When a player must perform an action, they should be given a chance to refine or clarify the narration of what they are doing, so that they may attempt to use a specific ACTION RATING while performing that action. Each action taken by a player will use one of the following action ratings, and it is up to the dealer which one will be used:
- CREATE: Your action is attempting to make something out of something else. While obviously used to craft an object from raw materials, create is also called upon to reinforce a door or window, design an item of your own invention before crafting it, or improvise a new use for an object.
- INVESTIGATE: Your action is attempting to uncover something. This can include forensic evaluation, medical diagnosis, reading a subject's body language, using evidence to predict an event, or searching a room from top to bottom.
- TREAT: Your action is attempting to render aid to someone or something, often (but not necessarily) to provide medical care, reassurance, repair, or long-term care or maintenance.
- FIGHT: Your action is intended to bring harm to something, or is intended to force something to move from its spot. This applies whether the subject is living or inert.
- MOVE: You are intending to use your action to change your position in a way that is not your usual means of doing so. For most human beings this is incautiously walking at up to a hustling pace on solid ground as wide as their shoulders, stopping in their stride to: swim very slowly across the surface of still water, hop across a gap no wider than the length of their leg, slowly crawl through a space twice the diameter of their hips, or carefully climb over waist-high obstacles using both feet and at least one hand. Your move rating will usually be called upon to climb a high obstacle, evade terrain features such as thorns or mines, outrun or outswim another moving entity, perform a feat of acrobatics, or sneak around without being detected.
- OPERATE: Operate is called upon to properly guide something through its intended functions. This can include a vehicle or mount which is conveying you, fixed machinery, or a handheld gadget. Typically, if you are using something familiar to you for its usual function, such as driving a car at a safe speed along a paved road with clear visibility, you do not need to perform an operate action. Special maneuvers such as preventing a machine overrun, cleanly mowing a lawn, or outrunning another vehicle would require an action to be performed.
- COMMAND: You are intending to pass along instructions to be followed. This can include directing other PCs or NPCs through a task, teaching someone in a way that will help them retain the information accurately, or assembling a list of tasks to be executed in the future. If it is able to understand you, you may use command to dictate the actions of a being which is conveying you as a mount instead of your operate rating.
- DECEIVE: You are intending to cause something to appear to be the case when it is not. In addition to telling a believable lie, this can include palming an object undetected, passing a forgery as a genuine item, causing a distraction, or employing a convincing disguise.
- NEGOTIATE: You are intending to come to an agreement with someone or something, not necessarily on mutually beneficial terms. Negotiate is appropriate for selecting a gift or offering which will please someone, browbeating a creature into fleeing or obeying you, successfully presenting an argument for debate or trial, bringing a party to compromise, or for haggling the price of an item to what you can afford.
When the dealer has decided which action rating you will refer to for the action you are performing, you will know what advantages you gain in the hand you are playing. You may choose to place your bet for that action once you know this information. Each point of action rating applies the following benefits to your hand:
- Zero: You play out the hand of blackjack normally
- One: You win ties against the dealer
- Two: Before you play your hand the dealer will flip over their face-down card
- Three: The dealer must play their hand before you do.
The action ratings are meant to be much more broad than traditional RPG skill ratings, and finding creative ways to narrate your character applying the actual skills they use daily to their new situation is the core of The Jackrooms’s gameplay. When designing your character consider what they do on a daily basis, and consider what general actions they may be able to improvise out of it when determining your action ratings.