Welcome to Usurper.

https://www.wargamevault.com/product/494826/Usurper-2-Procedural-Fantasy-Roleplaying 

With the release of the 2nd edition of Usurper, I wanted to talk a bit about what the game is and what the rulebook includes.

Usurper is a fantasy roleplaying game, you know with the characters and the adventures and all that. It allows you to have exciting adventures in a fantasy world with strange gods and stranger dungeons, where lords battle for control and factions knife each other in the dark. 

The core of the game is the use of traits instead of skill values and stats. Your character is described by a series of traits such as being STRONG, LOYAL TO THE CAUSE or FORESTER.
When you try to do things in the game, your traits lets you roll twice and pick the best result or attempt an action that isn’t normally possible.

Actions are resolved on the “action/event table”. This is a D100 table providing the outcome of an action. This might mean your action succeeds, it may fail with a consequence occurring or your action may even be interrupted. Everything in the game is driven by this table and it helps spur interesting, unexpected and exciting moments in the game.
You pick the lock to the tower and not only do you succeed, but you make a discovery while doing so. Maybe you overhear the guards talk about how there’s a strange package being delivered by ship tomorrow night? 

Best of all this means gameplay is math free. Roll the dice and you know what happened. If you have a relevant trait, burn it and roll again then pick the outcome you prefer. Roll and move on.

The game includes explanations of how to handle things like group tests, difficult situations and more.
Character creation can be done by simply writing down the traits and convictions you would like or can be generated randomly with a small lifepath system that generates the character in stages of their life. 

NPCs are handled very simply and make it effortless for the GM to add new characters to a campaign. Unless they are a major villain or monster, all they need is a Demeanour (Surly), Motivation (Chase off any intruders) and any Exceptions that apply (can walk on water). Random tables provide additional details if you need a more in-depth NPC.

A world builder chapter provides tables to create your game world history, building exciting cities AND allow the game to progress within that world through random events and story development. There is also a system to reflect characters working to overcome an evil overlord or similar grand quest, rooted in the mechanics.

Rounding out things you get rules for learning magic from the gods, delving into dungeons, ruling a domain and leading an army into war. 

What I want to emphasise here is that the use of random tables is not just petty detail (though we do provide a lot of flavour as well). Instead the tables are created to try to push things towards creating story opportunities: A faction changes its leadership or the evil overlord decides to subvert your allies. Every die roll (we hope!) Drives the game towards something interesting happening.

The game became a bit of a hit with solo gamers, due to the wealth of random generation included and is imminently suitable to solo gaming, when combined with a traditional RPG oracle. It is however also quite playable as a conventional game with a group of players or with one player controlling multiple characters. 

This second edition has had its text cleaned up by the tireless work of Bill Hamilton and should be much easier to use. Almost every aspect has been touched up in some way and I think you will find this to be a much clearer expression of the game and its ideas.

This is also the launch of the game as a “living” rulebook. Updates and additional material will be made available periodically and supported by Patreon. This can include things like scenarios, variant rules, a more conventional spell casting system and more.

This will also allow us to take fan feedback and suggestions into account better. 

The initial release will not feature any art work or flavour text, but will be available at a slightly reduced price. Think of this as similar to a pre-order but you are getting the full game up front and can start playing right away.

Usurper can be purchased here

You can support our ongoing projects at patreon.com/nordicweasel