08.17.08
Intensity System
There are certain things I really like about a few games. Just for fun, I took the liberty of stealing them and forcing them all together into one distilled core. Here’s the fruit of that effort 
It’s a complete ripoff of Agon, Dogs in the Vineyard, In A Wicked Age, and Sorcerer. There’s also a PDF with one page of rules and two pages of examples.
If you don’t know those games, the system below probably will be a bit more difficult to understand…
Levels of Intensity
Pick one to use for an action. Which one you do is up to you and how invested your character is. You can up your intensity based on the declaration of others, but you can’t lower it once it’s declared. The levels are:
Calm D6 Invested D8 Passionate D10 Fanatical D12
Traits
Pick a trait to roll along with the intensity die. Main characters have three traits, one at D10 and two at D8. Examples: Smooth Talker D10, Gladiator D8, Love for Jila D8. Minor characters have 2 traits at D6.
Actions
Everyone says who they’re acting against and then rolls at the same time and compares highest single die. Highest number goes first (second die breaks ties). The defender can pick up one or both of their rolled dice to defend against the action. Dice used for defense can’t be used for offense anymore, so picking up both dice means forfeiting the action. Defense dice can be rerolled against any following attacks that round. A successful attack (i.e., one with a die showing a higher number than the defense’s highest-rolled die) causes an impact.
Impact
The successful attacker chooses an impact up to the rating of the action, effective immediately. The rating is determined by adding the highest actual single die result of the attacker to the intensity die maximum of the defender (i.e., the highest he could have rolled: 6 for calm, 8 for invested, 10 for passionate, 12 for fanatical). The defender can negotiate not suffering the impact in exchange for a fictional behavior or event.
Any Tax a trait (one step down in die size; ends after 5-minute rest period after the scene)
12 Gain 1 advantage point (AP) against the defender (used for special effects; see below)
14 Damage a trait (one step down in size until healed) – must be the one defender just used
16 Wound (all trait dice treated as one step lower; needs healing)
20 Fatal. Total control over the fate of the character: death, mutilation, incapacitation, etc. – this impact can be “held” until end of scene and used as negotiation material (see example 3)
Special Effects
Spend AP for the following effects with the character you have AP against. AP last until they are used up.
1 AP Reroll one defense die.
2 AP Count your own highest-rolled die as maximum value for impact purposes only.
3 AP Add four points to your defense after your roll.
4 AP Add four points to your highest roll after you roll for attack and impact purposes.
Healing
Characters need prolonged care and/or overnight rest to heal damage or wounds. One of these can be healed at a time. It needs to make sense in the fiction to do this, and you can’t do it more than once a day. Whenever a healing moment is requested by any player, all of the characters get to heal one impact. If a major character does not have a wound or damage, however, that character earns one (if opponent heals damage) or two (if opponent heals wound) advantage points against all of the healing characters with whom she was in conflict since the last healing, whether or not she was the one who inflicted the damage or wound.