Flat Math, Deep Characters

I have played and built primarily class based systems. I grew up playing various incarnations of d20, most notably Dungeons and Dragons, always eager to try out some different class that I hadn’t played before, some occupation or career or appellation that bestowed new mechanical advantages. I reveled in it and I didn’t think that RPGs had any other option. Yet, as I grew older and my exposure to various systems increased, I discovered that a large number of classless systems were in print and in play, even amongst some of my friend’s tables.

The enormous advantage of a class-based system, or one that categorizes characters into easy to describe chunks and skillsets, is that it is very easy to organize and to delineate roles. Having roles in a party is a relatively old concept, one which has been streamlined and incorporated more heavily into more recent incarnations of RPGs (such as D&D4e). Classes make it easy for players to fall into their role, and provide enough structure to allow for newer players to simply select their class and progress along its track. Players and gamers are used to selecting classes as seen in Diablo II and World of Warcraft and therefore it is a salient idea that is easy to grasp.

But one of the greatest disadvantages of a class system is that it is inherently restrictive. The entire purpose of the class is to naturally “balance” certain characters against others, fulfilling the roles that are necessary within a typical party makeup, and to limit those character’s options so that they can not excel at everything equally. Yet what if a player wishes to make a character that is not easily winnowed into one of the ascribed classes? The answer for years was simply to publish more classes, or to build individual classes, but as D&D3.5 evolved, multi-classing and Prestige classing (a form of a focused sub-class) became almost necessary to optimize a character and to fit in with the player’s original concept.

I remember building and playing a character that was made up of none less than eight classes, which was perfectly “legal” within the system. Yet, it became such an exercise in cherry-picking that I realized the very nature of the class system just made everything convoluted and stifling. It made the generation of creative, optimized characters a nightmare for those who didn’t wish to spend dozens of hours poring over seedy forum threads talking about DPR and max to hit by level.

When I originally built OMEN, I intended for it to be a universal tack-on for d20 and then eventually D&D4e. I had settled on six classes, each of which was balanced through the combination of technical skills, durability, and combat prowess. Yet that felt entirely boring to me and to my playtesters, but adding on more than six classes was a logistical and systemic challenge. It was something that I didn’t really want to pursue; slicing hairs into incrementally finer fractions continues to create the problems I discussed about D&D.

And so when the major redesign of OMEN took place, one of the first things to go was classes. But how to replace such a staple of the RPG genre? Most of the other classless systems in existence use a method to “buy in” or “opt in” or “opt out” of certain abilities that allows the player to focus his or her character’s skills. This seemed logical enough to me, but as I began to tinker with and study more of the popular systems, the complaints that I had heard about classless systems began to surface. It was entirely possible to make a character that was overwhelmingly powerful compared to others or genuinely wreck a character enough in the generation process that they were more of a liability than an asset to the party.

One of the largest reasons for this was the wide array of choices and combinatory mechanics. The ability to stack up bonuses from multiple sources is inherently logical, and an idea that I rather liked, but also could create some wickedly strong monsters of a character. This isn’t an entirely bad thing, but it could get very out of hand for a system that espoused heroic action, and only one or two of the characters were optimized enough to act heroically.

OMEN is not designed to promote Homeric heroes: supernatural beings with godly strength and power. Instead, I wanted the characters to feel alive and organic. I wanted the players to believe that their character could actually exist within the universe, and that that universe was founded upon reality with minimal assumptions made. People are fragile, people are fallible, and some people are simply better than others. These were things that I looked at, as well as other classless systems that I had experience with (and others that I didn’t) to examine how best to approach it.

I had tried percentiles, but the huge numbers became a problem, and the disparity between the dice roll and the bonuses grew wider and wider as the characters advanced in level. Since I had already determined I wanted to use 3d6 as the only dice mechanic in OMEN, I wanted the numbers to stay pretty consistently less than 50. And then I stumbled upon micro-lite systems; ones that use small amounts of foundational mechanics but don’t have to fill a six hundred page tome to get the concepts across. This fell in line with the design principles that I wanted for OMEN, and rather copy or implement how those games accomplished the task, I set certain limitations on myself as a game designer to accomplish the style of game that I wanted.

I like round numbers. One of my favorite numbers for mechanical reasons is ten. Multiples of ten are easy to manipulate, and serve as a good representation of percentages. Ten also happened to be relatively close to the average number for an unmodified 3d6 roll, and therefore the entire pillar of the system was formed: ten.

