Often I see one of two things out of gamers at a table. If combat offers lots of crunch, some players will get into it. The more ostentatious or outlandish their exploits can be, the more they desire to play the game. While I’ve seen others have their eyes glaze over as soon as the GM says roll for initiative. I tried melding elements together to get the best out of both worlds. I wanted people who dislike combat in role-playing games to feel like it is simple enough that they can have their character do what they desire without having to memorize a codex of options, and that it doesn’t take forever to resolve their actions so that they can move on to something more interesting to them while still feeling like they are contributing to the group’s goals. Yet, I still wanted those same options people have come to expect in rpgs, such as repeating fire being useful in general, or ambidexterity or dual wielding being awesome.

I like systems that at their core are simple, especially when we are talking about cinematic games where story is important. There can be catches and twists, but often the simpler an engine is, the faster it plays. The faster it plays the more things happen during a session. For example, if you run a strategy focused grid based system a combat can take hours to resolve. Although I’m not naming any names, I’m sure every experienced gamer can name at least one example. So the hours that were spent on that one combat leave less time for you to get into the meat of the story, or satisfy your player’s goals.

Task Resolution Overview

Task resolution in Daring Adventures is basically a player or the game master rolling 2D6 in an effort to add the die total together and meet or beat a set Target Number. This changes a bit because both Attributes and Backgrounds can add to rolls, and because bonuses and penalties can alter the roll result. The concept that makes this a high adventure game is the Extra Die. All PCs and all Enemies (the ultimate villains of any story) always roll an extra die when attempting a task. This extra die adds more possibilities into the pool, even though you must keep and add together only two dice.

It’s been a long time since I last posted one of these. If you’re like me, you’ll think it’s worth the wait once I get rolling on this system primer. And just to be clear, this is a different series of primers than the one for Cinematic Fighting System. I’ve got a bit of backstory with this one, because it’s the idea that began all of this.

I had finished Eternal Shadows, and thought to myself that the next obvious Genre sourcebook for AGE should be a space opera game. I came up with the name Interstellar Odyssey, made a logo, then eventually a cover, a page layout, made a new cover and page layout which I like even more and so forth. I only got a little further than a table of contents with the rules when I stopped and thought about it.

Since I’ve gotten much further with the underlying engine, it makes sense to resume posting setting info once again. To recap, each of the 9 Worlds corresponds to one of the branches of Yggdrasil in a metaphorical way. For example, Broken Trust corresponds to Hel, These Idyllic States to Midgard and Ascension Agenda corresponds to Asgard.

So I’ve done enough work to declare my house game engine to be viable for public consumption. What that means is that I am likely to post a beta, or competing betas, and begin posting stats for 9Worlds using Daring Adventures, rather than the game systems I have been up to now. As I have time, I will attempt to convert stats so that nobody is left behind, but I have to make it clear that in some ways the settings of the 9 Worlds Project are designed to showcase this new system.

It’s release day once again. I’m proud to release this micro-supplement. Given the subject matter, and just to clarify: original dungeons and dragons referred to the class this supplement is based upon as mystics, not monks, I am sure that some of you are expecting an entire volume worth of information about mystic orders, notes about immortals versus philosophy etc. Well, sorry. I don’t have enough material to flesh that out, so I’m just offering the skeleton today.

Mystics for AGE is a supplement intended to adapt and update the Mystic Class, cross-referenced against actual monk orders such as the Shaolin of China. So, this isn’t a 1 to 1 conversion of the Mystic, nor of the D&D (any edition) monk. It is however a class which I think fits the needs quite well to represent such characters from the world, as Mystara does occasionally mention them in the fluff, and to serve as a basis for any other game with similar warriors.