Advancement
New skills should be more specific than the skill rolled, and relevant to the action taken.
In rule 6, "for advancement purposes only" means you can spend XP to gain a new skill by upgrading dice, but the narrative result of the action still stands as rolled.
After you fail a roll, you can immediately use the gained XP for a new skill.
Difficulty
When opposition is not from another character, the GM rolls a number of dice based on how difficult a task is:
- Easy
- Average
- Hard
- Nearly impossible
Ties
When your result is a tie with the opposing roll, you both partially succeed and fail. You don't get XP, and accomplish your goal barely with an unexpected twist.
Optional Rules
Equipment
Treat equipment and gear as skills, where levels are a measure of quality. A new skill gained after an equipment roll is some specific expertise using that equipment.
Malfunctions
Rolling all 1s with a piece of equipment results in a negative malfunction status, affecting all related rolls.
Flaws
A flaw is like a negatively rated skill: its rating indicates how many dice you roll, but you only use the lowest single die result. For example, with Climbing Ladders -3 you'd roll 3 dice and only use the lowest value.
Gaining Flaws
Whenever you roll all 1s on an action, you gain a flaw specific to your action, with a rating of one lower than the negative rating of the skill/flaw you just rolled.
Skill Slots
For longer campaigns, or games where you want to restrict advancement, consider limiting skills to a total number of slots per level. Players then must choose to replace skills when gaining new ones.
The following skill "triangle" is a good starting shape:
- Four level 2 skills
- Three level 3 skills
- Two level 4 skills
Starting Skills
Depending on the scenario, characters could be customized and have additional starting skills. These could include broad archetypes/classes, specific skills for the scenario, etc.
Additionally, starting skills could have a cost, like requiring an equivalent flaw, or some granted XP to purchase initial skill levels with.
Statuses
A status is a modifier that affects actions, positively or negatively. They're noted with their signed rating first (e.g. +1 Strengthened, -2 Poisoned), and are added directly to the results of any related rolls.
A status will remain on a character until it's removed, either by action or otherwise made narratively untrue.
Damage
Tracking harm can be done with negative condition statuses that describe an injury, rated based on roll results. Appropriate healing can remove or reduce the rating of the condition.