Character Advancement

There is no automatic character advancement in Romancing the Toaster. You may, however, spend a turnsheet action to improve your skills. Unlike a typical 'training action' in other society games, an upgrade action requires some amount of expertise and resources in order to succeed.

Improving skills for a robot generally amounts to getting new software or hardware installed. This part of the process is generally quite straightforward, either at the manipulator arms of the repair centre DocBots or a player character with the relevant skill and resources. You may upgrade yourself.

When you spend an upgrade action, you gain one new skill of your choice. The same rules apply as they do at character creation: to acquire a new skill you must have all preceding skills in the branch. It can be any skill except one from your disabled skill branch or skills that you have lost to injuries that have not been repaired.

If you are gaining any skill above Basic, you must choose a specialisation. If you already have a specialisation, you may change it.

You may also spend an upgrade action to add an additional specialisation to any skill which is already above basic level.

Upgrading, like repair, requires bots with the appropriate skill (2 in Construction or Software Development, as narratively appropriate). Robots can upgrade themselves either together with a player competent in upgrading or by using Valkyries, which will pick you up to install the upgrade you request. Robots with the appropriate skill to upgrade can upgrade up to 1 bot per turn in a minor action, or spend a major action to upgrade more than one.

The following details which skills and actions players need to put into upgrading. In all cases except for Valkyries, players must have a Quirk's worth of Junk in order to perform an upgrade which is consumed upon upgrading.

• Upgrading yourself: Spend a Major Action and tell us which skills and resources you have. You can choose which skill is upgraded and how this upgrade manifests.
  • Player: I use my Construction 2 skill and the scrap metal I found last turn to weld a propeller onto myself in order to gain Air Movement 1.
  • GM: Here's a turnsheet response describing your adventures in upgrading yourself…
• Valkyries upgrade you: Spend a Major Action. You do not need skills or resources and you can choose where to place your skill point, but cannot choose what the upgrade looks like or how it functions,
  • Player: I request an upgrade from the Valkyries. I'd like my Investigation skill upgraded to Information Processing 2!
  • GM: Here's a turnsheet response describing how you are taken to the repair centre to have an eyestalk containing a cutting-edge processing unit attached to you…
• Player upgrades you: Patient spends a Major Action, upgrader spends a minor action. Tell us what skills and resources you have between the two of you. The patient and upgrader agree on what the upgrade will be. In all cases the patient will get to assign the skill point even if the patient and upgrader do not agree on the nature of the upgrade. However, if they do not agree, then the upgrade may not work as planned and its design will default to the upgrader's turnsheet.
  • Player 1: I'm using my Major Action to get an upgrade from Player 2. I asked them to give me a new magazine so I can upgrade to Destruction 1.
  • Player 2: I'm using my Minor Action to upgrade Player 1. They asked me to give them a new magazine… I guess they want me to upgrade their Supervision skill using this copy of Firbes Magazine I found?
  • GM: Here's a turnsheet response describing how Player 1 obtains a weapons arm consisting of a very heavy book that they can now hit people with…