Introduction
Introduction
We role-play to forget, to enjoy ourselves or for a myriad of reasons that can be patently obvious or sublime. CoActionDrama was first designed to make role-play easy by being generic, but as the design of it progressed in play, we found that many parts of it are specific to worlds.
CoActionDrama (CAD) is so named because it was designed to emphasise that role-play is not a competition between players, it is cooperative. As such, the rules are made so that inter-player or inter-character actions can be resolved easily.
There are three main settings for CAD:
The original Heroic Fantasy Setting -
Maston
Super Hard Science Fiction -
The Mission Universe
Steampunk/Victorian Roleplay/Wargame
Sabron
During the course of the book we will have references to the first two, Maston and The Mission Universe; the third, Sabron needs to be developed in its own book, and this may come later. Maston and the Mission Universe details can be found directly after the core rules.
The game is designed to have a core mechanic, the principle constituent of which is the character design. There are tables of Developments and Weapons in the appendix in the end, so that the main body of the text should enable to player or Game-Master (GM) to pick up the rules and find directly the portion to which they wish to refer.
Equipment
Players and GMs alike will need at least one copy of the rules, pencils, character sheets (available at the end of the book), eraser, dice, (at least D4, 3D6, D8, D10, D12, 2D20), and some imagination.
System Description
CoActionDrama is a descriptive, heroic, dice based role-playing system. Characters have Natures, their innate, “born with” ability levels which describe their natural and innate talents, and Developments, which describe and quantify their skills and abilities as specifically applied to the life that they have led since they were born. This is to reflect a balance between the Nature/Nurture arguments that follow from studying people as they grow up and develop.
Players control their characters in the usual fashion for role-playing games, and rolls are made to determine the outcome of the interactions between the player/characters and the world often including other player/characters.
It is a feature of CoActionDrama that the system is simple and manageable enough to cope with large numbers of players. Players are not in competition with each other, they are co-operating to tell a story, and the outcome of the story can be happy or sad, fortuitous or unfortunate, but the objective is for players to have fun and to find out what happens.
During play-testing it has been surprising how many times a flimsy application of the rules is the problem! Apply the rules as strictly as possible, it is in the interests of fairness for everyone, and removes the need for constant nit-picking attention by the GM which leads to much more satisfactory player-led role-play. (Hurrahs all round).
Introduction
We role-play to forget, to enjoy ourselves or for a myriad of reasons that can be patently obvious or sublime. CoActionDrama was first designed to make role-play easy by being generic, but as the design of it progressed in play, we found that many parts of it are specific to worlds.
CoActionDrama (CAD) is so named because it was designed to emphasise that role-play is not a competition between players, it is cooperative. As such, the rules are made so that inter-player or inter-character actions can be resolved easily.
There are three main settings for CAD:
The original Heroic Fantasy Setting –
Steampunk/Victorian Roleplay/Wargame
Sabron
During the course of the book we will have references to the first two, Maston and The Mission Universe; the third, Sabron needs to be developed in its own book, and this may come later. Maston and the Mission Universe details can be found directly after the core rules.
The game is designed to have a core mechanic, the principle constituent of which is the character design. There are tables of Developments and Weapons in the appendix in the end, so that the main body of the text should enable to player or Game-Master (GM) to pick up the rules and find directly the portion to which they wish to refer.
Equipment
Players and GMs alike will need at least one copy of the rules, pencils, character sheets (available at the end of the book), eraser, dice, (at least D4, 3D6, D8, D10, D12, 2D20), and some imagination.
System Description
CoActionDrama is a descriptive, heroic, dice based role-playing system. Characters have Natures, their innate, “born with” ability levels which describe their natural and innate talents, and Developments, which describe and quantify their skills and abilities as specifically applied to the life that they have led since they were born. This is to reflect a balance between the Nature/Nurture arguments that follow from studying people as they grow up and develop.
Players control their characters in the usual fashion for role-playing games, and rolls are made to determine the outcome of the interactions between the player/characters and the world often including other player/characters.
It is a feature of CoActionDrama that the system is simple and manageable enough to cope with large numbers of players. Players are not in competition with each other, they are co-operating to tell a story, and the outcome of the story can be happy or sad, fortuitous or unfortunate, but the objective is for players to have fun and to find out what happens.
During play-testing it has been surprising how many times a flimsy application of the rules is the problem! Apply the rules as strictly as possible, it is in the interests of fairness for everyone, and removes the need for constant nit-picking attention by the GM which leads to much more satisfactory player-led role-play. (Hurrahs all round).