I'd like to begin with a rhetorical question here. How would you ensure that an action you perform, let's say, upon another would be successful? More details on your text? (it's recommended, though, because it's nicer) We look at your levels? Toss a coin? Neither of that.
We are using a system borrowed from the old school tabletop RolePlaying games which proved to be the most useful one and that is also still being used to modern games, although automated, we do them manually.
Firstly, imagine that any character has a set of defining traits. We call them Attributes & Abilities. They are all splashed on a Character Sheet that you may fill up upon character creation.
There are traits like Strength, Dexterity, Stamina, Intelligence, Computers, Brawl and many more.
Say your character would be a strong man, you would definitely then want to push more dots into your Strength attribute. You may wonder why all this.
Let's say you would get into a clinch with someone, you both hold onto each other and try to best the other into submission, holding him still and maybe downing him.
In this case, both parts will decide the outcome via rolling. How? Alright, here we go.
Let's say you invested 2 dots into your Strength attribute and 2 dots into your Brawl. We will elaborate later on how much you can invest and when, for now let's just have these two in mind the way they are.
For every action in the game there is a roll formula, don't worry, you don't have to remember them all. Players, staff or Storytellers will tell you what to roll and in which combination. For this clinch, the formula is Strength + Brawl rolled at difficulty 6. (I'll explain what difficulty is in a moment).
The rolling systems:
We use 10-faced dice for rolls. The more dots you have in your traits, the more dice you throw and the more chances you have to succeed. This is to reflect a better chance to succed of a character who is a bodybuilder with 5 Strength and a lesser one for a weaker dude with 2 Strength.
Our character Tommy let's say has 2 Strength and 2 Brawl as mentioned earlier.
You use a command named /roll like this. "/roll strength brawl 6" -> Next up the system will roll a total of 4 dice for you like this:
"3, 7, 6, 3 - (2 Successes)"
Remember "at difficulty 6"? Here's how it works. The difficulty dictates which number or higher should the dice land on. The first dice was a 3 which was below 6, and thus it did not count as a success. Next up is 7 which is above 6 and now you have 1 success. Onward you get a 6 which is equal to your difficulty, meaning a 2nd success. And another 3 which is a "fail" because it's under the difficulty. You have a total of 2 successes.
Now Billy boy, the body-builder has 5 strength right? And he knows how to pack a punch, so he has let's say 4 dots in Brawl.
Billy rolls: "4, 3, 5, 7, 9, 5, 4, 6, 8 - (4 Successes)"
What does that mean? We now compare their successes. Tommy had fewer successes, and Billy overpowered him. He managed to immobilize Tommy and send him into submission.
That's how actions are decided between players most of the time, whenever there's the need for it. Things could be role-played without the need for rolls, but other times we need the dice to tell the story when we don't get along with the way we think things will happen, IC. The same goes for a punch. If Tommy scored 2 successes to punch and Billy scored 5 to dodge, Billy would have dodged it.
If you have questions please be aware that the staff is always there for you, most of us have years of experience and if we're not in-game, you can ask us on discord or on the support channel. We also have experienced players around that can also help.
Thank you for your time! See you in-game.