SAKE is a (levelless, classless) point-buy system, all Skill Ranks, Abilities, Spells, etc are bought with EXP. So where does the EXP come from, for that let’s go to character creation. When creating a character, the player chooses personality traits, principles and goals of the PC. Pacts with lesser gods and madnesses – we come back later.

At the end of each game session players journal every encounter/event/scene that was played through. Evaluate, whether was it dangerous for them, did they discovered something new, did it tested their skill and so on, getting 1 EXP from each tick. They also write down, did any of their personality traits came up in the scene, and did they move closer to achieving their goals (also 1 EXP).

This simple journal serves two purposes:

1. It is the way to get EXP.
2. SAKE, as a medium crunch system, is meant for longer campaigns. Campaigns sometimes have pauses, and people just forget things that happened half a year ago. So, the journal’s purpose is also – a journal.

Coming back to Madnesses and Pacts with Lesser Gods. When a character wants to use spells powered by a lesser god, they must at first form a pact with the god. As part of the pact, they must embrace a taboo or conviction. Depending on god, it can be something simple like protecting forests from over-forestation or more complicated like never fleeing from battle.

At the same time, mages studying magic, have to deal with unseen forces of the Otherworld that can change their Soul and personality. Every time a character learns a new spell, there is a chance that they have to take a new madness. These madnesses, named after the gods of the Asteanic World are serious business for two reasons. First, they come with penalties, second, they start to clutter the personality traits section of the Character Sheet. So, the mage runs a risk of having to delete their personality traits to replace them with madnesses.