Last Saturday the three of us got together and started to play a game. Usually we have been using a homebrew where we have descriptors that are organized according to TN's on a static dice pool of 3d6. It is used for an event-heavy superhero  game based mostly on  over-the-top action choreography and sprinkled with high tension and tempered with consistent weirdness.  Being a Grant Morrison disciple I have gained some skill with using this kind of rules-light system which is probably serviceable, but ultimately fueled by my own manic charisma and love of widescreen superpowered hyperbole. A small meeting with half the group being sick and busy I ask if anyone want to try something different. The last guy arriving says he wants to run RIFT-y madness, another kind of hyperbole and patent wierdness but more grounded.

So I hear that and start making a character, usually we assign seperate characteristics which we explain to the GM, and then set them at three levels of proficiency, which have ill-defined but universally accepted bench marks of: Things that guys do in Grant Morrison Comics, Things that guys do in Stan Lee Comics, Things that guys do in Frank Miller Comics; TN's 2,3,4 respectively on 3d6. The value of these tags are calculated to create hit points.

This would not work because this guy runs action movies, which is all Frank Miller. So we come up with a new set of Benchmarks: Badass and Okay; TN's 5 and 10  respectively on a d20, anything not covered in these two  has a TN of 15. In both systems combat involves combinations with rising and falling TN's being traded off for higher damage coefficients where you cannot not use the same characteristic in the same round. And counters which after interrupting a combo with a successful defense, gives the opportunity to land devastating hits. Initiative is gained by taking a TN penalty and using a tag  to roll against someone else at the beginning of combat.

We switched to d20 because this guy has gamblers hands drops over fourteen on 3d6 consistently and wanted to give use a chance win a little.  But the idea is the same, One has certain characteristic and we debated whether they are relevant to the task at hand like we always do according to our characteristics definitions.

This system take under 5 minutes to create characters, which is some necessary for our group who are short on time and are almost always poorly prepared to run game. The game went alright as far as a being a compelling 3 hours.  I had an argument in the beginning about my pack of dogs characteristic, I wanted them to be let out and come to me across borough in NYC.  First I had to argue that dogs can track their masters through scent. Then I had to argue whether a set of Badass dogs could do that. The gm conceded that my warrants were sound and concluded I could roll dice, I rolled well over TN 5.

After the game was over the GM had some problems which I'll talk about later. But I want to do some more tinkering, I don't like the hit points for such a gritty game. I love the combat system when the player are pushing planets out of orbit and wrestling with living time paradoxes but it's a little flatter now.

Hmm, this sounds like it was supposed to be posted in "Actual Play."  I agree with you that Hitpoints doesn't really work for Frank Miller, people die when and only when the story calls for them to.  I mean Marv in Sin City can literally be shot dozens of time and it hardly phases him!  Maybe instead of hitpoints, you could use a slightly smaller pool and have it represent "success."  If you run out of success before you accomplish your current goal, you suffer some major set back?  (Your lesbian councilor gets kidnapped)  Then, your success gets reset. 

Also, as we've established, I'm a GNS newbie, but I'm pretty sure your game is not gamist.

I would say the players negotiating their own trade offs of power and effects and so on has a gamist element. As I understand it, gamist means you play the specific game to enjoy using its specific rules, with the implication that manipulation of values and choices set by the game will get a strong focus in the game write up.

I would like to see the specifics of this resolution system laid out. The concept of interesting choices and trade offs is a major focus for me at the moment.

There are three units of the game: the characteristics, the combinations of the characteristics and the reversals of the combinations. Initiative is decided by subtracting a certain amount from the first attack rolled. Attacks are rolled against characteristics chosen by the defender, who opposes with their own roll. The damage is the successes made multiplied by the tier in the old game 1-3, in this game, 1-2.  If there is an equal amount of successes then the tally of the attacks are compared, if it is still even the characteristics tiers are compared. A combination can't repeat the same characteristic. Numbers are shaved off of dice and added to damage as a bonus for every hit in the combo.  A broken combination is followed by a reversal, which is a bonus to the roll and a bonus to damage.  Hit points were given out per characteristic multiplied the tier level by three, so with three tiers having three characteristics each the characters in the superhero game had 54 hits - in Badass -  there were only two tiers, OK gave three points per tag, and Badass gave 6 hits each, with 4 characteristics at both Badass and OK, each of us started with 39 hits. I do not like this for this game.

The traits that you receive and the ones that you have when you start play are  be chosen by implicit consensus. We select, announce, define, take in criticism for optimal use of the characteristic. There are different types of characteristics, but they usually are odd combinations of backgrounds, supporting characters, affiliations, special abilities, and resources.  One of the unspoken rules is that they have to be colorful as you can think of.
There are some kind of reward system involving experience points, which I ignore, the players take care of it and grow in a snippy manner with about a middle level tier every other game.

One of the things that I have been working on in another game is allowing players to take ambitions, and being able to drop those ambitions so that they may elect a characteristic. The whole group gets to chime in then he decision is made.