There would be ten points to allocate into the various aspects of a character’s creation and “build” or “skills” or whatever one wanted to call them. I wanted the aspects of a character to become increasingly more focused, starting with a large category at the top, such as the physical and mental attributes, and ending with the specific zones of expertise for a character, such as his specialties and skills.

Since I wanted my players to be able to add easily, I wanted the numbers to modify the dice roll (with an average of ten) directly. Some systems will add half level, or three-quarters of one this, or one quarter of that, or one every seventy five points of this, and so on. I’m no mathematical genius, nor are most of the players that I have gamed with. I wanted people to look at a handful of numbers and add them instantly rather than dividing and manipulating them in some complicated manner. So I determined that OMEN would become a “flat math” system. By flat I mean that the numbers stayed relatively low, and that they didn’t fraction, split, or multiply. Things would increase by one at a time, and the numbers would stay manageable.

This meant that different aspects of the character would also have to add directly together, and while I knew this could create stacking, I was completely aware of its potential and so built the system to inherently encourage and reflect that, while naturally limiting that highly focused character in other areas.

To start off, the big broad strokes that would define the character’s genetics and natural abilities. I decided to call them Attributes, and would have to keep a relatively low number of them. If the number on the Attribute itself would apply to the roll, with an average of ten, then the numbers should be between one and six, with maybe ten being the absolute highest. And since I wanted to utilize the number ten, I wanted players to have ten Attribute “points” to allocate, and that those numbers would directly influence a roll falling under those attributes. To prevent complete and utter unnatural “min-maxing,” or the tendency to build an extremely slanted character, I set the first level cap for a single attribute to be four. Setting the limit to four also meant that there would be six points left over, which split nicely into three categories. The four Attributes therefore were created: Strength, Resilience, Agility, and Mind.

Strength for all of the physical prowess and athleticism, Resilience for a character’s ability to withstand punishment and harsh conditions, Agility to represent his dexterity and natural coordination, and Mind to reflect his wisdom, intelligence, and natural ability to understand and influence people and things. Having ten points also meant that a standard “array” could be used: 4, 3, 2, 1. This created a balanced character that was interesting and dynamic, but the 10 split into 4 has many combinations that can create many different variations.

This same principle would be applied to the other aspects of the character, which I wanted to keep to a relatively low number. I settled on just two (for creation purposes) that would utilize this same mechanic: Skills and Specialties.

Skills would be the general purpose training and natural affinity in certain tasks for a character, while the Specialties would be specific and focused areas within the Skills. This meant that a character could be generally good at something, such as Ranged Combat, but be exceptionally good at a certain type of Ranged Combat. From there I determined the various Skills and Specialties, all with an eye for what made sense and worked for OMEN, but was generic enough to be utilized in most if not at all “realistic” science fiction or military-style RPGs.

Ten points would be allocated into the eight Skills, and ten points would be available to allocate into the Specialties of those Skills. Maintaining the same balance of a maximum of four points (at first level) this created characters that would have to spread into at least three Skills and three Specialties (4, 4, and 2) but encouraged even more widely invested characters. The dilemma of stacking and creating characters that had unnaturally high numbers was relatively solved, and keeping the amount of points handed out for future levels and the level cap low, a character’s roll should always be under 50 (barring certain circumstances.)

What developed was sort of an epiphany for me and for many of my friends and colleagues: the simplicity and flexibility of the system allowed for truly and inherently creative character creation and play. The low number of Attributes, Skills, and Specialties kept the option overload to a minimum for new players, but provided enough nuance for those who enjoyed the optimization process to truly build the character that they wanted without having to dabble in ten classes. We wanted people to build the character they wanted to play at level one, and have that character naturally and flexibly evolve as they progressed.

We feel pretty proud that we accomplished the goal; and the players so far love it.

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Dice Light, Fun Heavy

One of the greatest advantages of playing a video game over a tabletop game is that all of the complicated formulae are calculated instantly. I’ve known many gamers over the years, who are otherwise entirely intelligent individuals, that have had an almost unbreakable detestation of numbers. One of my colleagues has suggested that small number addition is as difficult to some as reading is as difficult to those with dyslexia, and I’ve seen enough hesitation and trouble with adding up the different dice and their modifiers amongst my tables for years to believe this is probably correct.

