Dicey Goodness
I'm borrowing part of this from Shadowrun, and don't try and combine this with the dice pool idea I had earlier. It won't work. It's not supposed to work. I'm trying things out here and some things will stick, and some won't, that's the way it is :).
The Actual Mechanic
The idea is simple, you roll a pool of dice (based on something probably your skill in some area.) and count how many of the roll are 5 or greater, these are called 'successes.' If you meet the number of successes a test requires, then you accomplish that task. Any successes left over increase the quality of the success.
Those terms suck, but that's the idea.
Kiln is trying to create a ceramic mosaic for the Steward. The artist wants to impress the official and tries to make the work as intricate as possible. The GM assigns a difficulty of three to the task, meaning Kiln has to achieve three success on his test. He has a Pottery Skill of 5 (which the GM determines to be appropriate in this situation.) and rolls five dice. The rolls produce 2,3,5,5,6, which is equal to the three successes. The work is completed beautifully, a gorgeous sunset with the tiles glazed just so to get the purples right, and when fired, doesn't crack. Kiln, and the Steward, are pleased.
Affinity
Because I like the Character Creation system (choose three words, bam, you're pretty much done.) I want to keep this idea. If a character tries to accomplish something that is strongly associated with their nature (is directly influenced by one of their Words of Creation) they roll a larger die for their success tests, d8 instead of d6. The target of 5+ remains the same. Yes, this means that people tend to succeed much more often at things they have a conviction or predilection for, but that's kind of the idea of the World.
Skills
I don't think I want to have a skill tree, or list, or anything of that sort. Rather, give the GM the option of giving bonuses to the skill the more related it is. Suppose one character takes Diplomacy, and the other takes "Convincing Town Guards to Let Us In Out of the Rain." If it just happens to be raining, and they're at a Town Gate and they want to be let in out of the rain, the one with the more specific skill is going to have an advantage. (Maybe +8 or so for being so darn lucky :) )
Opposed Rolls
At face value these are easy, but I'm having some issues with this part. Two participants roll skills against each other, the one with more successes exacts an effect of some kind. Usually, these are going to be closely related skills. What if, however, Big Bad Brute is coming after you with a sword and you want to talk him out of it? Why couldn't you use that same Diplomacy Skill against his Brute Smashy Smashy skill?
I don't see why you couldn't, but it gets into the exact nature of certain things. Some people enjoy the tactical nature of physical conflict. This sort of technique could affect that. There wouldn't be an option after words failed because you'd have a sword in your gut. I need to think on this part more.