Scum and Villainy

As in its parent system (Blades in the Dark), character creation in Scum and Villainy is relatively fast.  A player begins by selecting a "playbook" for their character.  There are seven playbooks to choose from, such as Muscle (fighter), Stitch (doctor), or Scoundrel (rogue).

Each playbook provides a different set of actions the character can perform to earn experience, as well as a unique Starting Ability.  For instance, the Stitch can declare "I’m a Doctor, Not a...:" to use their Doctor rating for a different action.  They also provide a variety of Special Abilities, but each character can only choose one.

Next the player chooses a Heritage for their character (a note about their family life) and a Background (a detail about their history).  After that they assign four Action Points (similar to skill points in other systems) to their actions, with no more than two points in any one.

After that the player makes a couple social choices for their character, selecting a friend, an enemy, and one (or two) vice(s).  Finally the player selects their character's name, alias, and look, and then they're ready to play.

After all of the characters have been created, the entire group selects a starship, from one of three options (smuggling-focused, bounty-hunting focused, and rebellion-focused).  They can then choose two upgrades for their ship, which were presumably provided by the groups faction ... and so they also have to decide how they paid for those upgrades (if they did at all).  They also decide on the ship's reputation, special ability, and favorite contact.

After creation ships earn experience (which can be used to purchase further upgrades) by completing tasks related to its focus.

To perform an action in Scum and Villainy a player first states what they want to do, and what type of action they want to use to do it.  The action must be appropriate, so one could use a Command action to boss others around, but not to fight.

Next, the GM decides the action's "position", either controlled, risky, or desperate, depending on the PC's current environment.  The GM also sets an "effect level", which determines how much effect the action will have: limited, standard, or great.

After that the player collects their "dice pool" and rolls it.  They get a number of dice equal to the number of points they have in the relevant action.

If at least one die rolls a 6, the action succeeds.  If the highest result is a 4 or 5, then the action is a success with a complication. If none are higher than 3, it results in failure.  If two dice both roll 6 the action is a critical success.

Players can add a die to the roll by getting help from another character (the other character must spend 1 stress).  They can add one further die by either pushing themselves (ie. spending 2 stress), or by making a Devil's Bargain (if the GM offers it).  The latter gives the player an extra die for a roll, in exchange for having guaranteed (GM-determined) consequences later on (eg. they lose an item, betray a loved one, etc.).

Finally, one other way a player can add dice to a roll is by spending the party's Gambit pool.  This is a pool of dice shared by the entire group, which gets re-filled when a player rolls a 6 on a risky action.

As a more narrative-focused system Scum and Villainy does not have any sort of initiative system: combat simply happens in whatever order the GM decides.  Similarly there's no special "combat time" of rounds: players simply describe the actions they want to take, and the GM responds with what happens, the same way they would out of combat.

Characters take damage in the form of stress, which is temporary and can be recovered during downtime (eg. by indulging in a character's vice), and trauma, which represents permanent harm the character has suffered.  When a character suffers four trauma they are removed from the game.

Ships have a slightly more advanced system, involving shields and different ship components, but space combat still uses the same simple narrative system.