While numberless systems are typically elegant and provide for excellent storytelling, they tend to lack the amount of control that most of the players I’ve come across enjoy. There is that certain competitive edge that people seek, even during the character creation process, that numberless systems do nothing to little to promote. I am sure there are exceptions, but in my experience, that has almost entirely been the case.

Due to the design goal of regulating combat, a numbered system for OMEN was completely necessary, and as stated in an earlier article, I had settled for the OGL d20. It was most familiar to me throughout the years, and had a substantial customer base, so why not? Yet, as many of you know, the d20 system is rather like using twenty-five tools when two will do. I abandoned it shortly after beginning the design of OMEN.

I had tinkered in the past with percentile systems, and had played in several that used “roll-under,” but I thought it somewhat counter-intuitive, especially to newer players who couldn’t grasp the vagaries of probabilities and the like. I had GMd games more than one in which people asked, “But shouldn’t a higher roll be better?” Even the older editions of d20 had used a roll-under mechanic, but had moved on to “higher is better” thinking as the system evolved. I too determined that for OMEN, higher numbers should always be better.

One of my greatest issues with many systems is the dependence of many different dice. This I felt was one of the greatest impediments to including new players, and one of the things that many players got snagged up on during the calculation process. Certainly the dice added a sort of romantic, mysterious appeal in the early days, but the esoteric nature of such peculiar dice has become a running joke to those who are unfamiliar with RPGs. As OMEN is intended to garner as much of an audience, if not more, from brand new players, settling on a streamlined dice mechanic was deemed appropriate.

I had done quite a bit of research regarding the different probabilities of dice mechanics, as I dabbled in various MMORPGs and their tabletop counterparts. I thought for many years that the “cleanest” were percentile systems, the higher the percent the better your likelihood of success. The issue with this was the rather large numbers that came along with it; while adding twenty seven and thirteen is not entirely difficult, adding multiple rolls with bonuses and penalties culminating in a number in the hundreds is quite another matter.

I had even completed a percentile system for a science fiction game I intend to re-work in the future, but it was unnecessarily complicated and entirely the wrong direction for OMEN. So I settled on using a die that nearly every household possesses: the classic six sided die, or referred to as the d6 in the RPG industry. The d6 was ubiquitous, cheap; even free with many other games out there that were common to the house hold. The numbers were easy to read and add, and people were used to rolling and using them. Cubed dice also seem to have one of the better physical rolling mechanics, they clatter around clamorously and then settle quite nicely; it is almost impossible to have a d6 land crookedly.

Another benefit to the d6 is that the numbers remain low. I was a fan of “measured randomness,” and one of my favorite parts of the d20 system was using multiple d6 to generate character attributes. One of the benefits of this design mechanic is that the roll probabilities are bell-curved, meaning that rolling an average is much more likely than in a linear mechanic such as the d20. This would mimic reality somewhat better in my opinion: a degree of randomness that is definitely measurable, but the great majority of the time a character could behave rather consistently.

I settled on using three d6, hereby abbreviated as 3d6, to create this clean bell curve figure and keep the numbers manageable. Since I decided that I strictly wished to use d6s, attacks, damage, and defenses would all have to be approached differently than the standard. The majority of systems I have experience with use two distinctly different mechanics for resolving successes and determining the degree of that success.

For example, in the d20 system, a twenty-sided die (the d20) is rolled, modifiers are applied, and then that roll is compared against the target’s defense or difficulty. Once success is determined, the effect comes into play. This effect typically involves rolling multiple and different dice than the d20, adding them together with any additional modifiers, and applying it to the target. This could cause a couple of things to occur: primarily slowing down the game, but more significantly abstracting the success of that roll to a point that just didn’t make sense.

For example, with the d20 system as described above, a warrior could hit his enemy with a very high roll of the attack (using the d20) against his target’s defense, but then roll very low damage (with all of the other dice.) This essentially robbed the fun for the player who rolled the great hit, as the payoff wasn’t directly related to the success of the roll.

I wanted to get rid of this double mechanic, which worked in seamlessly with my goal of having conflict resolution be fast and using a single dice set. As opposed to rolling once (or multiple times) to determine success, and then rolling again to determine effect, I would combine the two into a single roll and compare that roll against the target. This could be used with static target numbers or rolls. The difference between the action and the target would determine the degree of success.

