Taking a break from Alight to work on other games helped crystallize for me how to make it work the way I want: take away ability scores. You can put them back in if you want! But I want descriptive traits to be what characters are built on, and there was too much overlap there.

The result looks like a cross between Into the Odd and Knave, where you always want to roll high, and never add modifiers. Trying to save? d20 vs. target number (usually 15). Attack? Weapon die vs. armor. Got any relevant traits? Roll an extra die for each, take highest.

This cuts down significantly on the number of currencies to manage. I& #39;d really rather just give you one currency to manage, like "stamina" or "will," to track HP and possibly activate some kinds of powers.

This shift also encourages me to avoid overly detailed lists of character options. Yeah, I& #39;ll still give funky trait and power examples and such, but when it& #39;s more obvious what they do *without explicitly detailing each,* there& #39;s less temptation to define so many.

Looking forward to getting back to work on this with less risk of getting carried away.