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Author Topic: Omnifray Lite  (Read 656 times)

RPGPundit

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Omnifray Lite
« on: April 06, 2010, 05:20:19 PM »
RPGPundit Reviews: Omnifray Lite

Some time ago I had the dubious pleasure of reviewing the Omnifray RPG.  In that review, I mentioned that it was probably the (I paraphrase, trying to look up the review to find the exact quote would just renew my trauma) "only RPG that ever gave me an embolism just from reading it".  It was written as what was a clear labour of love, but the whole thing was a huge mess of byzantine super-complicated rules with nothing really redeemable.

Now, the people behind Omnifray have sent me Omnifray Lite.  Matt West, the author, even signed the copy for me, with the little quote "For RPG Pundit (sic), best of luck with the embolism!!".

Ominfray lite is billed as "the easy-to-play cousin of Omnifray".  It clocks in at 190 pages in a standard-sized softcover game book.  Now, I have to assume that its not really being sold at new roleplayers; just because if it is, the job isn't very good.
The book itself is a standard enough fare, with a full-colour cover that is a fairly amateur illustration (and by that I mean, tons of stuff on DeviantArt would have been heads and tails better illustration than what they chose for Omnifray Lite's cover), black and white interior, and like its "cousin", full of walls of text and tables with hardly any interior art.
Presentation-wise, its definitely not beginner-friendly.
Even in the introduction, after a very perfunctory type of "what is roleplaying" section, it jumps into some hardcore gaming-ideology positions. Most of which I agree with, incidentally; like that the GM is the authority of the game, that players have autonomy over what their characters do (that one seems to warrant a 3 page essay for some reason, leading me to suspect that somewhere down the line the author found himself in a situation where the GM tried to run his character for him); and some very convoluted stuff about "player stances", where players could be "constructive" (wanting to work with the party) or "conniving" (wanting to work against the party) or "mixed" (a bit of both).  The author even suggests that players should consciously choose their stance at the start of each game session, and may even want to tell that to other players.  Seriously, does anyone actually do this kind of shit in actual play?!

So OK, Omnifray Lite is not actually for beginners. That means that it was written for people like me: experienced gamers who didn't like the complexity of the regular Omnifray game (which, I remind you again, is so complex it makes GURPS look like Over the Edge).

After the intro, Mr. West, whose brain I think works a little bit different from the rest of ours, goes into character creation. Makes sense, right? Only the very first thing (and therefore presumably the most important thing) that he makes you choose in character creation is your alignment.  And not even alignment in like "Lawful Good" or "Anarchist" kind of alignment, no. You can choose from "primordial, redeemed, excommunicated, fallen, or unbidden".  Makes perfect sense, right?

Don't worry though, he explains what these alignments mean with stuff like "Redeemed spiritual status means that your character's soul belongs to the angels of the celestial realm".  Wait, am I accidentally reading a copy of the Celestine Prophecy, or something? Did I pick up the wrong fucking book? WTF is this shit?

Actually, reading through the six-page description of alignments with great attention, one figures out that what he meant by "alignment" was actually more like "religious affiliation", and what he meant by the overly-pretentious names he chose was actually (in order) "Pagan, pseudo-Christian, heretic, satanist, or eastern-mystic". I guess it would have been too hard to just say so.

After alignment, we look at Luck, Energy, Reaction Time, Movement Rates, then choosing if your character is a spellcaster or not (apparently only Pagans or Satanists can be spellcasters), and finally "Action stats" and "Reaction Stats" (influence, melee attack, ranged attack, and stealth are action stats; "Defence", perception, and willpower are reaction stats).  The most basic way of determining these stats is by rolling a 12 sided dice (the D12 is the only die used in the game), and looking on a table to see a set of predetermined attribute numbers which you then assign to the attributes in the order you want (though its mentioned twice, in bold and underlined, that melee attack and Defence must have the same numerical value).  Spellcasters use a different set of tables for their stats.

I do have to note at least one improvement over Omnifray here, at least there's a quick-rolling non-point-buy system for attribute determination.  You also roll randomly for your social class, which also determines how many "ref points" you get. Luck and "Ref Points" both give you a number of tokens.  Luck tokens are spent to re-roll dice, Ref Points are the same except that you have to ask the GM for permission to use them.  You can apparently get more "ref points" by playing out your personal "tendencies", which you list on your character sheet.

Your social status determines your starting cash (in the unexciting single denomination of "silver coins"), and equipment lists follow.  There are even rules for how to own land and be a peasant farmer, and feudal obligations.

Anyways, onwards to the action resolution rules: everything in the game is resolved by D12 rolls. A single roll is used, adding the appropriate stat, to determine basic success. If you are doing an opposed check and you roll a natural 11 or 12 on the die, AND your opponent rolls a natural 1, you got a "perfect success". There is also a "double roll" mechanic, where you roll 2D12 (adding the stat to each of them but not adding the totals together), and compare that to the 2D12 rolls of your opponent, to determine if you had a "perfect success", a "clear success", a "bare success" etc depending on how each of your rolls compare to each of your opponent's.  There's some relatively fast and loose rules to modifying these rolls based on difficulties, and for collective endeavours, or holding back effort, and other such stuff.

Like its "cousin" Omnifray, the lite version continues to track time in one-tenth-of-a-second increments, but it has simplified things somewhat. Please remember that this is Omnifray, though, and when I say "somewhat simplified", I mean "there are Eight Pages of rules about initiative".