The system immediately clicked for me. It was fast and it made sense. The significance of the weapon in the d20 system, generating the larger die values, was paramount in determining combat effectiveness. If small dice were used, high modifiers had to be added, or large amounts of attacks had to be made in order to balance it out. This kind of system heavily favored huge powerful weapons. I didn’t want that in OMEN.

The people of OMEN typically used guns, or small and improvised melee weapons that wouldn’t slow them down. These kinds of weapons would still be deadly, as the difference of the weapons would not be as significant of a factor as the skill of the wielder. An extremely skilled combatant would consistently beat the average thug, even with a better weapon; but that threat would always exist. A lucky shot, in this case embodied by the roll of the dice, could land in that perfect spot and kill even the most skilled.

This went well with the realistic and somewhat gritty tone I was going for with OMEN; it played fast, it played smooth, and it made combats extremely fun and dangerous. This made tactics, cover, and strategic choices all the more important. The math was relatively simple, with numbers in the ten to forty range, and the math was fairly flat. The playtesters who had slogged through the convoluted mess that was the OMEN d20 system now had hours of fun in conjunction with combat, role-play, and all manners of obstacles requiring rolls. The system began to evolve and become refined, and I was happy with what I had created.

In another article I will discuss in more detail how the skill and character progression system was built, and why.    

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The Creation of a Universe

My main purpose as a publisher and member of the esteemed creative community is to illicit creative reactions from my material. In other words, I hope to inspire people to discover and create their own stories, some of which may go on to impact society as a whole. This impact might even engender an invention or provide insight into a potential future avenue that humanity may traverse. To this aim, I don’t desire any credit, I merely wish to progress society in a way I feel is fun and harmless.

If my motive is to create inspiration and incite others to experience or create something new, the “universe” of OMEN should be indelibly recognizable; easy to visualize and empathize with; even easier to imagine that it could in fact one day become reality. Therefore, I decided to use Earth, Sol, and the surrounding stellar systems to serve as the milieu of OMEN. This would make it easily recognizable, and grounded in enough fact to remain potentially a piece of foresight from fiction.

This would serve as a traditionally smaller scope for a science fiction universe, but I found that an advantage rather than a detriment. It would allow all of the laws of physics and space travel that we know to remain intact, with only the slightest hand-wavery. I personally believe that faster than light travel is impossible (despite some intriguing theories) and therefore posited the question of how fast a highly advanced ship would be able to travel without the use of warp drives, portals, or wormholes. This encouraged incorporating relativistic speeds and differences in the universe itself, which eventually began to coalesce into how such an environment would behave. How would humanity and other sentient species spread across space?

It would be very comparable to the colonization and exploration of Earth hundreds of years ago. Travel was dangerous, extremely time-consuming, and typically one-way. I felt that describing space travel and exploration in this vein would be not only physically consistent with reality, but it would appeal to those looking to create personal and interesting stories. It would be tremendously costly and difficult to have system-spanning organizations, and so colonies would be formed as understood representatives of the species, given charters to go and spread and alleviate the population burden of terrestrial people.

Controlling the distances between the systems would be essential to the survival of the species and the long term control of resources. In order to control space, large fleets of ships would be built, supported by thousands of reconnaissance drones and satellites to track incoming enemy vessels. These fleets would need support bases for resupply and rearmament, therefore individuals would need to inhabit these large stations in order to man and operate the facilities. They would in essence be cities and forward operating bases that would allow more permanent control of space. This continued development of space eventually evolved into the concept of the Cosmo Grid: a network of thousands of stations built in all directions from the different systems toward the empty zone, called “The Void”, in the center of the star cluster.

After the exorbitantly expensive Cosmo Grid was built and maintained for centuries, the struggle for resources would eventually be too much for the home systems, and thus the reaction would be to pull back all of the necessary forces back home, literally abandoning those at the stations out in forward positions. Billions of people would be cut off from their supply lines, and would need to cannibalize all of the old vehicles and mechanisms of war. These orphans would resort to aggressive conquering of nearby stations, and power struggles even within a single station would become predominant. Thousands of fractured clans would evolve independently from the homeworlds from which they came.

After five generations, the mixture of different species amongst each station would create a new melting pot of culture. A culture oriented around survival and cooperation, but also harsh violence and immediate brutality. This would create an environment for GMs and players to play within literally limitless setting options, as there would be thousands of stations and ships, seven systems with homeworlds, and dozens of lunar or terrestrial colonies to occupy.

