Mechanics

Table of Contents

The primary thrust of this system is simplicity. In order to keep players in the moment, keep the dramatic flow of the story going, and ensure maximum fun for all involved, the mechanics of the game are very minimal; very minimal but very specific. The most important equipment one must bring to each play session is at least as much maturity as one's play group. From insanely off-the-wall to gritty realism, the system lends itself to any style of play.

Important! The mood should be agreed upon and adhered to. As long as all players are on the same page, many problems can be avoided.

Roll-playing

Standard Rolls

At heart, this is a freeform roleplaying game. Dice are added to introduce the capricious hand of Fate and the drama of unexpected outcomes to the Game. Without this critical ingredient, without the gamble, the thrill and drama are also missing.

Any action performed by a character that would, under normal circumstances, succeed without any doubt such as sitting upon a chair or walking across a room are Automatic actions. No roll is required.

Any task a character undertakes for which there is any doubt of his or her success is considered a challenge and dice will come into play, such as when walking across a room that is on fire or otherwise structurally unsound or any action, save the most mundane (walking, speaking), performed under stress, such as during Combat.

There are, basically, two kinds of challenges: those in which a character may be challanged by his or her own limitations and those in which a character may be challenged by the abilities of another character. We'll call these Challenges and Contests, respectively. When making the roll for an unopposed Challenge, the player rolls 1D10 and wants to roll below the sum of Attribute and applicable Skill, plus modifiers. When making opposed Contest Rolls, each player adds 1D10 to Ability (that's Attribute + Skill) and the highest roll succeeds. Simplicity!

In the case of a tie, the character with the highest Skill wins. If still tied, the highest Attribute wins. If still tied, all players involved must re-roll.

Criticals

The 0 on the D10 represents Zero, not Ten, in the Game. Whenever a player rolls a natural Zero or a natural Nine, they must then roll 2D10 (as percentile dice) to check for Criticals. Most often, a natural 0 will be an Automatic Failure, and a natural 9 will be an Automatic Success, but the Critical Table will make that clear. There is a chance that such Successes and Failures may be spectacular (Critical Success/Failure).

Critical Table
Percentile Roll	Result
0-(4)	Critical Failure
(5)-(94)	Automatic Success/Failure
(95)-99	Critical Success

Critical Success means that not only does a character manage to do what he or she wanted to do, and look good doing it, there may be positive, unforseen side-effects to the action (at Narrator's discretion). Critical Failures, on the other hand, not only mean that the character has failed, likely in an embarrassing way, but also that there may be negative side-effects to the action (up to, and including, injury or death, at Narrator's discretion).

Most generally, as one may see, Automatic Success/Failure is the default. The numbers represented in parentheses represent a potentially variable value (such as by various Upgrades). Now, your next question is, "What if a player rolls a Critical Success after rolling a Zero?!" and the answer is "The Action Succeeds, but just barely and despite all odds." Similarly, if a player rolls a Nine and follows up with a Critical Failure, the Action fails, but just barely and, again, despite all odds.

Now, some may have come to realize that Unopposed Rolls for particularly powerful or skilled characters will almost never fail. Yes, that is correct. Really, you think that Krusharr, the World-Destroyer often finds himself unable to do as he intends unless somebody opposes him? Or, if you prefer more well-known characters outside our realm, do you think Superman™ often fails to be able to fly, lift heavy things, weld with his heat vision and so on and so forth when some bad guy isn't getting in the way? Yes, it's good to be the king and also good to be very powerful and/or skilled.

Extended Tasks

Some things require a bit of time and concentration. Medicine of all forms comes immediately to mind, as do programming, certain forms of magic, and performing arts. In situations involving either multi-faceted or time-consuming actions, we have the Extended Task. More or less a series of Standard Rolls, success and failure depend on the aggregate of the rolls involved.

Extended Challenges

The system is quite similar for both Extended Challenges and Contests. In the former, one's own limitations would be considered the opposing force. The Narrator (with some guidance from Skill descriptions) will determine the base number of rolls necessary to complete a task for an Unopposed Challenge. Assuming all of the required rolls succeed, the task is successful. Should a roll fail, things get interesting. When one of the required rolls fail, the character is at a Disadvantage. An extra roll must then be made. If it is successful, the Extended Task continues, if it fails, then the Task fails. This simulates unforseen difficulties, slips, and the like. The extra roll tests whether the character is able to overcome this adversity and continue or not.

Extended Contests

When characters are directly opposing one another in an Extended Contest, such as Grappling, each player makes his or her Roll. The highest roll has Advantage. Each player rolls again. If the player whose character has the Advantage gets the highest Roll again, that character wins the Contest. Any other result (including a tie) returns all involved characters to a No Advantage state, and all players roll again. When two or more characters are competing in Extended Challenges, like a race to see who can write a program faster, then each character simply performs an Extended Challenge and the first to reach the goal would be the winner.

Be Successful?

What are "successes"? A success is simply short for "a successful roll". When opposing another character, a success would be when your roll beats the other player's, or players', roll(s). Simplicity!