Basic Rules

Core Resolution Mechanic

In any given task, there are a multitude of factors that come into play: your natural talent, your training, the quality of your equipment, and even random chance. This game uses the Decisive Factor System, in which you roll to see which of those factors is the one that tips the scales.
When your character is called upon to achieve a task in the Decisive Factor System, the GM lists a difficulty and you roll a special six-sided die to determine what the decisive factor is in the situation. This is called the factor die, because it’s the voice of fate telling you which factor is going to be crucial in this challenge. The factor die has several values listed on it. Two of its sides say “Attr.” and two of its sides say “Skill.” One of its sides says “Asst.” which refers to your assistance bonus. The final side says simply “Luck.” Whatever side comes up, you compare your number in the appropriate rating to the difficulty to see if you succeed or fail.
Let’s say you’re trying to shoot a bird with an arrow. The GM says that this is a difficulty 4 task, a number you need to meet or beat. Ranged attacks use your Ranged skill and Agility attribute., so you’ll need to pay attention to those values. (The shorthand for this is an Agility/Ranged roll)
If the factor die comes up Attr., your attribute rating is the decisive factor. That means if your Agility is 4 or higher, you hit the mark. But your Agility is 3 or lower, you’re not quite deft enough to make this shot. The GM will narrate your success or failure based on how nimble and deft you are.
If the factor die comes up Skill, your skill rating is the decisive factor. In this case, you’d need a Ranged skill of 4 or higher to hit, while anything lower misses. The GM will narrate your success or failure as a result of your skill with a bow.
If the factor die lands on Assist, that means success or failure comes down to your assistance bonus. That can be someone helping you, in which case you’d use the rating of the skill they’re using to assist you, which is usually the same skill you’re using. Equipment also fulfills this role based on its quality rating, so if you had a bow of quality rating 4 or higher you’d hit, otherwise your bow isn’t good enough to make the shot. If you have assistance bonuses from multiple sources, only the highest applies. Regardless, the GM will narrate the help you’re getting turning the tide in whether you succeed or fail.
Finally, the factor die might land on Luck. In this case, you roll a regular six-sided die (d6), and whatever number comes up needs to beat the difficulty. So on a 4 or higher you succeed, while on a 3 or less you fail.
However, there is one other die that comes into play, the fudge die, which you roll alongside the factor die. The fudge die is another six-sided die which has two sides with a + on them, two with a -, and two that are blank. If you roll a + you take whatever number the factor die listed, and you treat it as if it were 1 higher. Conversely, if you roll a -, you treat that number as if it were 1 lower. On a blank, you leave the number as is. So, you can succeed even with a 3 if the fudge die rolls +, and fail on a 4 if it rolls -.

Advantage/Disadvantage

Finally, there’s advantage and disadvantage. If you have the upper hand, the GM might give you advantage, in which case you add 1 to whatever the final total would have been. Conversely, if you are at disadvantage, you subtract 1 from whatever that total would have been. You only get the benefit of advantage once, no matter how many circumstances are giving you advantage, and the same goes for disadvantage. Advantage and disadvantage cancel each other out.
If two characters are acting against each other, the highest result wins, and on a tie results are mixed. In combat, attacker hits the defender. In magic, the spell affects the target. Otherwise, the results are mixed.
Should the decisive factor be obvious, the GM may wish to set it personally. For example, in an armwrestling contest, the decisive factor is obviously Strength. If you’re blindly throwing a bomb over a wall against an enemy who doesn’t see it coming, luck is the decisive factor.

Kudos

Kudos are in-game rewards given by the GM to players for good roleplaying. This could be playing a flaw or limitation when the player doesn’t have to, making everyone laugh while staying in character, agreeing to cooperate with the GM, or anything else the GM wishes to reward.
You can spend a kudo to reroll any die result, but only once per roll, and you must keep the new result. If you have fewer than 2 kudos at the beginning of the session, you start the session with 2. If you have more than that, keep what you have.

Why Set Things Up This Way?

There is a common issue in RPG’s where you roll to see how good you are at a given task. Everyone has their stories; let’s tell a particular. A skilled hacker is trying to breach a firewall. She’s intelligent and skilled, with top-of-the-line equipment, but she rolls a 3 on a d20 and so the GM narrates how she suddenly is very bad at coding and can’t figure it out. Meanwhile, the party member who took intelligence as a dump-stat rolls a 20, so even though he doesn’t know the fundamentals of programming he’s able to type in high-level commands that are able to bypass the firewall. Now, most people recognize this as bad GMing, and would have some advice on how to do that better, but what if there was a system that actively discouraged that line of thinking?
That’s the goal we strive for. The Decisive Factor System never says that you’re not good at the things your character sheet says you’re good at, it only tells you how much those numbers matter. Maybe it comes down to natural talent. Maybe skill was what made the difference. Maybe you couldn’t have done it without a little help. And maybe you just got lucky.
So in this case, we hope that no matter how the dice land, the GM and players are naturally guided into telling a story that makes sense and reinforces who the characters are. If the hacker succeeds, it’s because she’s intelligent, or well-trained, or has the best equipment, or she caught a lucky break and knew how to take advantage of it. If she fails, maybe her battery died just before she could get in. She’s still a top-tier hacker, but her luck ran out.
Meanwhile, the only way the gunslinger’s going to succeed is by luck. And so maybe under his shoe is a sticky note with the computer-owner’s password on it. Some lucky break allowed him to get in when the hacker couldn’t. It could happen, and when he succeeds, the GM is more likely to describe it in a as a lucky break rather than an unprecedented burst of competence.

What if I Still Prefer d20 systems?

While this game is designed with the Decisive Factor sytem in mind, we do offer a d20 Conversion that takes the content here and allows for something more akin to the d20 experience.