2024 is the Year of Rota Magnus

Work on the Rota Magnus rpg has pushed all other projects aside. Right now it’s being built as a generic system to make sure it can handle whatever comes up, but the final product will probably focus on a particular action genre, as if the product will at some point be final.

Some of the key features of the Rota Magnus rpg:

All dice rolls are opposed. You stack dice for all your abilities and skills and roll a big handful of mixed d6, d8, d10s against whatever the opposition can bring to bear. Whoever wins is successful for that round of combat, and you spin the wheel for results. If you fail, then your opponent succeeds, and vice versa. It’s fewer turns to play, so faster action.

The results of success are based on the wheel and include impactful injuries.

You have to win initiative by rolling higher than anyone else to get a turn. Every time you win by rolling high, you expend some of your initiative dice to perform an action. You keep doing that until all combatants are out of initiative dice, then you start another round.

Magic maximizes flexibility. You don’t have spells, you have power over elements and have a lot of options for what you can do with. it Magic is also opposed rolls, with opposition dice based on the scale and scope of what you’re trying to do.

All gameplay occurs in game rounds. There are three types of rounds: combat, social, and narration. Combat actions rely on a kind of action point economy. Social rounds are structured to allow all players to contribute to the game equally without being a natural-born performer. Narration rounds can be whatever time period the pace of the story calls for, 5 minutes or 5 years. Whatever type of round is played, it works the same. You get one roll on your turn, but the menu of actions varies by type of round. In a combat round, you make an attack, but in a month-long narration round you might raise an army or win a siege.

It’s been a lot of fun to design a system around the Rota, then making everything else about it try to be fun and simple. I like rolling lots of dice, so there are lots of dice, but the Rota is essential in determining the results of success. in a fun way that only the wheel can do. I hope to be play testing at some cons this summer.