Other Strangeness Character Guide

After reading bits and pieces of the 500 odd pages comprising the two starter books for the new FFG edition of Legend of the Five Rings, I'm looking at the pocketmod books that form the basis of my Other Strangeness game. I'm undecided...

...a lot of that 500 pages is providing context and background information for the setting, or explaining how elements of play tie into that setting. Since Other Strangeness is generally designed to use the real world as a basis for it's play environment, then modifies it according to the collaborative choices of the game's players, it doesn't really need this.

The actual rules of the FFG game are a bit convoluted, and feel a bit counterintuitive at times, they're partly explained multiple times in a way that builds up the concepts from various perspectives. The way these fundamental rules are explained could fill multiple pocketmods, each of which doesn't actually explain the rules... as an example, I've had to page flip between half a dozen different parts of the rules to get a gist of how combat is supposed to work in the game. 

I'm not saying one extreme is right, or one extreme is wrong. FFG is making a bucketload of money, while my game writing often scrapes together barely enough to make a trip to the cinema once a month. They're obviously doing sonething right with their hefty tomes. Some people just prefer a minimalist set of rules that get right to the point, and other prefer carefully, legally constructed sets of rules that back up their explanations with multiple examples to cover every possibility that might arise in play.

Anyway, enough editorial, here's the character generation rules.