The System

> "Congratulations, you’ve lost your marbles. Or maybe you’ve found them. Who knows? Not you. You’re too busy conversing with the mice." - The System
>
>

'The System' is a mysterious interface by which the residents of Odwia and many other worlds measure their strength and skill. Although little is known about it at this point, Gerald has noted that its messages sometimes seem less impersonal machine and more intelligent being.

There seems to be at least one 'administrator' who oversees the system, but their identity and intent is as of yet unknown.

## Status

### Stats

The system computes various aspect of its users into clearly defined numbers and categories, which can be accessed via the status screen. Some of these are self-explanatory, others of them less so.

These include name, race, level, experience, gender, age, allegiance, fame, strength, intelligence, dexterity, wisdom, charisma, endurance and health (or hardness and durability), as well as a list of the user's available energies and their respective regeneration rates and limits (mana, ki, psi etc).

Following is an explanation of some stats by Gerald, based on what he learned by querying the system about various things:

"Strength represents the amount of force you can exert. Of course, it means nothing to a being like me who has no muscles or other way to exert force...

...Dexterity is a useful stat for anyone in combat situations, I think. If Strength improves your muscles, dexterity improves your control over them, and your body in general. On top of that, it increases your motion perception and thought speed. Well, even if you have perfect control over your body, there’s no use if your body is weak, so it’s not like DEX is the prime stat or something. Still, I imagine it would be incredibly important for any job that requires precision – craftsmen, snipers, scribes, acrobats, and so on.

Intelligence increases calculation speed, as well as the ability to think outside of common sense and question the norm. It also improves information retention – memory. Not that it affects me.

If intelligence tells you how to build a railgun, wisdom tells you that you didn’t even need a pistol to kill that slime. It reduces superfluous actions and improves decision making ability. Almost like a mental version of dexterity. It also increases your self-control, which is always nice.

Charisma enhances empathy and acting talent, as well as subtly improving your appearance based on your own preferences.

…I’m guessing that this is within reasonable bounds, like, you can’t grow horns or something, but… this is a system after all, who knows if that was included as a feature or not?

Hardness. Simply a number relating to the required force to do a certain amount of damage on an object. Any increases or decreases of this stat, outside of changes in material, do not affect density or appearance.

Durability, a measure of how much damage an object can take before ceasing to function as that object.

And luck. Now this stat - and I quote – 'Increases luck.'"

### Titles

The specific requirements to receive a title are rather amorphous, but they tend to be awarded for extremely unique or difficult achievements. They often come with specific benefits, such as increases to stats, traits, and very rarely skills.

### Traits

Traits generally describe the parts of the user that are more related to what they are, rather than what they can do. They tend to be similar or identical among users of the same species.

Each trait has a rating attached to it, which describes the magnitude of the trait's effects. This goes in the order (lowest -> highest):

minute, minor, small, average, moderate, large, huge, ???

A +x next to a trait indicates that the trait is more than what it is rated as, but not quite so much as to require the use of the next largest rating. Generally speaking, two of the previous rating are equal to the next. That is to say, if a user had both a minor and minute version of a trait, it would be displayed as minor +1. Ratings over two steps down from the largest on a specific trait are ignored.

### Skills

Skills describe what the user can do. At birth, a user will generally have only a few race-specific skills or no skills at all, and the user will then build them up over the course of a lifetime. If one were to somehow access another's status, they would likely be able to get a good picture of their personality and past from their skills list alone.

#### Proficiency

This indicates how proficient the user is with a particular skill. This goes in the order (least -> most):

basic, advanced, expert, master, ???, ???, ???

Progress within a proficiency level is measured with a percentage.

Alternatively, skills can be 'static', which means they cannot be further improved or mastered.

#### Rarity

Each skill has a rarity attached, which describes how common (or not) the particular skill is. While higher rarities often mean more powerful and useful skills, this is not always the case. The rarity of the skill also takes into account the proficiency skill - that is to say, the rarity of the skill reflects how common that particular proficiency level of that particular skill is. This goes in the order (least rare -> most rare):

common, uncommon, rare, unique, ???

Each rarity is further subdivided into low, mid and high in that order.

#### Type

This describes what type of skill it is. Common types are: Passive or Active. Skills can also be toggleable or dependant on the fulfillment of certain conditions.

## Other functions

The system also offers some other functions to the user. Although it is readily apparent as the user is not informed, more functions become available as the user increases in level.

At its base, the only available functions are options, help and status.

Apart from this, only the party and games functions have been seen thus far.

### Options

This allows the user to change the appearance and layout of the system's functions, such as colour, text size or font.

### Help

The help function allows the user to request additional clarification about any feature or aspect of the system's functions. These also grow more detailed as the user increases in level.

### Party

Allows the user to group himself with other users of the system under a party name, allowing them to share experience and sometimes titles. Maximum party size is increased with level, fame, charisma and a 'leadership' skill. Parties generally cannot be maintained over different worlds.

### Games

Allows the user to partake in some basic entertainment. Quantity and quality of games available increases with level.