In combat, besides having to worry about initiative, you also have to worry about "Combat stance". At the start of combat you pick a stance (from a list of "Cautious", "Cunning", "Heedless", "dramatic", "Darting", "focused" or "regular").  These are symbolized by suits or courts of playing cards. Why? I have no idea. There was no mention of playing cards up till just now. Ok, that's a bit unfair of me. The cards are used to put face down in front of you so that you don't need to reveal your stance right off the bat. Each combat stance gives you different combat options of what you can do with yourself in a fight, and different special advantages or disadvantages, which are triggered by the expenditure of yet ANOTHER beancounting mechanic, "Energy tokens".  You spend energy tokens to give you certain bonuses. You can also spend 3 energy tokens to change your stance.

Next come shitloads of combat rules, including rules about handling mooks, special rules about poison, positioning, mounted combat, special injuries, etc.
Now, unless I've read the combat rules wrong, if you get a "perfect success" (ie. both your d12 rolls are higher than both of your opponents), you kill him instantly. Likewise, if he gets a "perfect success", he kills you instantly. Pretty rough combat system. Also, from how I understood the "compare 2d12s" method to work in light of the combat system, if you are fighting another PC-type character (ie. not a mook) you are likely to be taking injury pretty well every round (except if you get an instant kill, in which case the other guy doesn't hurt you at all).

There follow a couple of chapters on stealth and perception checks, again with a lot of special rules for modifiers etc.

The magic rules for Omnifray lite are described next, and they are described as being "only a taster".  In fact, the core Lite book has rules only for "pagan and unholy" magic; "holy magic and mystical powers" are left for a sourcebook called the "Booster Book", which was mercifully not sent to me.

In essence, players first choose their character's "type" of spellcaster from a list of Sorcerer, Priest, Wizard or Mage. The first three of those have sub-headings of "highly focused", "focused", "semi-focused" or "general".  The Sorcerer type also has one more sub-heading, the "Universal Sorcerer". Apparently, "highly focused" spellcasters are "versed in eleven magical arts", while Focused are versed in 14, semi-focused in 20, and general are versed in something called "magecraft" (which lets you "bind the memories of particular spells" to your mind) plus 11 other arts. General spellcasters have 33 magical arts, and universal sorcerers know all the magical arts.
The more magical arts you know, the weaker your spellcasting level will be in all of them.
Some handy templates are provided for each kind of spellcaster, including "suggested magical arts known" and "favoured spells".

To cast magic you roll a 2d12 roll against the "spirit drain" score of the spell you are trying to cast, to determine how much spiritual fatigue you suffer from the casting. Characters who are spiritually fatigued suffer penalties to all actions until they rest to recover from the effects.
It is noted that all characters in the Omnifray default setting can sense magic, and that magic must be used with caution because it is supposed to be essentially kept hidden from the common folk, who fear and distrust it.

The book itself only provides a short list of about a dozen spells, making this section feel like the least complete of the book.

After this we get the sections on advancement (with a kind of building point mechanic), and an alternate method of character generation if you want to go with point-buy.  I think it was a good touch that the author gave both options in the game, and generally a good call that the default method was the "assigned stats" method and not the much more complicated point-buy.

There is a chapter on the Assumed Setting of the book, which provides a list of core assumptions for the setting of the game; I think this is a necessary thing to have in an otherwise generic set of rules, because of course no rules are generic. There's always assumed default setting built into whatever rules you make, particularly for fantasy settings.  Here, the author makes it clear that the rules assume the PCs are special individuals held up or chosen by the fates to rise above common folk, that the spiritual world is hidden to the common folk, that religion in the setting is divided into the defaults set out in the alignment section, that the common folk are deeply superstitious, and that the default technological setting is medieval.

The final chapter is a short but decent bestiary, a combination of 24 statblocks for a mix of normal animals, magical monsters, and basic human foes (like bandits or mercenaries).

So, to sum up: is Omnifray Lite better than Omnifray? Yes, I think so. It is a marked improvement, in the sense that I can actually imagine some people playing this game. On the other hand, the author would have to have tried really REALLY hard to have made a game that was less playable than Omnifray.
This game is playable, but don't let the "lite" fool you; we aren't talking about Everway here, we're talking about an incredibly crunch-heavy game with multiple mechanics of bean-counting type resource management, an option-heavy combat system, and fairly slow moving combat that nonetheless manages to also be highly lethal.  To me, that's a pretty poor combination (though I guess technically, a slow-moving combat system where it would take forever to kill anything would be even worse).

On top of it all, the one area that Omnifray Lite is true to the "lite" moniker is in its lack of completeness. It only has human player characters, and has a less-than-complete (though still playable, just barely) magic system.

In short, I'd still have trouble seeing this game be something that anyone would choose over any number of other games out there. D&D in any of its forms is more complete, and plays faster and easier. If you want complexity, GURPS offers much more than Omnifray does. You might like Omnifray Lite if you really, really dig those particular default assumptions of the setting, without the benefit of having an actual setting detailed anywhere in the game. So I guess if you wanted to create a world of your own, with exactly the same assumptions as Omnifray has for its default, you might find this game worth trying. Though again, you could probably do much the same with any number of other games.

Omnifray Lite is a step up from Omnifray Basic, it doesn't reach embolism-levels of insane byzantine complexity. It just isn't very good at being better than any other choice besides Omnifray Basic, unfortunately.

RPGPundit

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