Situation Throws: In the absence of any other guidance, the referee may always resort to the situation throw. When an incident first occurs, throw two dice to determine its relative severity. A low roll means that it is easy, a high roll means comparative difficulty. The number achieved is now the situation number. The player characters involved, when they attempt to deal with the situation, must roll the situation number or higher on two dice, They are, of course, allowed DMs based on any appropriate skills. Tools, assistance, and equipment may also provide beneficial DMs; weather, haste, adverse environment, or other handicaps may impose negative DMs. It is even possible for a referee to make the situation number greater than 12, thus making success impossible unless the players can provide necessary skills or tools with DMs to get their throw also above 12.
Example of Throws: An adventurer (46797A) has experienced a malfunction in the drive room of her vessel. The situation seems hopeless at the moment, and she is forced to abandon ship. The air lock hatch, however, is warped shut. A quick resolution to the problem is to state that she must roll strength or less to force it open. After several unsuccessful rolls, she casts about for a pry bar to help her.
The referee arbitrarily rules that the bar allows -4 on the die roll (the referee could guess or roll one die for the result).
On the next roll, the adventurer is successful; then she makes her way to the ship's locker for her vacc suit. Grabbing a survival pack, she proceeds to abandon ship. She knows that the drives cannot stand the strain much longer, and that she must get out immediately. The referee decides that the drives will explode on 9+ in the current turn, 8+ in the next turn, and so on, The referee decides that the character's last minute repair attempts have been partially successful, and he increases the needed roll by her level of engineering skill (Engineering-2) to 11+.
The adventurer needs to find a survival kit before she leaves the ship, but one extra turn will be needed to gather it up. The referee rolls to see if the ship explodes this turn (11+). It does not, and she grabs the survival kit.
On the second turn, she cycles through the airlock while the referee checks for an explosion again (10+ this time); once more the ship remains intact.
On the third turn, while the character is drifting away from the ship, the referee rolls 11 and the drives explode (9+ was needed).
The distress call from her radio attracts a local asteroid miner. He is required by custom and law to pick her up, but may net like being diverted to an unprofitable rescue mission.
The referee rolls two dice for his reaction: the result is 4. She must now convince him to take her to the local starport so that she can arrange salvage of her ship. She may add any applicable skills, such as streetwise, bribery, even DM -1 for Intelligence 9+ if the referee thinks this appropriate.
Obviously, in a situation such as this, repeated requests will not be possible (or they may be allowed at DM -1 per additional request). Probably she only gets to try once.
Even with DMs totaling -3, she rolls an 8, which does not convince the miner to go out of his way to help her. She is stuck on his ship until he finishes his prospecting run of (the referee rolls one die) 4 months. Judging by his reaction roll to her, he'll probably make her pay for room and board as well.