I’ve played a bunch of games using what I call the Stats plug-in. As play-testing usually does, it showed me a few weaknesses in my original approach. On playing, I thought the way stats are used was overly complicated. Worse still, the game felt flat and repetitive. I’ve simplified the rules.

First, these rules apply only to Event, Encounter, and Discovery cards. I’ve added the discovery cards to “the mix”.

Second, instead of having fixed values such as M=7 (Mind = 7), all cards are now of the form X+?, X-?, and X=?, where X will be M(ind), B(ode), or S(pirit).

If the player encounters a card with one of these, the player takes the corresponding character stat, adjusts the value (only for this action) according to the card value, then rolls one die. If the value rolled is greater than the resulting change, the character succeeds in the action, applying the Result of Rolls rules to the story.

NOTE: The adjusted value can be greater than 10, but not less than 1.

The simplified rules allow me to adjust the difficulty relative to the character, instead of trying to force the difficulty based on absolute values. This makes more sense.

I’ll play a bunch of games with the new rules, then post the cards and values, and update the manual.

By the way, if you’re trying this, please let me know what you think. Feedback is welcome.