I wanted the tone of OMEN to be one of loss tempered by hope; one of a past golden era; one with strong and resilient people willing to do whatever necessary to survive; I wanted to demonstrate the infinite endurance and courage and willpower of humanity and its evolutionary companions. I felt that this dichotomy between the stations, with their rough and pragmatic people, and the whimsy of the past gargantuan empires would create a rich and diverse world to play within. I wanted the universe to be organic and constantly changing, and I felt that this design helped accomplish this goal.

The lack of faster than light travel would also help generate a tone that I felt was essential to the success of OMEN as a role-playing game. I wanted one of the core themes to build upon personal relationships. The connection between a player and his character was very important, and the notion that a character could not simply escape to a far away safe place, and was for the most part typically in danger, would elevate that amount of dedication to the character and the storyline. I wanted to make OMEN more personable and intimate. I wanted characters to be on an individual relationship level. I didn’t want the emotional connections of characters to be obfuscated by galaxy-spanning problems; I wanted the problems of a family or a group of friends to really matter to the players. The local communities built within the ships and the stations out on the Grid, supported only by one another, would generate those relationships that I felt were so endemic to the universe.

Due to the primary focus of the setting to be upon the Grid, with its mixture of cultures and species and histories, I had to develop those foundational and fundamental cultures and histories. I wanted a good amount of species, and I delved heavily into astronomy to learn all I could about the nearest star systems to Sol, some of which are only a couple of lightyears away, and how sentient creatures could have evolved in those systems beneath the warmth of those stars.

I decided that despite many modern astrobiologists proclamations that any alien discovered would be so entirely, well, alien, that we could not even discern any reasonable similarities with it and ourselves, I wanted aliens to be easily empathized with. I wanted them to be immediately recognizable as sentient creatures, not blobs of goo or wisps of energy. I studied the concepts of parallel evolution; the idea that many creatures assemble similarly from base organisms that may have differed based on their environment. Since I wanted all of the different planets to be relatively similar to Earth, I could deduce by this logic that aliens could also have evolved from similar base organisms that humans did.

Now, part of the fun (or the majority, for some people) of a science fiction universe is the aliens. I wanted to placate those people, and also develop reasonable and complex cultures and societies that people would have a genuine interest in. I wanted to stay away from human analogues with a twist, like adding blue skin or pointy ears or a wrinkly thing on their forehead, and instead wanted to create a creature that could walk and talk and eat and maintain an intelligent conversation with a human, but remain different enough to where they could rarely if ever be confused for one another.

I originally settled on the number of the species for a strictly mechanical reason, as the amount of core attributes in the first version of the system was the standard d20 six, and I wanted each race to sort of “specialize” in an attribute. But more importantly, seven total species (six aliens and humans), was a nice sounding number, and there just so happened to be about thirty-five star systems all within a handful of lightyears away from Sol, meaning that it was reasonable to suspect that every five systems or so could support life within a given area. This sounded perfectly plausible to me, and I didn’t think too much more on it. The culture for each species began to grow outward from the basic assumption of which attribute they were most focused upon; the reasonable and intelligent Kraezoch, the tough and stubborn Burshdett, and so on.

I will dedicate another post to discussing the brief development history of each of the seven species in their current form, as this one borders on being dangerously verbose as it is. Thanks for sticking through it with me, any and all questions or comments are appreciated.

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A Vibrant and Harsh Omen

The OMEN RPG is set roughly six hundred years into the future, at a time when the destiny and survival of humanity is unclear. We have become a part of a galactic community with six other intelligent species, all of whom inhabit different stellar systems surrounding Sol.

The ever accelerating consumption of resources, and the catastrophic effect of inter-stellar warfare, has caused Earth and humanity to suffer tremendously. The other intelligent species were not more sophisticated, or had a broader empire than that of the humans, yet all seven of the species has evolved somewhat parallel to one another. As they each reached the apex of their civilizations, their native homeworlds were not enough to sustain the dozens of billions of individuals that lived upon their taxed surfaces.

Thus, the species took to the stars, hoping to find new sectors of resources, as well as sustainable systems that may provide a wellspring of life for the crumbling civilizations. What they found was that nearly every system adjacent was occupied by another sentient species, and soon the process of the struggle over resources dominated the Systems for the next three hundred years.

