Combat & Health
Health is a measure of how much of a distance you are from total collapse, followed by death. It's not just a measure of your physical well-being, but how much you can take the pain, which is why painkillers do as much as bandages. Human characters have 10 health, dogs have five, particularly endurable mutants have fifteen. If you find armor, you can add a few "armor points" that will absorb damage for you, but you will take damage when the armor is destroyed.
Combat is the primary way you lose health, apart from accidents. When you fight another creature, both you and the attacker roll. Usually, the fight will be over in a single roll. However, force adds to the amount of dice rolled for someone, and if there's someone backing you up then you get more dice from his force. Here's how the rolls go.
1-3: You lose five health points.
4-6: You lose three health points.
7-9: You lose one health point.
10: You retreat from the area, causing you to lose a random recently picked up object in the retreat.
11-13: The enemy retreats from the area, and you gain a random item from their person.
14-16: The enemy loses one health point and stops attacking you.
17-19: The enemy loses three health points and will not attack you again for a while.
20 (For players): The enemy is killed, allowing you to loot their corpse. (For attackers) The enemy loses five health points.
Crafting & Scavenging
When crafting, you need two objects and way of attaching them. This can vary based on what exactly you're making: a hammer would do as a way of attaching nails to a baseball bat, and you'd need a welder if you wanted to metal objects to be fused. You can craft items and do other things as well.
If you want to craft something like a large machine or a car, you will need more ingredients and a base to work with. If you're making a water filter, you'd need a grille, assorted tubes, a plastic bottle, and a box to hold it all in. So, machines are much more complex then just tying a brick to a baseball bat.
When you wish to scavenge, you can choose to scavenge generally (just looking around for anything useful) or look around specifically for something. You may not always get what you want with the former, but the latter will get negative modifiers if you're looking in a place it's not likely to be found (like searching a house for a rocket launcher or looking around a junkyard for a working portable television). You can scavenge for regular and small items. Regular items are shovels, pistols, handheld computers, and other useful items. Small items are bullets, morphine syringes, food, and other single-use items.
Scavenging Results for Regular Items
1-2: You uncover a booby trap or fall prey to an environmental hazard. You will get a roll to dodge, but if you fail you will get one point of damage.
3-6: You find nothing but useless junk.
7-9: You find a broken item. It could be fixed, but it's useless for now. If you were looking for firearms, this would be a pistol that's been half-buried in sand for the past year that's rusted all to hell.
10-12: You find a used item. It won't work nearly as well as a regular item, but it'll do for now. If you were looking for firearms, this would be a zip gun that's liable to blow up in your hand if you look at it the wrong way.
13-15: You find an ordinary item. It's not the best it could be, but it'll do. If you were looking for firearms, this would be a civilian home protection pistol.
16-17: You find an above-average item. It's pretty good, in the upper tiers, but still not the best. If you were looking for firearms, this would be a police brand pistol.
18-19: You find an excellent item. This item does it's job, and does it well. If you were looking for firearms, this would be an army pistol with a laser sight attachment.
20: You find a brilliant item. Wowee zowee, you got lucky here! If you were looking for firearms, this would be a Hydrogen-Fed Fusion Blaster Mark X-86.
Scavenging Results for Small Items
1-2: You uncover a booby trap or fall prey to an environmental hazard. You will get a roll to dodge, but if you fail you will get one point of damage.
3-9: You find nothing but useless junk.
10: You find 1 of the item.
11-12: You find 2 of the item.
13-15: You find 3 of the item.
16-17: You find 5 of the item.
18-19: You find 7 of the item.
20: You find 10 of the item.
Hunger
Hunger is a big part of the game. You have to feed yourself, or you will starve. The effects of starving are not good. The longer you go on without food, the lower your maximum health will get. After four days without eating, you will die. However, rations are supplied by the military every eight days. These rations will feed you for a day, while regular food will require you to eat three of them to feed yourself for a day.
Character Sheet
Name: What's your character called?
Bio: Give a summary of your character, both in backstory and personality, with maybe a few ideas of their appearance.
Attributes: See attributes.
Skills: See skills.
Advantages: See advantages and disadvantages.
Disadvantages: Ditto.
Attributes
Attributes are the base abilities of your character. They do not provide direct bonuses, but they allow certain rules to happen that are beneficial to you. You have three points to spend in attributes, of which there are:
Endurance: The ability to take what you get. For every point spent in Endurance, you get an extra health point.
Force: The ability to give back what you take. For every point spent in Force, you get an extra die roll in attacks.
Fortitude: The ability to withstand for at least a while longer. For every point spent in Fortitude, you get an extra day before hunger sets in.
Inspection: The ability to see things others wouldn't. For every point spend in Inspection, you will get an extra die to rolling to scavenge.
Skills
Skills are much more general then attributes. You can select any and everything as a skill, from firearms to activating particle accelerators. You will get a bonus to using this skill in certain activities. However, there are rules. The more specific a skill is, the more bonuses you get. You would only get +1 to firearms, but you would get +4 to using scoped bolt-action rifles. You get to have two skills.
Advantages & Disadvantages
Advantages are things that happened to you because of circumstance or because you earned them, they're not skills. They are physical things or events that have happened to you and either benefit you or do not. You can have one advantage, but you also need to have a disadvantage as well. You can make up your own advantages and disadvantages, but here's an example of an advantage and a disadvantage.
Advantage: Shotgun. You have a shotgun with two bullets at the start.
Disadvantage: Spouse. You have a lover who needs to be fed as well as you do, and she may die.