It just occurred to me that "adopt new lifestyle" and other developments might tie into two separate (or one bi-directional) advancement tracks. There are
two cycles going on in the show:
- Within an episode, things get more awful for most characters until near the end, but then wrap up with things mostly back to normal. Standard serial comedy, but with the degree of personal misfortune turned up to 11, such that changes can seem profound ("Now we're homeless junkies!") rather than circumstantial ("I can't let my friend catch me having borrowed her favorite shirt without permission!").
- Character positions and relationships are slowly altered over time, often for the worse.
Accordingly, making an AW-style list of advances which are basically improvements seems inappropriate... but a list of advancement options that are
special (that is, not otherwise accessible), for good AND for ill, could still be fun.
Losing points from a positive stat could be an option for those who enjoy using the system to mirror the fiction, but would otherwise be a waste of an option; it might be best to make losses mandatory rather than optional. On the other hand,
if the stats themselves are negative, then advancing one gives the player more options to choose outcomes (7+ rolls on "player picks" lists) even as it lessens their character's odds of success (with GM narrating successes on 6- rolls).
Is
rolling to lose, and
picking your failure, a perfectly
Always Sunny way to play? Or would it simply be no fun?
Another option is to leave improvement to the realm of [decreasing Enmity, getting others to do what you want, and fictional developments], while
assigning "advances" strictly to negative stuff. (No prob asking players to choose bad options if ALL the options are bad.)
Perhaps over the course of a session, your
stats get worse, and then you have to
buy them back up to their starting positions by the end of an episode, so the show can start fresh for next time. So the pervasive
concern across multiple sessions is not the stats, but the
budget you spend on them. This budget should then tie into lasting changes in positioning; the less you must spend on your stats, the more you can spend on shares of the bar, or some other sort of leverage over the other characters.
I could also tie in
Enmity, letting it carry over across sessions and allowing players to take on more Enmity to buy back stats (if you're in good with Charlie, 0 Enmity, then you can afford to con him into some obnoxious shit he'll resent, in order to boost your depleted In Charge stat).