During this time, the societies that had struggled and climbed to a glorious point of education, quality of life, and civilization slowly broke apart under the strain of the Void Wars. Communication and compromise between the species became more necessary, yet more difficult, as long range communication between the forward forces and their political commanders back home began to dissipate. Eventually, all that was left were the descendants of those military forces and support staff that continued the war. Abandoned, they continued their difficult survival in the Black.

The vast empires had broken apart, and all that remained were thousands of pockets of savage, archaic leadership. New alliances were formed, new civilizations founded, and the majority of the known galaxy's populace now lived amongst the intricate Cosmo Grid, a network of space stations that spanned the distance between the farthest systems.

Few have seen their homeworld, even fewer were born there. The limits of space travel technology have been reached, culminating in approaching the speed of light, but unable to surpass it. This makes space travel extremely slow and expensive, and so the Systems are distant, comprising nearly entirely of the cold, apathetic Black void of space. Were one to travel from Earth to the further reaches of the Grid, it might only comprise of several days, but several years would have transpired on Earth. Families must either stay together, or bid farewell for decades.

The cold reality of space survival has crushed the romantic dreams that had been fueled by their imagination. This has caused the remainder of society introspection and philosophical contemplation, realizing that no great civilization will come to enlighten them, but that they are entirely self-reliant to continue to evolve and improve their state of living.

Wars are fought, but between hundreds of men between station to station, not planet to planet. Civilizations exist, but the racial lines are of little concern, and the localized governments are ruled by those who are able to control the dangerous environment that they have created. Five generations are station-born, and now the dreams are of the wonders and history of the fallen empires. The future is one of pragmatic realism, cold-hearted instinct, and a hopeful yearning to survive, and to thrive.

It is said that the universe has lost track of its destiny. That the tendency for all intelligent life to expand and to control their environment has ceased. That the nurturing, maternal homeworlds have borne billions of orphans with no memory of their mother, their history, or the sacrifices that were made so that they could survive. There is only the daily struggle for survival, for acceptance, and to answer the ultimate question: why are we here?

For many, the answer will never be known. But to most, the path to happiness is simply through satisfaction. Satisfaction that their family is safe, and that they have enough water and food and heat to last them the next cycle. Satisfaction that they have enough ammunition for their weapons, enough fuel cells for their generators, enough oxygen for their lungs. The notions of love and kindness and art are still widespread, and are even more appreciated than they had been in centuries past. The brevity and severity of life have made even the simplest pleasure all the more enjoyable, and treasured.

There are those who would kill simply for a spoonful of sugar, a thimble of honey, or a bite of a fresh vegetable. And yet there are those who cooperate, remain organized, and build a utopian vision of a new civilization, one amongst the infinite vastness of space, without the historical scars that have been so entrenched by their forefathers. There are those who aim to seek peace, to maintain harmony. Yet they remain powerless against those who are willing to kill, willing to strike terror, willing to plaster the blood of their enemies onto the cold, unforgiving walls of their new metallic homes.

A people are shaped by their environment, and the environment of the denizens in the OMEN universe is harsh, unforgiving, and will break those who are too weak to survive it.

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The History of OMEN

OMEN has seen multiple evolutions since its first inception. The original concept was a universal system which would allow players to play within their favorite science fiction universes. It was to be based upon the Open Gaming License and utilize a d20 core mechanic, and introduce OMEN’s interpretation of Powers and Talents, somewhere between Pathfinder, Star Wars Saga Edition, d20 Modern, and D&D 4e.

Yet as the system grew in complexity, the zone between tedium and fun began to shrink and collapse; too many things were added to encourage play within multiple universes and multiple styles of play. While this strategy had been successful with other games, it lacked the aspect of “cool” that we at the Sigil Stone labs were really trying to find. We felt that there were enough generic systems that could effectively mimic popular settings, why waste our time and money attempting to cater to an already satisfied market?

Therefore we decided to integrate OMEN with its own setting, its own universe. Certain principles were established right from the beginning, much of them as nearly idle ponderings during our spare time. But soon the fledgling setting began to evolve at an exponential rate, as most truly inspired projects do. Within less than a month, the OMEN universe was making strides and progressing quickly. Work on the project was fun and exhilarating again, and that aspect of creative rapture that artists and writers sometimes experience enveloped OMEN’s creative producers.

