Setting:CATastrophe/TAIL established mechanics

Character creation

Stats

Your character's raw capabilities.

Toughness - Your physical strength and endurance.
Agility - Your movement precision and hand-eye coordination.
Intelligence - Your wit and cunning.
Luck - Your inner reserves, potential and PLOT POWER.

Each stat goes from 1 to 4 with 2 being baseline.

Rolling

Standard roll

Xd6, where X is character's stat corresponding to roll plus bonuses. 5 and 6 are successes, the roll's outcome depends on number of successes 0 successes - "scratch", something unexpected happens. It's not just "you fail, try again", it's things going south, likely ending in action scene. 1 success - Partial failure, you get slightly close to success, but not completely, or you get close to success with some consequences 2 successes - Partial success, you succeed, but with consequences. 3 successes - Complete success, you do exactly what you wanted to do 4+ successes- critical success, you get what you want and more!

Extended roll

Xd6, 5 and 6 are successes, but instead of degrees of success you need to score set number of successes to pass.

So, Extended 4 roll will need 4 successes over several turns.

Tricks

Stuff your character picked up, learned or is naturally good at. Trick can be used with the roll if character attempts an action related to that trick, as long as player can explain how he uses it.

When you use trick with the stat roll, add 1 dice to it. You cannot add more than 3 dice this way.

Tricks can be Basic and Advanced.

Basic tricks are wide categories of abilities. You cannot use more than one basic trick in a roll.

Basic tricks:

Acrobatics - scaling obstacles using your dexterity
Animal knowledge - knowing what to expect of , how to deal with or how quick to run from local fauna.
Athletics - scaling obstacles using your strength
Chemistry - it bubbles, it fizzles, it smells mighty bad!
Craft (x) - Proficiency in certain craft (e.g. basketweaving, tinkering, masonry...)
Driving - Basic knowledge about piloting vehicles
Earless' technologies - understanding fundamentals of ancient technology.
Empathy - understanding other people, discerning lies, knowing {{>that feel}}
Explosives - Stuff that goes boom, how to make it go boom better, how to make it go boom beautifully and how to avoid it going boom in your face.
Iron body - Ability to take hits head on without as much as flinching, being the juggernaut.
Linguistics - Speaking Earless.
Martial arts - Kick, punch (it's all in the mind!)
Mechanics - probably redundant with craft (x), but it could be its own category. Fixing machines, making machines, jury-rigging stuff...
Parley - using leverage you have on NPCs when attempting diplomacy.
Performance (x) - Dancing, singing, playing instruments, ironically terrible poetry... you name it.
Sleight of hand - Anything involving manual dexterity, from carefully removing golden statue from a trapped pedestal to cheating at card games (you monster).
Trade - Everything trade-related.

This list of tricks is not all-inclusive and if you feel that something your character should know is missing, add it! There's just one guideline - avoid categories TOO broad (Do everything, Jack of all trades)

Advanced tricks: Cheaper, more specialized tricks inside main ones. These are to be defined by player. For example, a character might be good at computers (subset of Earless tech), or be amateur boat racer (subset of Driving). Advanced tricks are fairly freeform, just keep them from being too general.