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A change is as good as a break…

I wanted a bit of a change of pace. I have been writing those little white books for the past five weeks, while also pulling the 2000AD games apart.

The little white books were quite intense to write because I really wanted each new one to capitalise on the success of the previous ones. Things tend not to hang around in the hottest lists for long, and anything that stays visible for more than a week is rare. Easier Solo Play did that, and then getting the second book into the same banner boosted the sales of both titles. Then it was a case of trying to keep the momentum going.

That was a hard treadmill to run on.

So, I wanted to look at something different. Something where I didn’t need to write 3000 words a day just to stay on track.

That something is Genesys. This was one of the requested systems when I ran the poll a couple of months ago. I looked at the rulebook and it wasn’t massively heavy, just over 250 pages for the generic core rules.

The unique selling point is the narrative dice system. It uses its own funny dice based on d6, d8 and d12s. There are positive and negative versions of each dice. Your stats and skills add positive d6s to the pool. The difficulty of the task add negative d6s to the pool. Special gear or complications can upgrade d6s to d8s. Then the d12s are special. In solo terms they are your yes and… and no and… (triumph and despair in game speak) dice. They give results over and above the normal successes and failures.

You assemble your dice pool and then cancel out success results with failure results, and there are other special symbols that can cause positive and negative effects independent of the pass or fail. For example, you could succeed at picking a padlocked door, but also break your lockpick (success + threat), or fail to pick the lock, but notice a usb stick dropped by an employee at the building (failure + advantage).

You don’t need to rush out and buy funny dice either, there is a dedicated dice roller app for the game.

So this is what I am reading and playing with this week. If it is finished it will be released in the Genesys community content programme next Monday. If it isn’t I will release Cut Up Solo Pirates.

At the weekend I will get back to building supplemental tables for 2000AD.

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