Things in the system had to be tweaked, the explanation behind technology altered and then solidified, the purpose behind the entire game became revealed within the next weeks as we continued to separate the boring from the fun, the good from the bad. Everything seemed relevant again.

As the game began to become tailored to specifically fit the universe, and the universe had been built upon the foundations of the system that we were attached to, we truly believed that we had a contender for one of the best and most in-depth science fiction RPGs on the market. Established design concepts such as Skills and Feats and Talents and Powers all made appearances (read: entire Chapters) while there were over three hundred attachments for weapons, armor, and other utility gear.

The playtesting began again, with renewed vigor and purpose. We were excited and eager to put our creation into the hands of the players, and hear their glorious praise and promise to purchase multiple copies for all of their friends and family. Yet, the game was still slow and clumsy. Creating a character could be in excess of an hour (sometimes far more), combats were dozens of rounds long, and long standoffs interrupted by intensely violent and far too brief firefights were the norm. Multiple dice were rolled for everything, d20’s to attack, two to six dice for damage, damage was compared to Shields, specific Resistances or Vulnerabilities, Regeneration, Squad Healing, and other weapon effects. It became an exercise in mental endurance and multi-tasking mastery for a GM to run a simple encounter.

This is not what we wanted.  We beheld our creation with revulsion; as Frankenstein looked down upon his greatest and most terrible experiment; built for beauty and elegance, gargantuan in size, yet in reality, horrible to experience, horrible to witness. And we knew that if it was not destroyed, that it would ultimately ruin the reputation of our staff and of our business. We had to do something.

And so the system was scrapped. The universe remained intact, and did well to rid itself of the cancer of its most damaging component. We settled on the basic foundations of what we wanted to accomplish, and designed the game from the ground up. Not even from the ground; we dug several stories down, built a deep foundation, and then built the system from there. Once we had removed our loyalty to the OGL, we knew that the marketability of our system would decline, although to rely on someone else’s creation in so fastidious a manner is nothing short of creativity for capitalism’s sake. It felt good and righteous to be creating something from scratch, to be experimenting like young innovators with nothing to lose and no goal in mind other than to create exactly what we wanted.

It became obvious within a few short days that our decision was the best since the creation of the company. We thought of all of the things that we hated about our old system, and all of the concepts that we loved, and we merged them together. Not in a hectic hack and slash, not in a copy paste merger of the digital ink, but with the intention of creating something new that elicited creative play, unique characters, and a fast and challenging game. We hit what many game designers call the “flow” of a game; it wasn’t too intricate, it wasn’t too simple, it didn’t take too long to get started, and the rules were easy to understand and follow. But the key element of acquiring enough “flow” to engender a game where time seems to melt away and all of the player’s focus is squarely within the game world, we had to create a breadth of tactical in-game decisions.

The most modern iteration of Dungeons and Dragons attempted something similar, but with creating “clickable” powers that do stuff to other stuff exactly as it says. In our opinion, they failed. They failed to acquire the desire for creativity that a tabletop role-playing game is supposed to incite. The majority of players involved with systems that utilize hundreds if not thousands of clickable powers, such as D&D4e, not only get bogged down in the choices, but once the choices are made, lose interest after one or two uses of said power. Because the effect is primarily the same, every time. There are certain combinations for certain builds, when combined with other combinations from other builds create a no-loss scenario, and the party can simply run up, clickity click their individual powers, and kill whatever is in the way.

In OMEN, we wanted the answer to be “Yes, you can do that.” We wanted the players to scrunch up their faces in consternated thought, chewing their fingernails to the nubs in concern and anxiety, and shout out with cries of jubilation at success. We wanted to enable the Game Masters and the Players of our system to be able to do anything that they can imagine within the context of the game and the OMEN universe.

In short, we are pretty sure we accomplished our lofty goal. We didn’t do it by adding five hundred pages of powers, we didn’t think of every exception to every rule or possible scenario, we thought of a core system based on simple, logical principles and applied them to everything in the game.

One dice mechanic with degrees of success and failure, and infinite combinations and applications. No classes, no huge leveling system, no need for a calculator. Characters are created simply and possess dynamic options, combat is fluid and intuitive (and most importantly: fun), and a unique gameplay experience with interesting playable species, abilities, and setting came to fruition.

We are happy to present OMEN RPG and we hope that you enjoy. Over the upcoming weeks, we will continue to update this blog with the musings behind the mechanics and the setting.      

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