System
Instead of representing characters using attributes and skills, characters are quantified with "traits" — freeform descriptors, like "Fireman", "Quick" or "Monster from another Dimension", which are created and defined by the player. Each character has one primary trait, two secondary traits, and one flaw. One of the three positive traits is chosen as superior. If a character attempts an action based on their primary or secondary traits, they get (usually) four (for the superior trait) or three six-sided dice to roll.
If a character has a particular advantage, they may add a bonus die — they roll one more die, and discard the lowest roll. If they have a particular disadvantage (such as their flaw), they must add a penalty die — they roll one more die, and discard the highest roll.
For most tasks where the traits don't apply, they get two dice. For a routine, very easy task, the difficulty is 4; for an easy task, 7; for a moderately difficult task, 11; for a difficult task, 14; for a very difficult task, 18; and for a nearly impossible task, 21. If an opponent is resisting the action, the difficulty is their roll.
Read more about this topic: Over The Edge (game)
Famous quotes containing the word system:
“Psychoanalysis is an attempt to examine a person’s self-justifications. Hence it can be undertaken only with the patient’s cooperation and can succeed only when the patient has something to gain by abandoning or modifying his system of self-justification.”
—Thomas Szasz (b. 1920)
“The human body is not a thing or substance, given, but a continuous creation. The human body is an energy system ... which is never a complete structure; never static; is in perpetual inner self-construction and self-destruction; we destroy in order to make it new.”
—Norman O. Brown (b. 1913)
“While the system of holding people in hostage is as old as the oldest war, a fresher note is introduced when a tyrannic state is at war with its own subjects and may hold any citizen in hostage with no law to restrain it.”
—Vladimir Nabokov (1899–1977)