Skills describe what your character is personally capable of doing. In Dream, the more “mundane” skills that a human may conceive of simply don't apply; every Muse is just as capable as any other to carry out basic physical tasks, in as much as that even makes any sense for beings as borderline un-physical as Muses are in the ever-shifting Dreamscape.
What sets Muses apart from each other is instead their proficiency in channeling the power of their Ideal to achieve certain types of goal. These proficiencies are a Muse's Skills. These Skills fall into four broad categories: Strife, Seek, Subvert and Sculpt. When a Muse tries to achieve something in a Vignette it is their Skill in achieving that type of result that is important: the actual physical action they take to do so is only relevant insofar as it connects to that result via their Ideal.
Mechanically, each Skill has four power levels, and must be under the purview of an Ideal. Since Vignettes may each have wildly different scopes, it is difficult to describe the effective influence of each power level in a meaningful way. For example, a house fire in a period drama could change the course of the entire story; whereas in a space opera it might take the destruction of an entire planet to have the same narrative impact. Muse scholars have struggled with this in the past - and, indeed, still discuss this with great fervour today - and so have developed the Theory of Narrative.
The Narrative is a force which pulls on a Muse's power, enhancing or diminishing it as appropriate to the scope of the story. As well as setting the overarching scope, the Narrative also seeks to preserve itself: disruptions to a single scene will only have larger consequences if sufficient power is behind them, and certain characters or objects may also be more resistant to change if they have a large Narrative importance.
Within Vignettes, the power levels may broadly be described as follows:
A Skill governs a Muse's ability to achieve a goal, while their Ideal governs what type of actions a Muse can perform to achieve that goal or what type of goal they may have. The line between action and goal is sometimes not entirely clear-cut, but the best results are achieved when both the action and the goal are in line with the Ideal.
When a Muse wishes to use a Skill to achieve some narrative change within Vignette, power flows from their Ideal, through their action, into the results they want. Hence, like water flowing through a series of pipes, if all three of their Ideal, action and goal do not align, power will be lost and so the effect on the Narrative will be less significant.
On the pages for each Ideal, you will find examples of each Skill at each power level. These have been normalised to a human-scale narrative standard which is common to many stories, or roughly what a Muse may expect to accomplish outside of a Vignette in the Dreamscape. However, a Muse would do well to bear in mind the Theory of Narrative: the Narrative of stories with particularly large or small scopes will significantly alter how a Muse's power manifests in absolute terms, but the narrative impact will remain constant. Likewise, what it is reasonable for a Muse to physically do in a Vignette may change: in a high fantasy epic, casting spells and throwing fireballs may be reasonable ways to achieve the desired narrative effect; in a conspiracy-fuelled '80s mystery, psychic powers might make sense; while in a modern romance a Muse would only be human. It all depends on what the character a Muse takes within a Vignette could reasonably be capable of.
Strife is the Skill which governs all direct conflict between characters. Physically fighting, arguing and competing are all examples of Strife. This includes both inciting and de-escalating conflict, as well as strengthening a combatant's abilities or defending against them. In addition to physical conflict, it also covers social conflict - wherever two or more people are at odds, Strife holds sway.
Subvert is the Skill which governs all indirect conflict between characters. Stealth, duplicity and forgery are all examples of Subvert. Many different things may fall under this Skill depending on the Muse's intent - whenever a Muse wishes for an action to be carried out in secret, or to obscure the cause of something, they would benefit from having a strong Subvert Skill.
Seek is the Skill which governs uses of powers to gather information. This covers many different activities, as long as information is the goal: gathering rumours, conducting a scientific investigation, interrogating a suspect, reading signs in the stars or getting directions to the supermarket. It can't pull information out of thin air, but it can point a Muse in the right direction and make sure they find what they're looking for.
