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Very Different Places

A character has six stats, which also function as resources: Physical Ability, Physical Resilience, Mental Ability, Mental Resilience, Emotional Ability, and Emotional Resilience. These stats may be drawn upon to add additional dice to a check (detailed below).

A starting character begins with these stats at 2, with 3 increases available. One additional increase may be applied by decreasing one stat to 1. A starting character cannot have a stat above 4.

A character's wounds are calculated based off their resilience stats and equal 1 + their resilience in that stat. A character’s wounds may be increased as if purchasing a skill, starting at rank 1. A character who has taken enough wounds to hit -1 is taken out of the scene, though the how of it is generally based off the current scene; a runner doesn't fall over dead if their physical wounds hit -1 during a race, they're simply too tired to continue.

Recovering wounds can be done by spending a scene to engage in an activity specific to doing so, in which case they regain their full resilience in wounds for that scene. A character may have a method other than rest to recover; this is common for mental or emotional damage. Long-term wounds can be added onto when a character is taken out, and may decrease a stat until properly taken care of during extended downtime.

The core rolling mechanic involves a pool of 4 dice (d6), split between Accomplish and Caution. The minimum number of dice that may be devoted to a side (accomplish or caution) is 0. but most of the time the split will be 1-3, 2-2, or 3-1. The Accomplish side refers to completing the desired task, while the Caution side refers to avoiding consequences of attempting the task. A character can succeed their task with Accomplish, but fail their Caution, in which case they do succeed, but there is some consequence, such as breaking a lock, making noise and being discovered, ore any such condition that does not negate what the check was being made for. The reverse is also true, and a successful Caution but failed Accomplish generally means all that's wasted is time, and the task is usually repeatable outside of some circumstances.

Advantage on a roll gives an extra die to roll’s pool; disadvantage removes one. Common ways to gain advantage are from using a specialized skill, or willingly overexerting by spending 1 point from the relevant Ability stat (which can be recovered with rest as if it were a wound or a character's special recovery action). Spending from your Ability may be done after the roll has been made, but before the result is declared.

Rolls are generally called for in the following format: "Roll for (accomplish) against (caution)". For example, "Roll for repairing the engine against wasting some of your spare parts", or "Roll for attacking the guard (and defending against the guard)".

A skill-based roll has the skill score added to it; the skill is added for both sides of the roll (so, the skill value is added to Accomplish, then it is added to Caution). In rare cases, a different skill may be used on each side.

Skills are loose and purchased with XP. In general, a skill should not be too broad to apply to too many things, but not too narrow to apply to too few. Martial Arts or Swordplay is a valid skill, but Combat is not. A specialization should be suitably narrow, such as a single weapon or a school of medicine. A character may not spend more XP on a skill than 1/4th their total amount of XP.

A specialization costs 5xp and grants 1 advantage dice when using a skill in that area of specialization. Further specialization may be taken, either greatly narrowing down the scope (Such as Medicine (Humanoid (Heart Surgery))) for the same cost, or adding an extra advantage die for an additional 10 xp (for 15 xp total).

A completely untrained character trying to use a skill that they do not have will use an effective skill value of -2. A barely trained character trying to do the same will use an effective skill of 0. This is most common when a character is shown the rudiments of a skill during downtime by another character. Basic life skills generally do not need to be defined, unless it’s unusual for a character to have or not have them in a setting.

Character powers are optional, and meant to help convey the ideas a person has for their character. They are not required, and are generally a trade off between the versatility of their skill ranks and a tighter and more defined powerset, much like a specialization. Shoving people around is available to anyone with ranks in the Brawling skill (or similar), but being able to set up enemies to attack each other in the chaos of a brawl (like in a Jackie Chan movie) might be a special power. In some cases, a power may cost XP, but this would be when they add more than they lose.

A contested skill check, such as combat, but also a social conflict, arm-wrestling, race, etc., involves both participants rolling the relevant skills. In most cases, one side's accomplish result is the caution target for the other participant, and the cost of failing this caution is usually wounds in the relevant stat, even leading to multiple wounds if the target may be divided by the caution result more than once (such as a target of 13 vs a caution of 6, would result in 2 wounds).

A successful attack usually results in one wound being inflicted, however, the attacker can instead choose to inflict a condition on the defender such as by shoving, tripping, disarming etc. For a mental contest such as a debate, the attacker may cause the defender to become angry, flustered, etc. For example, Lyra the Photon Knight is faced with an advancing bipedal robot. She attacks it using her electrokinesis as a weapon, rolls 14 against the robot's 6, and can thus damage it twice; her player chooses to inflict 1 wound and then to knock the robot over so that it will have to waste an action to get back up. The player should generate a coherent narrative for this!

During a fight, under normal circumstances a character that attacks with 3 dice will roll 1 die when defending for that round, a character that attacks with 2 dice will roll 2 dice to defend, and so on (All-out attacks are dangerous if the target gets to retaliate!)

Actions are taken by groups rather than by single character, to make it easy for characters to execute actions that play off each other. Timing is generally determined by who got the drop on who. If nobody got the drop on anybody, the group with more familiarity with the area goes first. If that is also a tie, roll 1d6 and use its results as if it was a coin flip.

DM section

As the average of 2d6 is 7, this makes for a common target for modestly challenging tasks. An easy task is more likely to be a 5 or even 3. To increase the difficulty, go in steps of 2; a 9 is difficult for someone even with a +2 skill, and an 11 would require having advantage to clear.