Beats are measures of drama in the Storytelling system.
Five Beats become one Experience, one significant moment able to advance your character.
You receive Beats for multiple things in the course of the story.
Aspirations and Conditions are the most common ways to achieve Beats, but numerous others exist.
Here are the main ways this occurs:
- Any time you resolve or make significant headway toward an Aspiration, take a Beat.
- At the end of every chapter (game session), take a Beat.
- Any time you resolve a Condition, take a Beat.
- When you fail a roll, you can opt to make it a dramatic failure and take a Beat.
- Any major dramatic event the Storyteller deems appropriate can award a Beat.
You can only receive one Beat from a given category in a given scene.
If you resolve three Conditions in a scene, for example, you only receive one Beat.
However, if the moment is particularly dramatic, or you’ve made significant sacrifice to trigger multiple Beats, the Storyteller can rule that multiple Beats are acquired.