This is one of three methods the game system uses to determine the Outcome of Actions. The other two are Automatically Resolved, and Double-Blind Contests (DBCs). The GM should call for this Action Resolution Method whenever success of the current Action the Actor is attempting is in question, the Action has a Known or Discovered Difficulty, and one or more other actions are competing for the Actor's point pools in the same scene, time period, or Combat Round. If a player is Role Playing and describing some Action they are attempting along with some other action(s) where the GM doesn't know if they can actually accomplish all that was described, he should interrupt the player or wait until they are done describing their Action, and follow the steps below. If the GM is describing the multiple Actions of an NPC Actor, he might optionally want to use this method to give assurances to the players that the NPC is capable of doing what he just described, based on the Stats and Abilities of the PCs, or current circumstances.

The Manual resolution method is the medium complexity to resolve of the three and should be used to resolve only Actions of Known or Discovered Difficulty where he Action can't be Automatically Resolved because the Actor intends to perform one or other Actions in the current scene, or time-period or Combat Round that would compete for allocation of points from the Actor's relevant point pools.

This Action resolution method should only be used when an Action cannot be Automatically resolved, but where a Double-Blind Contest is overkill and would slow the game down when success of at least one of the intended Actions in the sequence is assured. This is to speed play and avoid interrupting player or GM role play flow with overly cumbersome game mechanics.

To resolve an Action Manually, compare the Action Difficulty Score of each of the attempted actions in the sequence they are attempted, to the Action Score Total the Actor allocates to the Action. Once it is determined that the Actor has allocated enough points to succeed, and what the Outcome Score is, move on the next action attempted in the sequence and repeat the same process of comparing that Action Difficulty Score to the Actor's Action Score to determine the degree of success or failure. Repeat this process for each additional Action in the sequence until all succeed or one fails because the Actor has run out of points from their relevant pools to allocate that would equal or exceed the Action Difficulty.

Successful Example: Joe the smiley-faced trader is an PC merchant trying to swindle an NPC into paying more than the value of an item he is hawking. At the same time, a group of rich nobles arrive at his stall. The GM determines that due to Joe's Social Abilities and Intuition Stat that he can easily assess the shrewdness of his original NPC mark, and the disposition of the group of nobles, and so interacting with both in the current scene would comprise two Actions of Known Difficulty. Because points from the same Stat or Abilities will be needed for both of these actions, the GM selects to Manually resolve the action sequence.

To resolve the first action in the sequence, the GM announces that the NPC seems intimidated by foreigners and doesn't like confrontation, thereby revealing that the first Action Difficulty is only 1. He stops there and asks the player to state how many Intuition points and Bargain points he will allocate toward the first action: swindling the original customer. Joe is a master swindler with Bargain 6 and Intuition 5, but he thinks he can make more from the nobles, so the player states that he only allocates 1 Bargain point and 1 Intuition toward the first Action. Since the Action Difficulty was 1, and Joes' Action Point Score was 2, he succeeds with an Outcome of 1 and the GM awards him an extra gold piece as part of the transaction.

Next, the GM moves on to evaluate the second action in the same way, revealing the Action Difficulty now. He says that the nobles are impatient, only partially interested in his wares, and their primary negotiator owns a merchanting business himself. The GM announces that the Known Difficulty of the task is 8, since the noble buyer is allocating 5 Intuition points himself and there is a 3-point Circumstance modifier because the group are impatient to stay. He also tells Joe's player that the relevant skill is Persuade, not Bargain in this case, but that Intuition is still the Influencing Stat. As it would happen, Smiley-Faced Joe is also a used wagon salesman with a Persuade Ability score of 5, but and since he only spent 1 point of his Intuition 5 Stat on the first action in the sequence, he still has 4 points to allocate to this second Action. Persuade 5 plus Intuition 4 equals 9, so again he succeeds with an Outcome of 1. The GM announces that one of the nobles stays to make a deal and the player and the GM move on to a new scene that is Automatically resolved to determine Joe's profit from the transaction.

Partially Successful Example: if we were to repeat the steps of the Successful Example above, but during the Second Action resolution discovered that Joe had the Disadvantage Bad Reputation that gave him -5 points to Social Abilities with nobles, his Action Score for the second Action would have been only 4, compared to the Action Difficulty of 8, and so he failed miserably to persuade the nobles to stay while he finished with his other customer.

---