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. If you can't carry it, you don't own it, and everything you do own is made of wood, leather, stone or bone. But you are rich in magic, and know the secret ways of the shakt, whom you can call to do your bidding, help that is necessary when things come out from the Bad Places to threaten the People and sometimes the Earth Mother herself. Dreamtime is now available in Acrobat 3.0 format.