Glossary

Players roll a d20 against one of their Ability Scores to see if they are successful. This is also known as a Complex Action. For example, a Player attempts to lift a boulder. Since this will require some muscle, she needs to roll against her Strength (STR) Ability Score. Her STR is 15, so this means she needs to roll a 15 or less to be successful. Specific Ability Checks are included in all Adventures, but, like in this example, the GameMaster will also have to improvise and decide which Ability Score to roll against depending on a given Player's intention. You make the call!

Three Ability Scores —Strength, Wisdom, and Dexterity — make a Character unique and determine what he or she is able to do in the game. When creating a new character, the player is asked to distribute 30 points among these three abilities with the condition that no ability should have a score lower than 3 or higher than 18. For example, a new Character could be strong and good with weapons with a relatively high Strength score of 15 and Dexterity of 10, but there would only be 5 points left for Wisdom. So while epic in hand-to-hand combat, perhaps that Character isn't too bright and certainly not clever enough to Cast Spells.

Much like a play, every Ampersand Adventure is cut into two or more Acts. This is to give a natural break in the gameplay with each Act roughly corresponding to a single gaming session. The GameMaster will be able to see the Acts clearly indicated in the text on the inside of the ScreenBox. If you're having fun, there's nothing wrong with playing through all Acts in one marathon gaming session — just make sure to take breaks and have snacks.