Sculpt is the Skill which governs a Muse's ability to alter the physical setting of a Vignette. Making and modifying objects or manipulating the environment are examples of this Skill. Some other Skills may incidentally change the properties of an object or the world in the course of their manifestation, but these changes are fleeting and fade as soon as their task is done. A change made with the Sculpt Skill, however, will generally be more permanent and allow for much greater nuance. Sculpt is also useful when an object itself is of great importance - a single Narratively important object will be immune to anything but the concentrated application of Sculpt.
Each Skill on its own may be useful, but truly great things may be accomplished when they are used together to the same end. If more than one Ideal and/or Skill can be brought to bear by the collaboration of multiple Muses, the result will be more than the sum of its parts. Muses refer to this as 'Synergy'.
However, such powers require considerable cooperation, and Synergystic powers may fail or, in partiuclarly unfortunate situations, succeed unpredictably if its constituent Skills are contradictory or confusing. This is called a 'Narrative Criticality'.
Tropes are small shards of pure narrative, hewn from dream and shaped by unclear processes into physical forms - iconic tools or weapons, stock characters, even well-established plot arcs. They are archetypes that transcend particular stories, recurring over and over in different forms across different stories, imbued with distinctive meanings and significance.
Tropology does not replace Skills, Ideals or ordinary objects, but provides an additional boost to their power, versatility or control of the narrative, and may be played alongside the use of a Skill in order to boost its power (though they may also be played alone).
When you are writing actions for turnsheets, you should detail how exactly you intend to have your Skills work if you wish to use them in a specific way. For example, if you've got the Pattern Ideal and wish to use a Strong Skill to Subvert, you might turnsheet to hide your allies within a crowd on one turnsheet, but to fool the Grand Vizier into being unable to read their advice on the next.
Hence using a Skill has two components: the goal of what you are trying to achieve and the action that you take. These are connected by your Ideal: when your goal and/or the natural consequences of your action align with your Ideal you are much more likely to be successful, and most of all if they both do. Ask yourself why the action your character takes is (narratively) likely to result in the desired outcome, and if that answer falls under the theme of your Ideal then they are in alignment. For example a Muse of Affiliation might want to depose a Monarch: the goal places the Skill as Strife, because this represents conflict with another character, the level in most settings would be 4 and an action consistent with their Ideal might be to kidnap their child and use their relationship to get the Monarch to step down.
Specifying how you wish to use your Skills is no guarantee it will work that way - you might get distracted, or come up against another Muse who undermines your Skills in some way. Events simply might not turn out how you'd thought they would. The GMs will do our best to work around things by coming up with other ways of doing things where we can, though.
Skills cannot be used in Spindle. They will also exhaust your Creative Juices, and using too much can potentially cause you to Fade if you're not careful. However, you don't always have to use your Skills at their maximum power.
When using Synergy, the power comes from the addition of further uses of Ideals and/or Skills, which must all be in alignment with the Synergistic power's action and/or goal. If successful, the consequences of Synergy are more likely to be more powerful and wider-ranging than an uncoordinated use of the same Skills.
While providing a potential advantage, the constituent Skills might easily compound, deflect or contradict each other. When this happens, instability or an uncontrollable chain reaction might result. This 'Narrative Criticality' may either fizzle, or explode into wide-ranging unintended consequences.
For example, a a Muse of Life might attempt to use Strife to spread a plague to destroy a town in Synergy with a Muse of Pattern who is attempting to use Subvert to confuse the inhabitants to get confused and lost in their own surroundings. Though their goals seem to be in alignment, they are in fact not the same, which causes narrative confusion. At the same time, the action of the Muse of Pattern may prevent the spread of the plague by causing the inhabitants to remain indoors, while also causing the Muse of Life to get lost while trying to plant it in the first place. The result is a Narrative Criticality, which here, fortunately, is likely to fizzle.
Well-prepared Muses mitigate these risks by ensuring that every eventuality is accounted for, and making sure all contributing Muses are on the same page before going ahead. Having goals in alignment is particularly important, as well as knowing how each Muse's actions will affect the others.