Dangit, lost my post. Summary:
Characters now start with 25 Talent Ranks instead of 20. The talents are varied enough to warrant it. Level up your dudes accordingly. If you're having trouble, go with things you've dabbled in, like languages or trade skills.
arcadia: You may want to choose "Flexible" as an Aspect. That could grant help in situations that flexibility would help. Also, Scrimshaw is a generic animal-parts-usage skill. If you want to clean a skin for parchment, extract shark teeth for arrowheads, or make a sieve out of fish bone, this is what you'd use. Some tests are flexible though... cleaning fish could potentially use Cooking, Fishing or Scrimshaw, or even Animal Lore to recognize toxic sea critters. The flavor and results will be a bit different depending on what you use to complete a task.
Tack: Don't think too much about the mechanics of Talents when picking them. Mediocre Psyche is the mental soundness and faculties of an average joe or jane... you won't have breakdowns every 5 minutes just because you don't have a brain the size of Rhode Island.
MaximumZero: For the stunt, I'll need to tweak that a bit. There is no damage or energy
per se, but I can poke around with something thematic that fits. Just so you get an idea, here's a sample of how Challenges like Combat work (more details tonight/tomorrow)
Dynamic Challenge: fighting a hungry monitor lizard.
MoS Track Notes
0 No effect
1 ○○ Clipped
2-4 ○○ Injured (Lizard takes -1 to next test)
5+ ○ Taken out
Difficulty: Average. Monitor lizards are small, but can be dangerous when agrivated.
Failure: Wounded by MoF. Fair Fortitude test vs. Poisoning.
Span: Simple action, instantaneous.
This Challenge pits the lizard and player against one another in combat, and players can use relevant talents to attack the lizard. They could also attempt to escape by using other skills (to escape, etc), but it won't affect the Challenge. The lizard tests with appropriate combat skills (Biting), and if tied (Margin of Success 0) nothing happens. If the player is more successful, you mark one point off of the appropriate MoS track, and any effects happen. If the lizard is more successful, it manages to Wound the player by its MoS.
Some details of a Challenge will be public, but others will be hidden from players. Sometimes you won't know when you're completing a challenge until you finish!