1 Per­il round = 3 sec­onds

In moments of per­il, when death is a real and present threat, game­play switch­es to a detailed, blow-by-blow timescale of 3-sec­ond rounds.

Per­il begins when you or a com­pan­ion are faced with imme­di­ate dan­ger or vio­lence. Per­il ends when the dan­ger dimin­ish­es or com­bat ends. Notably, it may con­tin­ue past the sub­d­ual or sur­ren­der of ene­mies if an ally is dying.

Surprise

If at the start of Per­il you are unaware of the insti­gat­ing dan­ger or vio­lence, you must roll Per­cep­tion suc­cess­ful­ly or be sur­prised. You always roll against Sur­prise if a threat appears from dark­ness, if you are asleep, or if foes suc­ceed­ed Sub­tle­ty to move silent­ly. 

Sur­prised char­ac­ters do not get to act or react in round 1 of per­il.  Poten­tial­ly, groups of foes can sur­prise each oth­er. Sub­tle­ty may be rolled to Quick­draw and sur­prise oppo­nents who are already aware of you.

You are unlike­ly to sur­prise foes while car­ry­ing a light source. 

Initiative

Char­ac­ters in Per­il act in descend­ing order of Per­cep­tion: Char­ac­ters with the high­est Per­cep­tion take their actions first, fol­lowed by those with the next-high­est lev­els. Ene­mies act like­wise. If a play­er char­ac­ter and an ene­my char­ac­ter have the same Per­cep­tion lev­el, the ene­my acts first. Once every­one acts, a new round begins.

Actions

In Per­il, you get 2 actions per round.

Typ­i­cal actions include:

• Attack (with a Melee or Ranged skill)
• Move (up to your Agili­ty + 2)
• Stand up from prone
• Load a bal­lis­tic weapon (some require more than 1 load action)

If you’re adja­cent to an ally in ini­tia­tive order, you can act togeth­er. You can delay your turn to be adja­cent to an ally’s turn. You can skip your turn.

A sin­gle action may be held to trig­ger at a defined point lat­er in the round. If the trig­ger nev­er comes to pass, the action is wast­ed. This is use­ful for ward­ing against ene­my approach.

Grid Play

The Book­keep­er may choose to rep­re­sent the posi­tions of par­tic­i­pants in per­il on a grid map. Usu­al­ly, a large sheet of graph paper is suit­able for this. The grid should be vis­i­ble to play­ers. Each square rep­re­sents a square meter. Char­ac­ters and ene­mies should be rep­re­sent­ed by sim­ple pen­cil marks or small tokens or pawns.

Facing & Facets

It is impor­tant to know what direc­tion a char­ac­ter is fac­ing. Tokens used for char­ac­ters should include a line denot­ing this.

A square has four cor­ners and four sides. These are its facets. Your fac­ing must align with 1 of these. You may rotate out­side of your turn (this costs a reac­tion) once sur­round­ing foes have fin­ished mov­ing. Dur­ing per­il, attacks orig­i­nat­ing from your front and sides may be defend­ed against, and attacks from the back may not. 

Grid Movement

When char­ac­ters move, they tra­verse grid squares equal to their move­ment in meters. They may move into adja­cent, free squares via any con­nect­ing facet so long as that facet is unob­struct­ed. If a square is par­tial­ly occu­pied by ter­rain, it can still be occu­pied by a char­ac­ter, with­in rea­son.

Char­ac­ters may move along diag­o­nal facets, but not more than 1 meter at a time.

Two char­ac­ters may not occu­py the same space, unless one char­ac­ter is prone or very small.

Char­ac­ters of the same size may not move through each oth­er unless they are in cohe­sion or unless one of them uses a reac­tion to per­mit it. Notably, nim­bler mice can always move through larg­er allies and foes alike.

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