Infra-Red: Mechanical Nonsense

Due to its setting, Infra-Red's system moves quite far out from OSR orthodoxy.

It uses 6 stats: Athletics (ath), Driving (dri), Espionage (esp), Preparedness (pre), Shooting (sho), and Socializing (soc). Each skill starts as a 1, and characters have 6 points to assign between them, with a cap of 5 in a skill.

I use these stats instead of the traditional 6 because they focus more on what the PCs are assumed to be in Infra-Red: government investigators. I chose to use a point-buy system because there are a small enough amount of skills and points that this gives the player control without it being overwhelming.

For skill checks, you roll 1d6 and try to get equal to or below the skill being used.

Progression is inspired by Lost Pages' 1d6 Thieving: after failing a check with the skill 5 times, it goes up by one. If the skill is above 5, you roll multiple checks at once.

For example, a skill of 7 means you roll 2 dice, one against 5 and one against 2. if either die succeeds, you succeed.