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Inspired by Blades in the Dark, a flashback is a roll for an action in the past that would impact your current situation. When you invoke a flashback you essentially interrupt the story, giving a character an opportunity to approach a challenge from a different position, or change their circumstances by suggesting something they had done in the past that could help now.
Bear in mind that a flashback is not time travel. It can’t “undo” something that just occurred in the present moment, it can just add to what has happened.
Whenever you invoke a flashback, the GM sets a "stress cost" in the form of a Hit Dice Expenditure:
- 1 Stress --- An ordinary action for which you had an easy opportunity
- 2 Stress --- A complex action or unlikely opportunity
- 3+ Stress--- An elaborate action that involved special opportunities and/or contingencies
After the stress cost is paid, a flashback action is handled just like any other action. Many times a flashback won’t call for a roll at all because the character has already paid the stress cost to accomplish it. However, sometimes it will involve a Skill Check, because there’s some danger or trouble involved. Or it could involve some other kind of roll (attack, saving throw, or simple ability check) because we just need to find out how well (or how much, or how long, etc.) it went.
“I want to have a flashback to earlier that night, where I sneak into the stables and feed fireweed to all their goats so they’ll go berserk and create a distraction for our infiltration.”
“Ha! Nice. Okay, that seems a bit tricky, dealing with ornery goats and all... 1 stress.”
“Should I roll a Prowl to sneak in and plant it?”
“Nah. Their goat stable security amounts to a stable boy who is usually asleep anyway. You can easily avoid their notice.”
“So it just works?”
“Eh... not so fast. When you want the distraction to hit, let’s make an animal handling check to see if the goat acts as you had anticipated.”