Stats & Effects

The eight stats

Code	Name	Meaning
INT	Intellect	Analytical thinking, problem solving, education
CHA	Charisma	Social skill, persuasiveness, presence
VIT	Vitality	Physical health, energy, resilience
WIL	Willpower	Mental fortitude, discipline, resolve
WEA	Wealth	Financial situation, material assets
REP	Reputation	Social standing, how others perceive you
HAP	Contentment	Inner wellbeing, life satisfaction
MOR	Disposition	Moral compass, from psychopathic (low) to saintly (high)

Stats run 1-100, and a number in an *effects: line is a percentage of the room the stat has left, not a count of points. This is FairMath.

A gain takes that share of the distance to 100, and a loss takes the same share of the distance to 1:

Stat is	+20 gives	-20 gives
10	28	8
50	60	40
90	92	72

So the same number written on the page does most to a middling stat and least to an extreme one, in both directions. Becoming brilliant is hard, and so is being ruined: a character already at rock bottom cannot be hammered further by a run of bad luck. MOR moves the same way, because neither sainthood nor monstrousness should be cheap.

An effect always moves a stat by at least one point when there is anywhere left to go. The arithmetic alone rounds a small change to nothing near an extreme, and a choice whose *effects: line silently did nothing is exactly what this format exists to prevent.

Sizing a number

The curve decides how a number lands. You decide how big the event was. Those are different questions, and the second one is where the mistakes happen. A number here is a percentage, so it is easy to write one that looks modest and is not: -20 reads like a small figure and means a fifth of everything you have.

The event	Roughly	On a stat of 50	On a stat of 90
A bad day. A stubbed toe. A small embarrassment.	2	1	2
A flu. A snub that stings. A wasted month.	4–6	2–3	4–5
A broken arm. A public humiliation. Losing a job.	8–12	4–6	7–11
A serious illness. A scandal. A windfall.	16–24	8–12	14–21
A crash. An inheritance. A stroke.	30+	15+	27+

Read the last two columns as the point of the whole system. The same written number is a scratch to a weak stat and a wound to a strong one, because a strong stat has more to lose. A stubbed toe is VIT-2 and costs your athlete two points; ageing into maturity is VIT-30 and costs him twenty-seven.

Everything drifts toward the middle. At 90 a gain buys one point and a loss takes seven; at 10 it is the other way around. So a life of equal ups and downs converges on the middle from either direction, and an extreme is something a character reaches briefly rather than settles at. If you want a stat to stay high, the story has to keep paying for it.

Disposition

MOR is a stat like the other seven. It moves on the same curve, shows as a number in the header beside them, and a *requires: on it reads the same way: *requires: MOR >= 61 tells the player “Requires MOR ≥ 61”, the same shape as every other stat.

The one place it differs is character creation, where it is not bought out of the same budget as the rest. The player sets it on its own slider, labelled with the shape they are choosing rather than the number:

MOR	Reads as
1-20	psychopathic
21-40	selfish
41-60	neutral
61-80	kind
81-100	saintly

Those words exist only on that screen. They are worth knowing anyway, because they are the rough shapes players have in mind when they pick a starting disposition, and a gate near a boundary catches roughly the group whose name is on it.

The *effects: directive

*effects: HAP+4, WEA-2

Comma-separated stat deltas. Guidelines: a choice should move 0-3 stats by ±2 to ±10. Anything from ±16 up is a build warning - save those for genuinely drastic moments. Guidance and the warning deliberately differ, so there is room between what is advised and what is refused. An unknown stat code, or the same stat twice in one line, is a build error.

Both numbers are percentages, not points: HAP+4 on a character at 50 is worth two. Sizing a number puts the whole range beside the kinds of thing that actually happen to people, which is the easier way to choose one.

Effects are positional

An *effects: line fires at the point in the prose where it stands. Put it where the consequence lands - which can be paragraphs after the choice:

> Lend Tommy your bike
  "Back in an hour," he says.
  ...
  A week later you spot it, rusting, in the creek.
  *effects: HAP-3, REP-1
  You never lend him anything again.

Position controls two things: when the change counts (conditions later in the fragment already see it - see Conditions) and when the player sees it. Stat indicators appear in the prose only when an effect lands after a ... pause - the delayed-sting reveal. Effects with no pause before them stay silent in the flow and show up once, in the summary at the end of the fragment. Changes commit to the character when the fragment ends.

Beats: ...

A line containing only ... pauses the reveal; the player presses Continue to see what follows. Use it for timing - comedy, dread, or letting a consequence sink in:

Then, he eats you.
...
Just kidding!