- Creating Interesting Characters: Describe your character as specifically as possible. Describe activities that are effortless for your character, and those that are troublesome for the character. You do not need to stat your character, but you’ll want to be clear to the other players. If playing with a GM, the GM has final say over this.
- When Things Get Dicey: Any time you want to get something for your character, succeed at a task, win a contest with another character, etc.: roll a six-sided die.
- Difficulty: You can make the roll Easy or Hard.
- You win an Easy roll if you roll a 2 or higher.
- You win a Hard roll if you roll 5 or 6. Just for attempting a Hard roll, you get a Plot Point (no matter what you roll).
- What Happens: 1. If you win your roll, you get what you want (the item, the completion of the task, overcoming your opponent). 2. If you lose your roll, you make some progress but don’t get what you want immediately, and you go deeper into trouble. The GM or the rest of the group can define the trouble.
- Getting In Trouble: If playing with a GM, the GM can declare a task Troublesome for you. If playing without a GM, the group can declare a task Troublesome. This usually happens when a character attempts a task particularly unfit for that character (a weak character attempting to arm-wrestle a hulk).
- When rolling a Troublesome task, roll 2 dice and use the lowest number rolled.
- Plot Points: You can trade in a Plot Point to bypass a die roll and automatically get what you want without trouble, or to narrate your own trouble if you lose on your die roll. You can’t use a Plot Point earned for a roll to affect that roll.
(This system is still released under a CC-BY-3.0 license, so expand and play with it as you wish.)