Stumbled across your guys’s work from twitter after a friend who also loves PAFL showed it to me! First off, the pdf looks pretty good. I can tell there’s a lot of care put into it. The big issue is, three different people (myself, my usual GM, my friend who showed me the post) all looked over this pdf, and none of us could answer any of the following questions my GM had

-How do you actually roll a skill or attack check?

-What should be defined as actually difficult checks?

-How many skill points do you start with?

-How many points do you get for using power as a mutant?

-Is this game intended to have any actual advancement system?

As is, we felt as though we were missing multiple pages worth of information that would be vital to actually running and playing this. My friend asked if the PDF was intended as a supplement to one of the systems sited as inspiration. as many people do make fanmade supplemental settings stories and homebrews like this- they essentially were asking if we should be answering these questions with other books, but even if we are, it should be much clearer. And if that’s not the intent, then as I said; a lot of vital information for actual play is seemingly missing.

For another positive, it does feel like a lot of care was put into balancing the three classes as best as possible for a potential mixed party. Which is wonderful. Some media-inspired systems are outright cruel with balancing.

I’d love to be able to play this ruleset- as PAFL is a huge inspiration to my work as a writer and artist, and I can tell there was care put into this. Just as is, half my primary ttrpg party can’t wrap our heads around this book. I don’t know if you guys plan to ever update or consider reworking this (as much as I’d like it, I fully understand this is a nonprofit fan project!) but if you continue making tabletop rule sets I’d be excited to see what you guys do next!

Thank you so much for the feedback! As it's our first attempt at a RPG system we had very few inputs since we only tested the book a handful of times in one-shot campaigns, we'll eventually add a QnA text file to the downloadable content later, but in the mean time i'll answer your questions in the most optimal order:

-What should be defined as actually difficult checks?

The only skill check's difficulties that are already defined in the book and should be followed skin to bone are the Determined Checks of Effects caused by Mutant Powers in page 28, for class balancing reasons. Any other skill check, defined by the book or not, is up to the GM to determine. How hard is jumping over a 4.5  meter gap? Well, it's up to your GM to decide, an Acrobatics check of 4? Maybe 5 if you're being chased by dogs?

-How do you actually roll a skill or attack check?

Okay, lets go, first for skills, when you make a character typically you'll have a origin that grants you Proficiency in 2 skills

Lets take the Athlete origin has the Trained Skills: Acrobatics and Athletics.

This means whenever your GM assigns a athletics skill check, you have advantage, if you would roll a d6 you roll yet another one and get the biggest result:

Example: Anya needs to jump over a massive gap to escape a bunch of rabid ugly mutant dogs! Roll an Acrobatics Skill Check of 5, Anya has Proficiency in Acrobatics so she rolls two dice, getting a 1 in the first, and 5 in the second one, successfully passing the test with no problem!

Now, for Attack Checks, Melee and Ranged attacks have different Skills bound to them, in the Weapons page you will see in the damage rolls a text specifying which skill you use,  like for light melee weapons "Roll Fight 1d6-1" you will make a Skill Fight Roll and subtract 1 from the result, if you have Proficiency in the Fight Skill you have advantage, meaning you roll 2d6, get the highest result and subtract one, and thats the damage you do.

-How many points start with how many do you get for using power as a mutant and Is this game intended to have any actual advancement system? 

You start with 6 Power Slots for mutants, when you write a power, you spend those slots to make them, if you make a level 4 Power, you are left with 2 Power Slots Remaining. A 4th level Mutant power uses humanity equal to it's level.

No, the game is not built to have a "Character Leving Up" system at it's core, although you can get a little bit more experienced, just like Call of Cthulhu, if your player does something really cool with their powers or abilities, you can give them an "inspiration point" to level up their proficiency in a certain skill.

If your GM decides to give you that inspiration point, you can use it to:

- get yet another proficiency in a chosen skill
- get yet another die in a proficiency you already have, although you can only do this once per skill
- get another power slot for your mutant character

-Will you be updating this game?

To be blunt, i started writing this response 2 weeks ago in my Data Structure class, so it's hard to say we'll be working on this book any harder than we already did, but responding to questions and polishing the content there already is, is an activity we'll make in our free time when we feel like it, but since ZONA is an Open Source RPG (you can have access to a copy of the document in my twitter @ryanthecomic_) you can even alter the book yourself or make expansions and homebrew rules, as long as you have fun, ZONA was not really built to be an too strict set of rules.

https://x.com/ryanthecomic_/status/1821249866515017981

I hope that answered some of your questions, thank you again for your feedback and we'd love to hear more!