E. Progress Tracks

A progress track is used to measure your pace and determine the outcome of a goal or challenge in specific situations.

When you Swear a Chalk Vow, a progress track represents the challenges you overcome on your way to achieving your ultimate goal.
When you Undertake a Journey, a progress track represents how far you’ve gone and how favorable the travel has been.
When you Enter the Fray, a progress track represents your advantage as you weaken or outmaneuver your foes in combat.
When you Make a Connection, a progress track represents the evolution of the relationship.
Progress tracks are drawn as a row of ten boxes which you fill in - or mark - as you make headway toward a goal. When you initiate a challenge, these boxes are empty.

Challenge Ranks

When you engage in a fight, initiate a journey, or swear a vow, you give your challenge a rank. In increasing order of difficulty, the ranks are troublesome, dangerous, formidable, extreme, and epic. You (or the GM) will choose a rank appropriate to the situation and how quickly or easily it should be resolved. Troublesome is used for simple challenges. A typical challenge is dangerous or formidable. Epic and extreme challenges require great effort and luck to overcome.

Ranks not only help determine how difficult a challenge is, they also help determine the complexity of a challenge. In this way, they will determine how much focus that challenge gets and how long it will take to complete both in and out of the game. You may want to give further consideration to the current status of your character when determining a challenge rank, such as if you are trying to Undertake a Journey and you have a map of where you want to go, a guide to help you, or a method of transportation that would hasten your journey, then you may want to lower the challenge rank. If instead you only have the vaguest idea on the direction of what you’re looking for, you may want to instead raise the challenge rank.

Marking Progress

You will perform specific moves to advance toward your goal. For example, as you travel across perilous lands, you Undertake a Journey and mark progress as you successfully reach waypoints in your travel.

Similarly, when you fight, you Strike or Clash to inflict harm on your foe. To move forward in your quest, you use the Reach a Milestone move. To strengthen a connection, use the Develop Your Relationship move. These incremental moves let you amass advantages to have the best chance of success when you are ready to resolve your challenge.

Whenever you successfully move toward your goal, you partially or fully fill in a box on your progress track. You fill progress boxes with lines - called ticks. A full progress box consists of four ticks in a star-shaped pattern. When a move tells you to mark progress, fill in the appropriate number of ticks or progress boxes based on the rank of your challenge.


Troublesome: Mark 3 progress	Dangerous: Mark 2 progress	Formidable: Mark 1 Progress	Extreme: Mark 2 ticks	Epic: Mark 1 tick

Progress Moves

There are multiple moves, called progress moves, which utilize progress tracks to resolve the outcome of a goal or challenge. For example…

To resolve a quest, Fulfill Your Vow.
To end your journey, Reach Your Destination.
To decide the outcome of combat, Take Decisive Action.
When you retire from your life as a Chalksworn, Continue a Legacy.

Progress Rolls

You don’t make an action roll when you make a progress move. Instead, you tally the number of fully filled progress boxes (those with four ticks). This is your progress score. Then, roll your challenge dice and compare your progress score to the value of the dice.

As with an action roll, if your progress score is greater than both challenge dice, it’s a strong hit. If you beat one of the challenge dice, it’s a weak hit. If you fail to beat either die, it’s a miss. The progress move will tell you how to resolve the challenge based on the outcome of your roll. Also, keep an eye out for a match, which represents a surprising twist or unusual complication.

In the example below, you would compare your +6 progress score to your challenge dice when making your progress move. The seventh progress box is only partially filled in, and won’t count toward the progress score.

When deciding whether to make your progress move, you need to weigh your chance of success against the risk of continuing to make preparatory moves. One thing to remember: It’s not necessary to fill your progress track before making your progress move. In fact, a weak hit or miss on a progress roll can lead to exciting new story possibilities.

Momentum and Progress Rolls

Momentum is ignored when you make a progress move. You cannot burn momentum on a progress roll, and you do not suffer from negative momentum.

When you and your allies are working together to resolve a challenge - a quest, a journey, or a fight - you share a progress track and mark progress together. When you make a progress move, only one of you rolls the dice. The result will stand for the group.