Either! That’s typically how I’ve played most RPGs when it comes to determining Charisma, Dexterity, etc.

A player might say “I want to try and Force the door open,” determining it themselves. They might also say “I’m gonna survey the horizon. Do I see anything of note?” and the GM might say “Sure! Roll to Engage.”

With the base dice system, yes. I’m lazy so I’m just going to copy-paste what I said to the other commentor, lol.

It’s important to note that doubling up on dice in this system is essentially min-maxing. You’re getting a 75%+ success rate on Forcing in exchange for a 0% success rate on Engaging. That is just with the base system, though. I didn’t include these sections in the post, but other systems of the game (such as Effects) meddle these numbers and can allow a double d6 character to successfully Engage.

And no, I haven’t played Fabula Ultima. I’ll be sure to check it out tho if it’s similar!

Seems like if I take forceful and strong, I can never ever succeed at at least one categories of options?

That’s exactly right. While, yes, they are unable to Engage with two d6s, that kind of tells a story with just the math. That would be the classic “strong, short-tempered jock” archetype. They may not be the brightest, and they may not be the most careful, but dang can they hit hard!

It’s important to note that doubling up on dice in this system is essentially min-maxing. You’re getting a 75%+ success rate on Forcing in exchange for a 0% success rate on Engaging. That is just with the base system, though. I didn’t include these sections in the post, but other systems of the game (such as Effects) meddle these numbers and can allow a double d6 character to successfully Engage.

Though, my party and I understand all of this because we’ve been building the game together. I see now how that requires a wealth of mechanical context and isn’t really all that clear to new readers.

Unclear how health and recovery work. Seems like the double d6 would have low stress, high wounds?

Essentially just two pools of hit points, but with the added complication system if you roll a marked number. Yes, a double d6 character would have a low Stress capacity (6) and a high Wound capacity (18 - 6 == 12). They can take some physical hits, but are weak to mental hits.

Again, this wasn’t covered in the Markdown preview I wrote, so I apologize for that, but recovery is done entirely through storytelling, particularly during Downtime. If a character received a Wound from fracturing a bone, they’d spend a months-long Downtime in a sling. If they received a Stress from a terrifying encounter, they’d spend an hours-long Downtime coping with it. And if you have a lot of Wounds/Stress and forgot how you got each one, you can simply say “Hey I’m gonna recover during Downtime” lol.

Have you played Fate? This seems like a distant relative of Fate Accelerated.

I have! There was no direct inspiration, but I do like Fate a lot.

No meta game points or succeed at a cost?

Meta game points are covered by Effects, which were not covered in the Markdown preview.

As for succeeding at a cost, Wounds and Stresses cause “an immediate narrative complication alongside the action’s outcome”, but there’s no rigid system for uninjured characters. I tried to work it in, but it felt clunky for a rules-light game like this. I will say that the section on actions does give a brief blurb about “the relative ease or difficulty of the task at-hand”. When I’ve run the game with my party, I’ve narrated a player barely succeeding a fairly difficult task as a success with a cost.

South Carolina has been BOOMING recently. I can’t complain