It isn't difficult to get at least one success, even with only a couple of dice. If your group is heavily into role playing, the simple rolls described in Basic Systems serve to move the game along with a minimum of distraction. The options below serve to accent the game's action and cinematic qualities with an added level of complexity, but are still designed for smooth game play.

Some tasks require multiple successes to complete. These extended actions often take more than one turn to complete, although not always. The additional successes are cumulative, reflecting that sustained effort is needed to accomplish the action. You can keep trying to obtain successes until you gather the required amount or until you botch. If you botch during an extended action, the Storyteller may decide that you lose a “saved” success for each botch, or that you lose them all and must start again from scratch — or even that you messed up so badly that you can't try again.

Extended actions are more complicated than standard actions, and should seldom be employed in the middle of intense roleplaying. The action in the game should reflect what types of rolls are needed, not the other way around.

Your character can also perform multiple actions in a turn. The total number of actions the character takes is how many dice are subtracted from the first task attempted in that turn. Each action after the first loses an additional die beyond that amount (cumulative). So if your character tries to perform three actions in a turn, you subtract three dice from the First task's Dice Pool, four from the second, and five from the third. If the total actions bring your Dice Pool for any one task to zero, that action cannot be attempted.

Sometimes your character's efforts will oppose another's, just like in a tug of war. In resisted actions you each make rolls using the appropriate Traits. If you score more successes than your opponent does, your character succeeds at her action before the other character does. Your total successes are then reduced by the amount that your opponent rolled; the successes remaining are used for the action. In this way, even if your opponent can't beat you, she can dimminsh your efforts.

Some actions are both extended and resisted, One opponent must collect a certain number of successes in order to win. All successes rolled above the opponent's total number of successes in a single turn are added together. The first opponent to collect a designated number of successes wins the contest.

Characters can combine successes, generally during an extended action. At the Storyteller's discretion, two or more players can roll separately and total their successes. While teamwork is effective in repairing devices, collecting information or in combat, the tag-team approach can be confusing in social situations.

Failure is frustrating. If you're having trouble with your computer and can't figure out why, you're in for an evening of increasing frustration and decreasing productivity. Adventure reflects this “frustration with failure” by allowing the Storyteller to increase the successes needed for any action that you try again after an initial failure. So if a first attempt at picking a simple manual lock fails, a character's frustration with her failure could make her try too hard the second time. To reflect this, the Storyteller asks for two successes. Of course if the character fails yet again, things will continue to escalate….

The Storyteller shouldn't invoke this rule in instances such as combat. Missing a target isn't terribly surprising under such circumstances, considering that everyone is dodging about, ducking for cover and generally not being polite enough to stand still.