If your adjusted skill is equal or higher, you succeed. That's all there is to it. If your skill is lower than the Difficulty, you roll 1d10, and the success chance is a function of the difference. High skills allow you to complete tasks in less time, or absorb modifiers for more difficult tasks, like called shots, or working in adverse conditions. Combat is fast and deadly to the unprepared.
Characters act in order of skill level each turn, with more skilled characters getting more actions.
Damage from weapons directly affects the part of the body hit, with location-specific effects like knockouts, blood loss and broken bones. Armor protects you from lethal damage, but you can still take non-lethal hits through blunt trauma and other effects. Check out the Hyperbooks Online Bookstore for more information on that edition. This doesn't prevent VDS from having rules for magical power plants for science fiction topics, just that VDS treats everything in a logical, consistent fashion. If you can't carry it, you don't own it, and everything you do own is made of wood, leather, stone or bone.