Prologue: Page 3

Mark climbed the fire escape to its top.  He was above the roof of the building opposite him, and willing to risk putting his new-found strength to the test.  He leaped (Easy roll:  9  Target:  7:  Result:  Success), and cleared the alley, landing lightly on his feet.

The servants disguised as an ordinary couple reached the alley just in time to see Mark soar over-head.  The well-dressed woman spread her arms, and the air began to shimmer.  Neither of Mark's pursuers noticed Jonas repelling down the wall with liquid grace (Standard roll:  3  Target  2  Result:  Success)  When Jonas crept up behind her and drove his slender stiletto into the base of her brain-stem, she was unable to mount any defense (Easy roll:  5  Target:  5  Result:  Critical Success.  I had Jonas go for her brain-stem, another assassin favorite, because he was behind her and the eye would have been tricky).  The man accompanying reacted in a flash, moving to attack Jonas with his bare hands, but Jonas was already ducking, slashing out for his enemy's ankles (Standard roll:  4  Target:  8  Result:  Failure), missing. 

The man knew his stuff, his dance-like dodge made that clear.  Rather than risk losing his lead to a lengthy battle, he chose to follow his quarry.  He vaulted to the fire escape, scurrying up it as fast as he could (Easy roll:  2  Target:  4  Result:  Success).  Before his opponent could mount an attack, Jonas was on the roof, facing down a frightened Mark.

(Alright, what do you guys do?  Just occurred to me Mark has no idea who Jonas is, so that could be fun.  Also, Mark and Jonas each earn two experience.  Let's break it down:

Experience is wracked up in a few ways.  Slowly, by living and doing, anyone can get better.  Every couple of pages your character will get one automatically.  Dangerous situations tend to sharpen our focus, and we learn faster.  During tense situations, when one's life or freedom are on the line, a character might earn an xp per page.  Next, achieving goals rewards our risks.  As your characters accomplish story objectives, or achieve goals that you've picked for them, they will get a nice amount of xp.  Takes time to accomplish these things, but the payouts are large.  Lastly, succeeding in hard+ rolls earns you one or more xp on the spot, depending on how hard it was, and what you stood to lose by failure.

Once earned, experience can be spent in a couple ways.  First, a small amount can be spent for temporary boosts.  By spending 2 experience points, a character can up a stat by one notch for a dramatically appropriate length of time.  Mark could buy his strength up from weak to neutral, Jonas could push his agility from neutral to strong, etc.

How long it lasts is more of a story and personality thing than any set length.  The way I envision it, a character is drawing on inner reserves, having been pushed every which way by their recent environment, and everything they've endured gives them an inner strength.

So, if Mark is tired of running, tired of being pushed around, and just once wants to fight and rage on equal terms with the warriors, he can spend 2 xp to up his strength, and he will remain strong until the violence and anger have passed.

Skills are less broad than stats, and so cost 1 XP to boost in the exact same way.

The second way to spend xp is on permanent boosts.  Buying up a weakness PERMANENTLY in a stat costs 10 xp, as does buying the first level of strength in a stat.  5 xp for skills, with the same rules.

Powers are some what different, and have to grow through the story as well as through large xp expenditures.  Your first power is your birth-right as a character, and costs only 1 xp to buy at its weak level (Noted like this on your sheet Materialization (Iron) -).  These powers are hard to rigidly define, and will take work with the DM to figure out what is within your reach, what isn't yet, etc.  Since half the fun of abilities is using them in creative ways for huge effect, specifying the exact capabilities of any player would remove a bit of the fun.  For this reason, most creative uses of a power will come with a difficult roll.  Such creative uses are far from impossible, but they are tricky.  A character can spend xp to buy down the difficulty on one particular power related roll.  Each xp spent takes the difficulty down one category.  Spending 2 xp to use your power would take that roll down from hard to easy, for instance.

Alright, I know that's a lot to take in.  Questions?  Comments?)