Hey there! Love your stuff! Been thinking of running my first RPG, and have settled on the Orbital Decay microgame for a Halloween one-shot :)

I know 2400 is meant to be open to interpretation, but I'm new to RPGs and quite nervous about doing it well :') My understanding how the stress mechanic worked was that if someone wanted to reason that they were able to do something because it incited their fight-or-flight response (eg. making a quick breakaway from combat), they would roll their die to see what the stress effect of that action was. And after each use of it per player, the stress die size increases/resets after sleep. 

I was confused by the lines 'if that die rolls highest' and 'when it's highest in a roll' though, because it insinuates more than one die being rolled?  Could you correct me if my understanding of what you had in mind for the stress mechanism was different?

Apologies for the slightly pedantic question, and keep doing the cool things you do <3

Thank you, and no need for apologies! I can see how this could be confusing.

The intent is that when you roll to face a risk, you might roll multiple dice. By default, you’re rolling a die from one of your skillsets (or a d4 if hindered by some disadvantage), but you might also roll dice from “help.” You only use the result of the highest die to determine how things go, so usually, more dice means better odds of avoiding risk.

The stress die mucks with that “usually.” Technically, it’s “help” — you can include it in a roll to improve your chances of a high result, avoiding a disaster (1-2) or setback (3-4). But if your stress die is higher than any other dice you rolled (like your one from your skillset), you get a stress effect. This is a trade-off: You’re likely trading one risk (whatever you were rolling to avoid, like accidentally depressurizing the cargo bay) for another (like alerting an alien to your position when you cry out in surprise) .

When that happens, you don’t have to roll the stress die again on that table on the back page; you just consult the number you just rolled.  The way the table is written, the higher the result, the more intrusive the stress effect should be. That way, if you take a chance on the stress die and still roll poorly, you don’t get hit with double the misfortune. (And only rolling once just makes it go quicker.)

Hope this helps! Let me know if you have any more questions about this or anything else. 

Oh, and I should add: The upshot of the above is that if your skillset die rolls higher than your stress die, you don’t suffer a stress effect! Stress effects only happen when it’s the adrenaline that helps you succeed. 

Of course, by the time you’ve used the stress die a few times, it’s gotten so big that it’s a lot more likely to be the highest die in the roll…