving up?”
Situation: The party locates the enemy camp. The guards change shifts in ten minutes.
Option A: Scout the patrol routes (Wits + Alertness to Prepare). Attack with 3d6 — but the shift change happens and fresh guards are posted.
Option B: Attack now with 2d6 while the guards are tired and few.
The point: Good players look to prepare. Great players recognize when the window has already closed.
When the GM says no to a pairing, they are keeping the game coherent. “I do not see how Appeal helps you lift a boulder” is not a punishment — it is an invitation to describe a different approach.
Negotiation is quick. One or two sentences to explain the connection. When you cannot explain it that briefly, the pairing probably does not work. Adjust and move on.
Player: “I want to use Appeal + Heavy Lifting to move this boulder.”
GM: “The boulder does not care how you look. What is your character actually doing?”
Player: “Fair enough. I brace my shoulder against it and push. Body + Heavy Lifting.”
Total time: Five seconds. See the GM Guide to understand what the GM is weighing on the other side of this exchange.
This is the principle everything else serves.
Being the only one having fun means something is wrong. A creative pairing that makes the whole table laugh means the system worked. Strict optimization that makes combat efficient but forgettable means the system failed.
The
© Soltherra RPG System