Kill your darlings, bring more color

I took a month long break from the game and realized I had been too specific in one area (skills) and too vague in another (character advancement outside of XP mechanics). 1.39 is an effort to address both.

Action! Color!

When I was writing and first testing the game, I was really into depicting nomads from the genre, and thus driving and riding were big parts of my mental landscape. I now realize how poorly that fit into the bigger picture of depicting any kinds of lowlives struggling in the capitalist machine.

Driving is now gone as a skill. However: I ended up increasing the number of skills in the end, not decreasing them. 

Driving is replaced by Action, which is anything you would do in an action scene that isn't fighting. Chases, infiltration, shadowing someone, and athletics are all covered by this new skill. I did consider getting rid of Fighting, too, and just have Action for all manner of action. After all, in almost all cases I can think of, anyone in fiction that's good in one sort of action tends to be good at all sorts of action. I decided against it to give more space for player agency, to define their characters in a way that makes sense to them.

But I did need a place for my nomads' driving focus, and that place is provided by the new Color Skill. This is an empty skill slot that needs to be filled with the whole table when they're creating their punks. The nomads' Driving would go here, or another crew's Crime, a media crew's Media, an advanced fixer group's Business, or a band's Band. If you would want to use SFP to play cyber cops (you shouldn't), the cop crew's Policing would be this. 

Advancement systems

Two new systems have been added, both dealing with character advancement outside of the XP mechanics. The aim is to provide a meta structure, something to keep you going between sessions.

First is Gutter To Glitz: guidelines for how the punks' opportunities can grow as they're able to bring in more cash. I like the way this both calls back to D&D treasure for XP origins and aligns with the ultra capitalist world of the genre.

Second is Three Problems: a system for building drama to power punks through what I hope will be interesting, personal, meaningful troubles. 

Also: more art, layout fixes.