Last time I talked about player character stats, how they’re initialized and how they decrease with an action dice roll. I see there being two other ways the stats will change throughout the game.

1. Interacting with the special Camping card.

2. Interacting with specific actions and encounters.

3. Training

If the player draws the Camping card, that indicates a rest period for the player’s character as outlined in the core rules. If the player is playing with the Stats plug-in, playing the Camping card also increases each stat by 1 up to the current value. The current value, in this sense, means the highest level of a stat achieved in the game capped at the maximum of 10. This tells me I should give the player an easy way to track stats: current and highest achieved. But I’m thinking ahead.

So camping will restore one point of each stat up to their “healed” level.

Encounter and Event cards may have a stat value on them or a modifier. Modifier in this case means a value by which to modify a stat. So a Body + 1 modifier would mean add 1 to the character’s Body stat. They become stronger, faster, etc. Alternatively, an encounter or Event card may have a stat value: for example, Mind == 7.

Addendum to Player Creation (I’m thinking aloud, after all): When creating a character, the player has a pool of 12 points they distribute. The value they add to each stat I’ll call a modifier.. **The player will need to track this**

If the player draws the Mind = 7 card, they must roll a die and beat 7 (die roll + character’s stat modifier) in order to succeed at whatever the story action is. Also, their dice roll will be subject to the Dice Roll rules I laid out last time. Let’s say the player character has a Mind of 8, which is an initial roll of 4 plus 4 modifier. Let’s say the player rolls a 5. Add the modifier of 4. That results in a 9. The player character succeeds, but gets no story benefit (because he rolled a 5).

This may seem confusing because I’m thinking aloud. Once I put it into the rules, it will, hopefully, be straight-forward.

Training. I should probably call this Training/Study. It should be difficult. It shouldn’t be a vital part of the story, per se. That means I either need a training card, or work it in some other way. Because it’s difficult, I think I’ll work it into the Camping Card. As a first pass, I think if the character’s stats are at their current “healed” level, the player can roll a single die. If they roll a 6, they may increase a single stat up to the maximum of 10. This should be rare enough that training/study is valuable and difficult.

Now that I’ve thought this through, I need to distill this and incorporate it into the manual. Then I should play a bunch of games to see if it feels right. So, I won’t be posted for a few days until I think I have something to add/fix.