The Six-Step Adaptation Ladder
Understand every step from fictional role to mechanical expression, including capability ranks, scale, pressure, and consequences.
Use this page when
- You are converting anything from Mar de Oro into another ruleset for the first time.
- You have a mechanical stat block that no longer feels like the setting.
- You want a common vocabulary to compare characters, threats, and vessels.
- You are training another GM on how to adapt material at your table.
The ladder is a common working order that turns a described element into a mechanical one without losing what made it interesting. Do not skip steps. Each step constrains the next, and skipping usually produces stat blocks that are numerically valid but fictionally wrong.
Step 1, Fictional Role
What is this element meant to do in the story and at the table?
Step 2, Capability
How reliably and effectively can it perform its defining actions?
Step 3, Scale
At what level does it operate: Personal, Crew, Vessel, Faction, or Regional?
Step 4, Pressure
What problem, risk, or difficult choice does it create?
Step 5, Consequences
What can change, worsen, be lost, or become newly possible?
Step 6, Mechanical Expression
Which rules in the chosen system best reproduce the previous five elements?
1. Fictional Role
Say aloud, in one sentence, what this element is meant to do at the table. Not what it is called. Not what it looks like. What role does it fill in the scene, the crew, the story? A "customs officer" is a job title. "The obstacle who decides whether the cargo enters the harbour tonight" is a fictional role.
2. Capability
Capability describes how reliably the element can perform the actions its role implies. It is fictional reliability and authority, not a universal numerical bonus. Use these ranks as a shared vocabulary; every target system will translate them differently.
- Familiar
- The element can attempt its defining actions and often succeed, but under pressure it will need help, luck, or time.
- Trained
- It succeeds routinely at ordinary tasks and can handle known complications on its own.
- Expert
- It handles complex, high-pressure work in its domain and can teach or lead others through it.
- Master
- It is recognised as authoritative in its field. Failures are noteworthy events rather than routine outcomes.
3. Scale
Scale sets reach, resources, durability, and the size of the consequences the element can create. A Master duelist and a Master admiral operate at very different scales even if their capability rank is identical.
- Personal
- One person, their tools, and immediate reach.
- Crew
- A working group, a boarding party, a small unit, or a household.
- Vessel
- A ship, airship, fortress, or comparable structured environment.
- Faction
- An organisation with reach across a city, region, or trade lane.
- Regional
- An entity whose actions shape a coast, a province, or a whole nation.
4. Pressure
Pressure is the problem, risk, or difficult choice the element creates for the crew. An adversary without pressure is scenery. A location without pressure is a backdrop. Name at least one type of pressure before moving on.
- Time pressure
- Resource pressure
- Social pressure
- Political pressure
- Environmental pressure
- Operational pressure
- Moral pressure
5. Consequences
Consequences are what changes if the crew engages, avoids, defeats, or is defeated by this element. Preserve the ones that matter for the campaign; the target system will suggest how to spend them.
- Harm
- Exposure
- Delay
- Resource loss
- Escalation
- Political cost
- Changed relationships
- Lost opportunity
- New obligation
6. Mechanical Expression
Only now do you reach for stat blocks, dice pools, harm tracks, proficiency bonuses, or clocks. Choose the rules that reproduce the five earlier steps. If the target system has no clean way to express one of them, either accept the loss deliberately or change the mechanical expression, never the earlier steps.
Short worked example: a Heller sky-warden
- Fictional role: the officer who decides whether the crew's flight papers are clean enough to enter Heller airspace.
- Capability: Expert on aeronautical inspection, Trained on close combat, Familiar with Éterlumin regulator law.
- Scale: Crew, backed by Vessel-scale authority when their patrol is at hand.
- Pressure: time pressure, political pressure if the captain is a foreigner, moral pressure if the papers hide something the warden respects.
- Consequences: delay, a political cost with the Duchy of Heller, changed relationships in the harbour district, potential exposure of what the crew is hiding.
- Mechanical expression: a named authority with a small guard detail, one social clock tied to trust, and one operational clock tied to inspection time.
Conversion checklist
- Fictional role written in one sentence.
- Capability ranks assigned to no more than three domains.
- Scale selected from the five categories.
- At least one pressure and one consequence named.
- Mechanical expression drawn from the target system only.
- Nothing added that changes Mar de Oro canon.
Before you finish
- Have you named the fictional role in one sentence?
- Is the capability rank consistent with the character or threat's reputation?
- Is the scale category the one that actually applies at the table?
- Have you listed at least one pressure and one meaningful consequence?
- Does the mechanical expression reproduce all five earlier steps?