Sail Rules revised

Character Generation: At the beginning of play you are given 14 ability points and 18 skill points. These are to be distributed among your 4 primary stats and 6 skills. You are also granted 1 specialty for each of your stats. For all intents and purposes a specialty is a skill but has a +2 bonus to its roll regardless of any given circumstance. Point buy is 1 to 1 for value.

What is a Specialty: A specialty functions like a normal skill, it is upgraded in the same way each skill but is, in some way, important to who the player is as a character. This specialty can be fixing robots, singing sea shanties, cooking without appropriate tools, etc. It should be focused enough that it isn't used in place of normal skills but not so hyper specific as to rarely be used.

Abilities: Your main stats consist of Suave, Athleticism, Intellect, and Luck. Suave is related to all things involving personal interaction, Athleticism is used for all skills and activities related to physical prowess,  Intellect relates to all things involving technical skill, and Luck is used for re-rolling. The number allotted to your skills and stats is the number of dice you roll.

Tests of skill: When you face a task that could fail you roll dice. Typically skill checks will consist of rolling your stat dice with your skill dice. All 1s rolled are critical failures, all 2s and 3s are failures. All 6s are critical successes, all 4s and 5s are successes. In short, dice progression is as follows, from failures to successes (1 2 3 4 5 6). In absence of a critical event 1s count as normal failures and 6s count as normal successes.

In the event of a failure you can re-roll your dice. You have a maximum number of re-rolls equal to your luck stat. Your amount of re-rolls refreshes at the end of the session. When re-rolling you simply roll all the dice used on the task at hand.

Skills: Skills are associated with one of 3 abilities. what follows are examples of skill associations that could be used when making a character. Players and GMs are encouraged to make up their own skills as they go but the list here should at least serve as a basis to build on.

Suave: Negotiation, Haggling, Lying, Theatre, Singing, Charm.
Athleticism: Martial Arts, Intimidation, Metal working, Parkour, Acrobatics, Throwing.
Intellect : Electronics, Animal Husbandry, Agriculture, Programming, Architecture, Navigation.
Traits: Traits are used to make your character more unique, can you breath underwater? Maybe you get an extra bonus to performing certain songs. Perhaps you speak machine code. Discuss limitations and tone for the campaign with your GM.

Starting Gear: Players will receive one outfit, 3 pieces of gear, and a reasonable amount of flavor items to help flesh out their character. One piece of gear will offer a +1 bonus, one a +2 bonus, and one a +3 bonus.

Facilities and Specialists: Players who have access to the appropriate buildings and NPCs can gain circumstantial bonuses, based on the quality of the equipment in the building the player can gain a bonus ranging from +1 to +3. These bonuses can be used either in the field or while back in the player's settlement. The GM should also restrict access to certain gear and personnel based on what is available in the settlement thus providing incentive to leave and salvage goods.

The Settlement: Typically this will be the player's home base, they may of course choose to operate from a ship instead and not have any home base but the themes of the game are meant to support community building. As such it is encouraged that players found a settlement or find a town or city to live in when they aren't engaging in adventure.

Struggle: Whenever two characters are in a meaningful conflict where one party will end up winning or gaining a substantial advantage over the other, a Struggle begins. The involved players may choose which order to make their moves; when their move comes up in order, they pick an action and a related skill to roll, and sum up all of their collective successes and failures as they go.

Once all players have acted, the opposing NPCs will act, likewise taking actions. Players may choose to go after the opposition depending on the needs of the plot or circumstances. Struggles are not limited to physical combat, and can extend to any competitive event like a spelling bee, a debate, or an attempt to oppose a computer hack with a counter-hack.

To win a struggle, the players must achieve their goal, usually by having more successes on the party's side than on the opposition's side. If the players have fewer successes than their opposition, they lose the struggle, typically losing the opportunity to attempt the same struggle immediately afterwards and suffering an appropriate setback. Losing a struggle should not typically result in the failure of the entire adventure, but often will mandate the players find a new angle of approach to reach their goals.

Complications: Complications will have a negative impact on your skill and ability rolls. Generally it'll be -1, -2, or -3.  During a Struggle a player may incur penalty via loss in a struggle or poor decisions, this will be a complication that they or the GM assigns to their stats or skills. Players may also choose to assign a complication to their character to earn an extra reroll but only during a struggle. Complications are removed during a rest period so its important for characters to have a place they can return to for R&R.

Character Progression: At the end of session the GM awards Stat Points or skill points as they see fit. No Stat or skill can exceed six dice. Stat and Skill points can be substituted for services from NPCs, Items, Equipment, or whatever is deemed appropriate by the players and GM.

Success and Failure: Depending on the difficulty of what a player attempts they will need a certain number of successes. A trivial task will not need to be rolled for. An easy task will need one success, a medium 3 successes, a hard one 9 successes. (GMs may adjust the scale upwards and downwards as they see fit these levels are given as examples.)

Maluses and Bonuses: A bonus counts a extra dice, a malus counts as dice you are not allowed to roll on that task.

Teamwork: Players may work together to pool their successes or fend off consequences from failure. They may also use equipment or circumstances to give themselves bonuses or mitigate difficulties caused by complications or other circumstances. When working together both players will roll their dice and add their successes together.

Equipment Bonuses: Players can get a bonus to roll from their equipment, obviously the item on hand should pertain to what they're doing at the time. By default gear, buildings, and NPCs will start at a +1 bonus and further resources can be used to improve them. (Starting gear being the exception.) As a rule players will require one unit of resources to upgrade the bonus of gear, buildings, or NPCs. Thus a building would start with a +1 bonus and over the course of two adventures could be upgraded to +3. GMs may increase the amount of resources players gain if they would prefer to accelerate the pace of their campaign.

Circumstance Bonuses and the Settlement: Bonuses typically come from Equipment the player characters have, Facilities back at their settlement (or ship), or experts who aid them who can come with or be stationed in their settlement (or on their ship). The idea here is to have character progression not just in what gear and skills the players acquire but in the things (and places) they build and their connections with their community. As such it is encouraged that the GM and players hash out the creation of buildings that would be useful to their goal or the acquisition of skilled personnel who can help them in their endeavours.

During each session the players should be able to salvage items and resources that can be used to improve their home and be given the chance to meet people who could aid them in their future pursuits. Some downtime for roleplay should be spent in between adventures and time between sessions should be spent plotting out the settlement (or ship) and its inhabitants. Roughly speaking each adventure should yield enough resources to make one piece of gear for each PC and a single building while yielding the chance to recruit at least one skilled NPC.

Critical Failure and Critical Success: During a critical failure or success something unusually good, or bad happens and players and GMs are encouraged to work together to create a narrative around the unusual event such dice rolls signify. Alternatively hand out a lot of loot or sink their ship. But try to remember that you're here to have fun, salvage shiny things, and enjoy life.