“Comae Engine is a downsized roleplaying game when you need quick mechanics to tell a good story.”
I am a big fan of Clarence Redd’s M-Space, a stylishly developed science fiction tabletop roleplaying game based on the Design Mechanism’s Mythras, which is itself an elegant and refined successor to the Runequest family. Now he’s back with a short and inventive take on the Mythras core once again, but this time it is coalesced into a much tighter engine, honed for conflict resolution with some flexibe and extensible options to give you flavouring, whilst operable as a core for more detailed sub systems as preferred.
Clarence’s preface explains how The Comae Engine arose:
Painfully late in the design process of my first roleplaying game, M-SPACE, I discovered how to play exciting scenarios without resorting to in-game violence. Eager to share my findings, I shoehorned the rules into a short chapter named Extended Conflicts.
Those few pages turned out to be the most important of the book, completely changing how I played d100 games.
In the years that followed, I kept experimenting with the most fundamental pieces of the rules: conflict resolution and characters. I felt certain they could be taken much further by stripping them to the core and build everything back on top of the Extended Conflicts.
And after several false starts and failed attempts over the years, Comae Engine has finally taken shape.
By recasting the d100 RPG fundamentals, I have found that Comae Engine also recasts the actors of the game. With a flexible conflict resolution, allowing for more varied storytelling, players bring out new sides of their characters – and themselves. Aggression is down, creative thinking up. It’s as if roleplaying finally leaves its war-gaming roots behind – all without switching rule systems.
The Comae Engine provides a light framework for conflict resolution, with enough meat for a satisfying game, and one with plenty of legs for long term play. In HeroQuest and Tripod vein, action can also focus in on multi-roll ‘Extended Conflicts’ that have time increments sympathetic to the type of conflict. A firefight might drop down to 5-10 second intervals, a grand societal conspiracy might take a week at a time.
Characters have nine broad d100% skills, which can optionally be further detailed with Focus, providing a +20% top up if the conflict action uses it. Each skill is given three suggested Foci, with three available for intial characters. You are encouraged to you create your own, themed to the type of game and setting you want to play. I like how the Willpower skill Foci provide emotional drives for defining how a character acts in play.
Beyond skills we have Tags. These are advantages that a character has accrued through life. Again, using the 12 suggested Tags, you are encouraged to reskin or invent whole new ones to fit the game you are playing.
An experienced eye to Mythras ensures a rock solid underpinning to the game, with opposed rolls (highest success on d100 wins), Luck points, difficulty bonus//penalties gives you plenty of levers to support whatever conflicts you are ecxploring in your game. And on that, characters have four resource pools, that are expended depending on the type of conflict you are playing out. I quote the game text that describes the four pools:
- BODY for combat, stealth or physical challenges.
- INT for intellectual challenges like puzzles, finding hidden objects and doing research.
- POW for luck-based situations, willpower and magic.
- CHA for social interactions.
When a pool is down to zero your character is out of the conflict, and what that means is up to the GM and players. Pushing on beyond zero is possible with penalties and yet more serious consequences. These consequences are negotiated and depends on the type of game that you are playing.
As an additional layer you can apply ‘Lenses’ which are a bit like Fate Accelerated approaches. Are you ‘Aggressive’, or ‘Cautious’ etc, each of which modifies your skill and comes with a consequence. They can be applied to all sorts of skill rolls and can also be switched mid conflict to refelect changes in narrative and the way you describe what you are doing.
NPCs, which are grouped into Common, Skilled and Master types, are given some tightly described love with a ‘Code Block Generator’. These give quickly generated key words for personality, social disposition, motivation, and a recent event. Everything is pared down, highly functional to play and succinctly explained. Such is the way throughout the 44 pages or so of content.
I really like The Comae Engine. It appeals on a lot of fronts. It’s short and honed for maximum effect for minimum crunch. Simple, familiar and loved d100 resolution. Focus on conflict and not combat. Flexible approach to contests, what they are, which pool is at stake, how long they take, narrated consequences. Highly configurable to whatever game you want to play, introducing your own Focus and Tags will direct play in genre defining ways. It lightly accounts for things like weapons and tools, but you can branch and extend in areas if you want that level of detail; nothing will break. Want detailed starships? How about some lengthy spell lists? Fine, bolt them in!
The PDF Beta is about £2 at DrivethuRPG. More development will come, but it feels very complete. The game feels fresh, light on its feet, yet comfortably encompassing any game needs you might have for your adventures.
Go and buy it.
