So I've been slowly making progress on things, though writer's block has definitely been hitting a lot with this one. Thankfully just being able to talk to friends has been a lot of help in getting through it, as well as just getting some encouragement.

I've been steadily making progress, and I thought I'd share what I've got so far.

 ________ Finding The Core

I've been doing a lot of fiddling with the core mechanics of the game, trying to flesh out how they work and make adjustments on my original ideas. The basic D12 system that drives this whole thing has been hit with a lot of that tinkering, trying to make it clearer, simpler, easier to read. But also in this instance, trying to connect it with the other mechanics set out for this game. And I'd like to share with you a more in-depth explanation of these mechanics.

The Basic mechanics of (Untitled Cyberpunk) depends on a 12 sided dice - D12 - for its gameplay.  When a player takes an action that is being opposed - whether by an enemy or by the environment -  the GM will assign a Challenge Rating that the player needs to beat, the player then rolls a D12 and adds their related Attribute to their roll.
  Basic: 3
  Easy: 5
  Medium: 7
  Hard: 9
  Very Hard: 11

I always wanted to have there be 5 different levels of difficulty when it came to rolls, sort of a... hold over from a favorite game of mine.

 A character’s abilities are represented through their five Attributes, and the Proficiencies that are tied to them.

[ Physical
  Brawl
  Haste
  Grapple
[ Criminal
  Sneak
  Intrigue (Deception and Disguise)
  Intimidate
[ Social
  Perform
  Persuasion
  Insight
[ Mental
  Navigate
  Knowledge
  Medicine
[ Technical
  Research
  Engineering
  Hacking

Each of these attributes determines the modifier you use when rolling for an action, such as using Physical for a Haste roll, or Social for persuasion. However characters can have various proficiencies tied to their attributes. When attempting an action that you’re proficient in, you roll an extra die and take the highest result.
     Every die you roll that beats the challenge rating counts as one success; the more successes you roll, the better your result. If a player fails to beat the challenge rating, then they can choose to gain one success at the cost of gaining pressure.

Sometimes the player is at a disadvantage and has to make a dangerous roll - this is known as Risk. When rolling with risk the player rolls two dice and takes the lower result. If only one of the dice rolls fail, then the player can choose to succeed at a cost like normal. However, if both rolls fail, then the player suffers a critical failure that can directly damage the player or cause other problems.

It took a lot of thought to try and summarize and crush this down into something simple for the main game page, figuring out what to cut. What's taken a lot more time is just trying to flesh out all the mechanics of things like failure and success. That's been a big point of debate with my friends in terms of just... what to do and how to make it work. Whether to make a failed roll be just that, a complete failure, or to make it into more of a partial success. 
But one idea I saw recently - well, recently is a strong word for a web series that's so old that it's back from when Geek & Sundry was still alive - was the idea of Success At Cost. In that system it was the idea of the player to basically turn a failure into a success in exchange for something bad happening. 
So I thought why not use it for something I was kind of struggling to make work?

But the latest bit of work has been on the other core element of the game: the Skill Pool.

The skill pool is a measure of a player character’s skill, a pool of points that the player manages to fuel their Skills and Mods, and even tip luck in their favor. Each character starts off with a pool of 5 Skill Points for them to use.  Resting as well as certain skills let you regain skill points. When you take a rest, you regain a number of skill points equal to half your pool rounded down.
Outside of your class, each character has a few basic skills among them.
   Reroll | Once per turn: You can spend up to two of your skill points to reroll your dice, one for each point spent.

   Step Up | Once per turn/round: When you get 1 or more successes on a roll, you may spend 1 skill point to gain an additional success.

This has been one of the bigger headaches so far, second only to actually making the classes of this game. Inspired by the Swashbucklers and Gunslingers of Pathfinder, this is the main mechanic that pretty much everything else in the game works off of. I wanted to give the players a couple of baseline skills that players can rely on regardless of how they build their character, and admittedly that's easier said than done when you're dealing with writer's block buuut hey.

It's definitely been an interesting journey so far working on this game. And I can't wait to see what else I learn along the way.