The minisystem goes like this:
- Say what you do and roll a number of d6s.
- If the sum of your roll is higher than the opposing roll (either another player or the DM), the thing you wanted to happen, happens.
- The number of the d6s you roll is determined by the level of skill you have.
- At start, you have only one skill: Do anything 1.
- If you roll all sixes on your roll, you can get new skill one level higher than the one you used for the action. The skill must be a subset of what happened to you in the action (Say, Athletics 2 if you were climbing a wall, or Teeth of Biting 2 if you were eating a cake).
- For every roll you fail, you get 1 XP.
- XP can be used to change a die into a 6 for advancement purposes but not for success purposes.
This mini-system works beautifully for crafting characters on the go. Here are some example "charsheets" from the dungeoncrawl of Cakewalk that I ran:
- Krey the Heretic Monk of the Church of Pain : 0 XP Do anything 1, Fist O'Pain 2, Burning Fist O'Pain 3, Heretic 2, Teeth of Biting 2!
- Ferret the Son of a Shoemaker: 2 XP Do Anything 1. Boots of Kicking 2. Feet of Feats 3. Supplier 2.
- Ryu the Polymorphed Egglayer: 2 XP, Reptillian 2
But my favorite moment was this:
I had asked the players if they were doing anything to prepare for the dungeon before leaving town. One of them said he's checking to see if "he has his heirloom shield" with him. He rolls and botches, and so I say: "Your father is a shoemaker. You are not sure why you ever thought you had anything even remotelly close to a shield." After a little while, this character and the would-be monk make it to the heavy doors of dungeon Cakewalk and have a little conversation regarding their preparedness. The monk says he's barefoot and happy to be so, 'cause, well, he's a monk! And then the shoemaker says "I check to see if I have shoes on!"... Which is beautiful, of course - we've already established he's the son of a shoemaker, so he definitelly has shoes on. So if he does win this roll, we know that he doesn't just have shoes on, he has awesome shoes on!
And then he rolls a 6 on that roll and gets Boots of Kicking 2.
And then he rolls a 3-6 roll for kicking down the dungeon door, and upgrades it into Feet of Feats 3.
So I drew a stream coming out of a cave, with his village downstream and explained there was a river spirit in the cave that the villagers had to make sacrifices to or the water would become thin and foul. He told me that he was a Wizard. Wading up the stream, into the cave, he encountered a room that was a hive of stinging insects. He beat them by chilling the room and then swatting many down and letting the rest return to their hives to hibernate. I'd decided this was to be a two-room dungeon so there was just one left -- looks like this'll be a quick run. Or not. The next room -- reached through a narrow twisting crack in the rocks, lead to a room full of water with a large glowing blue crystal on one side. Here, we went back and forth, often failing to effect the other meaningfully -- constraining future narration, but only superficially and temporarily. Some good stuff did evolve out of that, but it took too long. The first two-thirds of the fight was over the crystal. He couldn't break it off and take it and it seemed to be the source of danger. Eventually, he transmuted it back into the hero from three generations ago who once came here to free the village from the spirit. That was cool. In the end, the spirit tried to buffet him in a coin-laden whirlpool and crush him but he turned the remaining water (he'd dammed the source) into steam -- killing it and burning himself. He ended up with Wizard 1, Quick Reactions 2, Metamorphosis Spells 2, Brave 2, Revert Metamorphosis 3, Force Spells 2 and I ended with Cave of Watery Spirits 1, Crystal of Power 2, Intimidating 2, Force Resistance 2, and Hurt People 2. I chose not to use XP at a couple of points because it had dragged on too long and I wanted Garrett to win. I'm not sure if that was good or bad, but it was OK. I'm kind of committed to starting the dungeon like a starting character (whether that's 1 or 1+2) but maybe giving it a pool of xp or maybe just making it longer so that the characters win a few rooms handily before the dungeon picks up a few skills.