Clouds Over Mercury

Clouds Over Mercury is an RPG set on the near-lawless urban sprawls that are the human colonies of Mercury.

-Setting
The journey to Mercury being a one-way trip, original settlers consisted of convicts and volunteered Overseers. As part of the terraforming procedure, vast amounts of smog were pumped into the atmosphere in order to block out the Sun's rays, meaning you can only tell it's night because the sky is a little darker. Not that that's a huge issue, giving to the fact the sun sets about once a year, which lasts about 88 Earth-days. You get used to it.

-Characters
A character consists of four abilities, an alignment, and a job. These abilities are as follows;
BODY: How physically fit you are. Encompasses strength, speed, and how well you handle yourself in a fistfight.
TECH: How capable you are with using modern technology, from blasters to hoverbikes.
FACE: How charismatic you are. Deals both with sweet-talking dames, interrogating suspects, and shaking down thugs.
MIND: How smart you are. This can be booksmarts, like knowing how to bypass a voicelock, or streetsmarts, like knowing which local crimeboss it was that sent this particular hitman after you.

Alignments are a predilection towards a certain kind of behaviour, and are as follows;
Rough and Ready: Body and Tech, the kind of character who knows how to handle themselves and get around, but isn't so much with the thinking or talking.
Old-School: Body and Face, the kind of hardboiled fella who reckons his fists (or legs) can get him out of any problem his tongue can't
24th Century: Tech and Mind, the kind of new blood that puts their stock in technological proficiency and knowing the right things.
Brainiac: Face and Mind, the kind of smooth talker who always has the right thing to say at the ready, and if it turns out he doesn't he's just about out of options

Jobs are the character's most significant ability or strength. While this can be anything, it is suggested that each player has a unique job. “Gangster” may be fine in a typical group, but if the entire group are gangsters than diversifying into “Enforcer” or “Safe-cracker” might be a better idea.

Each starting character has 13 points to spend between the four abilities with 10 being the highest an ability can go. The alignments they can choose are limited to ones which feature their highest ability. If a character has more than 1 ability tied for highest, the chosen alignment must feature at least two of them. Job is chosen freely.

-Conflicts
Whenever a player attempts something challenging, they roll an ability check. They get 1 die for every point they have in the relevant ability, and roll a d8 if the ability is not in their alignment or a d10 if it is. Any roll of 6 or above is counted as a success, and if the player gets enough successes they overcome the challenge. In addition, if the player's job is relevant to the challenge, successes occur on 5 or more. When two characters are in direct conflict, the number of successes required to triumph is the number of successes achieved by the other character.