What has come before.

Below is the first post I did about this to Livejournal. Some bits have been changed in the great melting pot that is my brain but I wanted to post this so everything is in one place.

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A person is split into two relms the body and the soul. Within each realm you have three traits Strength, Dexterity and Physique for Body and Knowledge, Will and Wits for Soul. People also have specialisms and complications, these make tasks easier and harder. The value of each realm is the total of the traits within that realm, the realm values provide a pool of points that are used for task resolution.

Traits range from 1 upwards with the average person having a value of 5 for each trait. Specialisms provide a bonus depending on their focus, a broad specialism gives a +3 bonus for all relavant tasks, e.g. Driving cars gives +3 to all car driving related tasks. A more focused specialism gives +4 for tasks related to the focus but +2 for other relevant but not specificaly focused tasks, e.g. a Driving Performance Cars gives +4 for driving high powered cars but +2 for other cars as the driver will be expecting the car to react differently. A tightly focused specialism gives +5 for related tasks but +1 for others, eg Drive Formula One car gives +5 for formula one cars but only +1 for others. If multiple specialisms can be used for a test the testee can select which is being used.

Complications provide a -3 penalty for any situation they are relevant to, complications do stack.

Tasks Resolution:
Each task has a difficulty. Sample difficulties are listed below:

• 1 - 4 Simple. Anyone can do this without even thinking about it.
• 5 - 8 Average. Most people can do this without any effort, some may struggle if they have never dealt with the tasks before.
• 9 - 12 Taxing. A hard task for the untrained but a specialist should have no problem.
• 13 - 16 Extreme. A specialist will be working hard to perform this without error.
• 17 + Heroic. Unattainable by the average man...

Doing something:
To do something describe to the GM the trait you wish to use to use along with any specialism you think is relevant. They will advise you on whether you think you will succeed based on the target number, the specialism, and relevant complications and any bonus for task description. If you think you are going to fail you can choose to exert yourself by spending a point from your Body or Soul pools. Select a second trait and explain how you are exterting yourself to bring this trait into play. The GM adds this trait to the first result plus a bonus or penalty based on the description of relavance. If the final total equals or beats the task target number the taks succeeds, if not it fails.
Wow.

Examples:
Tod is driving to work, on his regular morning commute. This is a Dexterity + Driving task with a value of 7. As he has a dexterity of 5 and a Driving Specialism he can do this every day. Lucky Tod.</p>

The GM decides today is not a good day, it a raining hard making the actions of the other cars unpredictable. He raises the target number to 12 and informs od he thinks the drive in is a bit harder today. In fact as he is approaching a particularly difficult junction a car swerves in front of him wildly. At this point unless Tod does something he is failing the test, badness will ensue.

"Luckily I react in time to avoid the car!" Tod cries Spending a Soul point and using his Wits to react to the incident. Tods Wits are 5 giving him a total of 13 just enough to succeed. The GM decided his description was average and so wasn't worthy of a bonus or penalty so the task does succeed.

But what if Tod had said "I'll spend a Soul point to add my Wits to the task". Wow... That's exciting, The GM decides that this inspiring piece of description is worth a -3 pentaly. The ensuing car accident should add some excitement to the game.

On the other hand if Tod had said "Swearing grimly I yank the steering wheel hard to the left while the tyres squeal, praying that they grip I narrowly avoid the idiot in front of me." and spends a Body point to use is Strength trait of 5 the GM could give a +3 bonus for good description. Not only does Tod succeed but he does so with style.

Doing things with style:
Anyone can succeed at a task. Generally a character will spend most of his day succeeding at tasks without any effort. Sometimes a task will prove more difficult than expected and exertion is required. And sometimes you have to do something with style. If you succeed at a task but only just then you have to accept the GM's view of what happened. If you succeed by 3 or more points you succeed with style and can dictate how you did it. The more you succeed by the more stylish you can be. Yes, this is not very exact, style is about forwarding the story, a success with style should not have any major effects that a simple success did not. It may allow for a minor extra effect.. (More details on this once I've tested it a bit). Also it earns you a temporary story point.

Failure:
Sometimes you fail at things. This can have a number of effects depending on the task in question. The simplest effect is the story moves in the direction of the task failing. The failing character may also lose body or soul points depending on how badly they failed. A good rule of thumb is one body or soul point should be removed for each full 3 points they fail by. In most cases the player can choose which to lose but sometimes the GM may do so instead.

If a player runs out of Body or Soul points they are physically or mentally exausted and in trouble. They can no longer spend points from the appropriate pool to exert themselves. If they have to lose points from an exhauted pool they instead gain a point of Corruption for the body Realm or Corrosion for the Soul realm.

Certain tasks can cause Corruption or Corrosion directly if they are failed, generally if a task fails by more than 10 points the character takes a point of Corruption or Corrosion depending on the task AS WELL as the Body and Soul reduction.

Corruption and Corrosion:
Corruption and Corrosion represent the ongoing damage a person takes through life. Each time a character gains a point of Corruption or Corrosion they gain a new complication, this complication should have a link to how the point was gained. If a characters Corruption points level ever equals their Body realm they die. If their Corrosion points level equals their Soul realm thet suffer a complete incurable mental collapse.

Removing Corruption requires weeks of medical attention, the sooner after the event that caused it the better. Removing Corrosion requires lengthy periods of psychactric counselling. Removeing a point of Corruption or Corrosion does not remove the complication that arose from it.

Story Points
There are two types of story points, temporary story points and permanent story points. You can spend story points to have a number of effects, once a temporary story point has been spent it is gone, permanent story points return like body and soul point (which I'll explain in a bit). Effects of spending a story point:

• Avoiding Corruption/Corrosion spend 5 story points to avoid gaining a point of corruption or corrosion. This has to be done at the point the corruption or corrosion is recieved.
• Removing a complication. Spend 10 story points and give a story for how the complication is to be removed. The GM must either agree and work this into the sotry line (the complication will be removed at the appropriate point) or refuse and refund the story points.
• Gaining a specialism. Spend 5 points to gain a broad specialism. Spend 5 points to narrow a broad specialism or 7 to keep the broad specialism and gain a related narrow specialism. spend 5 points to tightly focus a narrow specialism or 7 to keep to narrow specialism and gain the tight specialism.
• Affecting task outcomes. Spend 1 story point instead of a body or soul point for extertion. Spend 1 story point to include a second related specialism into the task (Driving + Performance Car Driving). Spend 2 story points to include a third trait into the task resolution. Spend 5 story points to gain a simple +3 bonus.

Players should note all story points spent to affect a task outcome. Once 50 points have been spent in this way they gain a permanent story point. Once you start taking part in the story you become more relevant to it.

Temporary story points are given to all players at story relevant points, 5-10 points should be given to each player for each major scene of a story.

Recovery.
1 hours rest will regain 1 point of either Body, Soul or Permanent Story. Rest can include doing tasks for relaxation in order to increase one of the other pools. For example Tod goes for an hour long walk, this helps to calm his mind regaining a point of Soul he lost during the days office work, later he paints a watercolour regaining one body point.