New Guide Cadillacs And Dinosaurus

Characters have six attributes: Strength, Constitution, Agility, Education, Charisma, and Intelligence. All work pretty much as you expect them to. In addition, there are a number of skills linked to each attribute. Attribute levels are determined by rolling dice for random numbers or by assigning points. Skill levels are determined by choosing a background profession and by assigning bonus points to those skills you want to beef up.

Each attribute and skill is ranked from 1 to 10. A player must roll equal to or less than the governing attribute or skill on a d10 for an action to be successful. Say your character needs to repair a car and has a mechanic skill of 5. He or she must roll 5 or less to succeed. Some tasks require characters to use two skills or attributes, so they add the two together, divide by half, and then round down to get the target number.

Tasks can be easy, average, or hard. An easy task is twice the governing attribute or skill level. An average task is equal to the level. A hard task is half the level, rounded down. I rather like the simplicity of assigning difficulty, finding it infinitely more user-friendly for referees than picking arbitrary target numbers.

Simple is not how I would describe combat.

Combat basically uses the same task resolution rules as above. However, there are so many situation-specific rules for attacks, damage, and healing that require you to add, subtract, multiply, divide, or get the square root that they quickly become overwhelming. Keeping track of damage is a headache, given different body parts have different hit point values. Then there is a funky initiative system allowing some characters to take from two to five times the number of actions as others in a single turn, which really unbalances gameplay.