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1-10 at the moment. Noodling on point-buy mechanics or just going old school and roll it. In order to speed development I'm leaning to a roll so I can move on to implementing the story structure mechanics and work out how that impacts task resolution.

I agree that one unified stat seems limiting, but even 1 more would add lots of simple depth. Lots of binaries to choose from (physical/mental, detachment/attachment, instigation/reaction, etc.) that I think could be used to still represent the ways in which people are affected by a sort of crumbling world. 

I think I may not have been clear - I was planning on using other stats too - just using Ruin as a unified measure for physical/mental mutation. My rough draft is Impact to measure smarts/strength and Survive to measure toughness/agility.

While I'm not 100% convinced it's a good plan, it's the one I have and am going to work. I suspect that, in the end, forcing the choices is a great thought experiment but maybe not the most playable game. We'll see.

Leaning into the story structure though - that I do think is worth exploring.

First things first. This is my first ever jam in over 40 years of tabletop role playing (I go all the way back to the first editions of Gamma World and Metamorphosis Alpha)  - thanks for putting this out here, sharing it on reddit and choosing one of my favorite genres to boot me into action.

The first choke point I ran into thinking about this is how, without a ton of complicated, similar and overlapping systems, to address these common (and frankly fun) tropes. I've kind got a vague notion for a unified stat called "Ruin" since they're all facets of the apocalypse manifesting in the character.

On first blush I like the idea of using a single stat but it creates some issues. First to use a unified stat the mechanics become binary. It's easy enough to use roll vs stat for task resolution for two of the three - simply use roll high vs Ruin for one and low for the other. The obvious problem and solution are to combine mental mutations and to collapse the choice to two options.

Where that creates trouble is that it forces the character, and by extension to be bad at one to be good at the other or be mediocre at both. That kind of "multiclassing means not being good at anything" situation feels kind of dated and unreasonable. Is that really the case?

In the media outside games that's rarely the case. Another point about translating movies and books to the game space - what's everyone think of attacking this as the classic journey by building a game that leans into the:

1. You are here but are forced out
2. The terrain and environment you must cross
3. The force that oppose you
4. What you have that they want
5. Sanctuary

structure of Miller's Mad Max films, Damnation Alley, and almost every zombie movie ever?

Edit: I suppose the actual question is the same for both - "Does it look like there's anything down that road?"