Invoking a Distinction

Your character have Distinctions, things that are interesting and unique about your character. You can invoke each of them twice during an episode, once for comedy, and once for drama.

There are three blanks on the character sheet, and you can fill them out. You probably want to. But you don't have to, you can just fill the blank in each episode, differently, when you do them.

Because those words are not particularly important, and if you want to change them in an episode, you can. E.g., if the episode is around Christmas, and you want to make your character care about that, then you can make a Distinction be Christmas, maybe overwriting something you have. Or maybe something happens in the episode, you get angry because kids are involved or something, and now that's an Distinction for the episode.

The only real rule is that whatever it is, it should be the same for Comedy and Drama when Invoked. If one of them is Christmas, you talk about it for Comedy to get a Stress back, then later you are distracted by Christmas decorations and get some Drama because you weren't 100% for a second.

And each of the three should be somewhat different, although that's up to you.

This gives you a three consistent thing going on with your character throughout the episode.

Comedy

When you invoke a Distinction for comedy, it doesn't have to involved an Action Roll, it doesn't even have to be during any sort of activity. Just a reference or joke or anything is fine, a flashback to a the last time you did something like that, something that an audience would find funny or interesting that helps define your character.

All this does is reduce your stress by one.

Note that 'Comedy' is being used here just as a general opposite of drama. It doesn't have to be funny, it's just something that isn't causing narrative drama.

Drama

When you invoke a Distinction for drama, it has to be during an Action Roll. And the Roll has to be an important roll where there are consequences, decided at the GM discression, and usually gathering information would not count, unless the information was criticial. After the GM okay it, you roll the dice like normal.

And after when you get the results, before you assign outcomes, the number on the highest die gets flipped one lower.

Then you assign results to outcomes like normal. While you're doing this, you're handed an Edge, and you can burn that Edge immediately to Push Yourself if you want. Or keep it.

Strategy

Distinctions are one of the ways you get XP, so it's good to use them.

Doing it for Drama doesn't impact your roll as much as you might think. Reducing the highest die by one will only matter if the highest die is a 6 or a 4, because that's the only time the reducing the number by one changes anything. And even then, you just a free Edge, which means...you can Push Yourself for free to fix that, so you came out neutral.

It's even better when you have an Action Roll where you have to roll zero dice, and thus will have to take the lowest of two dice. You're reducing the highest die, which isn't the die you aren't going to use. So the only time it matters if both dice are identical...and that identical number is 4 or 6. And it it's two 6s, you just got an Edge from that crit, so while the result drops down to 5, you can fix the Partial Success with that Edge, and keep the Edge you got from Invoking for Drama! So the only time this can actually ever impact you on a zero dice roll is if you roll two 4s, and as said above, you just got an Edge to fix it, so you come out neutral.

(If you're rolling 'negative dice', it becomes much more complicated, but basically roll everything you need to roll, flip whatever is the highest dice lower, and then discard the higher dices.)

And thus...

If you don't have an Edge, it's a really good idea to Invoke for Drama to get one, as soon as you can. Just a a general strategy. Maybe not on the most critical rolls, and remember that you can get Edge other ways and you can only do this three times, so don't overdo it. But it's a good idea to keep an Edge in your pocket at most time.