Allied — A character is allied with a die in a conflict if they roll that die (ie use an ability on it). Being allied with a conflict implies that your character is affected by it.
Character — A character may be a Superhero, a Supervillain, a normal person or a Non-Person Character (such as objects or locations).
Claim — A player claims a side in a conflict at the start of a new Page. If the Resolving side (the highest total) of a conflict is unclaimed at the end of a page, it can't be Resolved. A player may not claim more than one side in a conflict. Claims on unresolved Conflicts are removed when the page ends.
Debt — Gained by using Powers, or losing Stakes. Spent to Stake.
Drives — Debt Tokens go on Drives. Each Drive has a numeric Strength. If it has more Tokens than Strength it is Overdrawn. There are five Drives that can vary in strength between 1 and 5. The total of all Drives must not exceed 9. Drives may be entirerly heroic, entirely villainous or a mix of both.
Exemplar — Any character with Drives may choose or create one Exemplar for free. For a second (or third, or so on) Exemplar, two players must collaborate on Sharing the Exemplar — There must be a "root conflict" in the relationship between the character and her Exemplar. This is some fundamental way in which they are forever at odds. That, in turn, spawns many trivial, solvable, conflicts. It is often easiest to invent the root conflict by creating a sentence of the form "This good thing, but that bad thing."
Free Conflicts
for Exemplars — Each Exemplar has a permanent Free Conflict attached to their relationship to the primary character. That Free Conflict can be played once in any Scene where both characters appear. Either the player of the character or the player of the Exemplar may play the Free Conflict. It may be played many times, in many Scenes, in the same story. Although it must remain the same Conflict each time, it can be resolved in many different ways.
for Non-Person Characters — When constructing a non-person character, you may choose to equip it with a Character Conflict, in exchange for removing one type of Ability, and the four Abilities of that type. A character so modified will have only two columns of Abilities, and those will either be distributed four and four, or five and three. — — The player may introduce their character's Character Conflict any time Free Conflicts can normally be introduced. However, when that Conflict is Resolved, the character is removed from the scene. The object or situation that it represents in the story may continue, but it exerts no direct pressure on the dice.
Gloating — If Resolving would violate the group Code the Claimant instead Gloats. Starting with their highest die on the Conflict they may turn dice to 1. For each die turned the Resolver earns a Story Token.
Inspiration — Gained by winning Conflicts. Spent to raise dice up to the amount of Inspiration used. — When the Resolver matches one of their dice against a greater opposing die, the result is not a negative Inspiration. It is a positive Inspiration for an opposing player, The Resolver chooses which player with a character on the opposing side receives the Inspiration. They may award it to themself if they played characters on both sides of the fight. —Each Inspiration is from the result of a particular Conflict. When it is used the player should narrate some reason (as tenuous as they like) why that Conflict's outcome has an impact upon this Conflict.
Overdrawn — At the start of each Page, for each Overdrawn Drive, the player rolls the highest die the character owns (is Allied to), accepting only lower rolls, for one conflict the character is in.
Non-Person Character — To play a non-person character, a player has to get away from thinking that the actions of the character come from their inner motives. A bomb doesn't have inner motives. It has a place in the Scene, and things that it does to further the goals of the player who put it there. — — Non-person characters can, however, have Attitudes. As human beings, we attribute human emotion to many inhuman processes. A Deathtrap can be eccentric. A computer virus can be relentless. Luck can be perverse or generous by turns. — — Non-person characters have the same type of abilities as a nonpowered human character: Skills, Styles and Attitudes. As always, the needs and desires of the player are the key to using those effectively.
Story Tokens — Each player who Staked Debt on the winning side chooses how to distribute their own Debt as Story Tokens to other players.