Basic Rules
Basic Die Rolls: Almost every die roll in the game will be handled by taking an Action Value and adding it to the result of a dice roll. Action Values are generated by adding one of your Skills to the appropriate Attribute.
A typical action value, for instance, might be 15. Let's take the Martial Arts skill as an example. Lets say someone wants to attack with a weapon. The player rolls two 10 sided dice of different colors, or rolls them one at a time. Before the roll, one die is designated positive, the other negative. The two dice are added together, to produce a number between 9 and -9.
So, to continue the example, lets say that the Positive dice rolls a 6 and the Negative die rolls a 4. The total in this case is 2, which is added to our Hero's action value of 15 to get us a result of 17.
If that 17 is enough to beat the opponent's defense, the attack hits, if not, it misses. Most of the rolls in the game will follow this exact format.
Exeptions: There are two exceptions to the way the dice rolling system above works. First, when either die rolls a 10, that die is immediately re-rolled, and added back in to create a greater result. So if someone rolls a 10 on their positive die, and they get a 4 on the re-roll, the postive die now has a value of 14.
If the re-roll generates another 10, the die is rolled again, making the result even greater. This re-rolling continues until either the difficulty number of the task being attempted is met, or the Action Value of the character is reduced to zero. Any time an action value is reduced to zero, that action is considered a Critical Failure. In the case of open-ended rolls where the goal is simply to get as high a number as possible, the re-rolling continues until no more 10s are rolled, or the Action Value hits zero.
If both dice come up 10, then fate will either be very kind or very unkind to the character. When both dice come up 10, the dice are re-rolled. If, on the re-roll, the action succeeds, it is considered a critical success. If the difficulty is not met, after 10s have been rolled, then the action is a critical failure.
There is more than one way to get both critical failures and critical successes. If a die 'explodes', that is, comes up 10, more than once, the roll is critical. Thus, if a positive die comes up 10, and the reroll is also a 10, then the re-rolling continues, but the roll will automaticaly be a critical success. If the roll not only fails, but the total die result is actualy a negative number, then the roll is a critical failure.
Rolls Without Action Values: In a case where there is no appropriate Action Value to add to the roll, either because the character does not possess the right skill, or because the roll is against a simple attribute (such as Strength for lifting), the GM simply picks an attribute appropriate to the situation, and the dice are added to that attribute. Otherwise, the action proceeds exactly as if the roll were using a regular Action Value. There is no penalty for attempting something unskilled, other than a lack of a skill bonus.
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