RPGPundit Reviews: Omnifray Basic Handbook
or This Game Gave Me An Embolism

This is a review of the Omnifray Basic Handbook, written by Matthew James A. West, published by Lulu. The copy being reviewed is a print edition, and believe it or not, the "basic" edition came in at 300 pages of double-column small-type with very few images.  I also received the "Expert handbook", which is even larger; though frankly, for reasons which will quickly become apparent, I can't imagine how anyone could possibly need the "advanced" version of these rules.

This has to be, without a doubt, the hardest review I ever wrote. In struggling to find something nice to say about Omnifray, the main, and pretty close to the only thing I came up with is "Its definitely a labour of love". You can see that, the effort and dedication it took to put a mammoth project the size of this game into paper, you can tell that it was deeply heart-felt.  Which is what makes it all the more tragic that I can't imagine anyone who'd actually want to play this game.

Omnifray is a vast byzantine series of super-complex equations and systems, mechanics for everything under the sun, excessive rules-mongering.  There are far more charts in the book then there are illustrations (though what illustrations there are, which are few, are very nice). This game is so rules-heavy it makes Hero, GURPS, or Rolemaster look like Over the Edge by comparison. It would seem that the mentality for the creation of this game would have been "create as many obscure rules as possible for absolutely everything". Examples will follow.

Now, people who know me know that I am not a fan of rules-heavy; but you will also know that I've reviewed several rules-heavy games here and been able to point out what works about them, or how for a certain type of gamer they might be appealing; I can't say that about Omnifray. I can't imagine that anyone other than possibly bizarre deviants who are sexually aroused by abstract mechanics involving multiplying and dividing decimals. Alternately, if you stripped all the roleplaying elements from the game and left it as a wargame-style skirmish combat system it might appeal to those who find Advanced Squad Leader a little too fast-and-loose.

Though it is not in the book itself, the author has stated that the name Omnifray was intended to suggest the etymological breakdown of a game that was good for all kinds of conflict. Get it? "omni-fray".  I think that's indicative of where things went horribly wrong, trying to include everything in the rules is a common mistake of the game designer who wants to create an all-encompassing game. In the book's introduction the author refers to Omnifray as "a very special development in roleplaying games" and claims that it is "extremely flexible" (that does not, sadly, come through in the rules themselves, other than that there are basic and advanced rules, even within the basic handbook itself, so that you can choose between ultra-complex and ultra-ultra-complex... yeah... flexible). Even the author himself admits "it can be a challenging game to run or play" (shit, never mind that, its a goddamn challenge to even read through the thing! I think I had two strokes trying), but claims that its worth it because of it being the "best in atmosphere, choice, and a true-to-life feel, and a meticulously level playing field".  And there, gentle readers, are problems numbers two and three of game design, the old bugaboo of "realism" and "balance".  Try to make a game "meticulously" either, and you'll only end up with a crappy over-loaded game.

Omnifray isn't just a system, though, its also a setting. The "Enshrouded lands" are the setting of the game, and the author claims that they're "really a thousand worlds in one".  This is due to the game presenting variants of probable, possible or improbable versions of setting events.  While this gets close to even being clever, it is negatively affected by the fact that the setting, in any of its variations, strikes me as rather dull.
The Enshrouded lands are called that because the realm is "shrouded" by a realm of magic and fantasy; which basically means that the regular part of the setting is neither magical nor fantastical. According to the book, "Only a chosen few tread the boundary between the facade" between the mundane reality and the supernatural world. Those chosen few being the PCs, supposedly.
The setting portion of the book includes a map, which shows the setting as mostly a bunch of smallish islands with a couple of bigger continents on the periphery of the map. Everything on the map is in "Ye Olde Englishe". A huge chunk of the map is just water, making me wonder why they didn't focus in and draw a more detailed map (say, with some geographical details) of the archipelago of islands where most of the action is? As it is, all you get is the shape of the islands and city-names, which are often so crowded and small to be almost illegible, while "Ye Endless Ocean" and "Ye Greate Eastern Sea" are two big blank spaces that occupy 65% of the map.
Each important area of the setting contains a couple of pages of elaborate detail, mostly history and geography and details of the people who live there, followed by a short list of "dangerous wildlife", and then a series of tables listing "current happenings" and "occult reality" in the "probable", "possible" or "improbable" setting. For example, in "the Sultanate of Ezreffir", if you go with the Possible table, the current happening includes something like "the sultan's daughter is a young lady of exceptional beauty" in the "Probable" world, in the "possible" it mentions that the "sultan's daughter has fallen out of favour because of spending time with riff-raff", and in the "improbable" section it lists that the Sultan's daughter's staff has been "infiltrated by spies, assassins or thieves". Meanwhile, in the "occult reality" section, a sample occult "probability" would be "the djinns and dragons of Ezreffir sleep in tunnels far below ground, guarding ancient magical artifacts"; possibility would be that several of these artifacts were stolen by assassins and "are now kept by a small and secretive guild of murder"; and the "improbable" would be that "the terrible Moggaleth is within reach of the fringes of Ezreffir and is under the control of dark forces".

This is about as good as it gets, setting-wise. The "dangerous wildlife" boxes are a total waste of time, and highlite the overall dullness of the setting material; the world being generically-ok fantasy at its best, and sub-par dull at its worst.  The entire "wildlife" listing for Ebirea, for example, is black bears, boars, bulls, snakes, wolves and stags.  For Emeirel its "black bears, boars, bulls, snakes, wolves, wild cats and stags". Woo! Go wildcats! Way to make a difference.
Even the Sultanate of Ezreffir has, in its exotic locale, such wondrous creatures as "wild dogs, lions, snakes, wolves and vultures". Yup, that's it.

The setting includes a detailed Chronology of the world. A dozen or so different languages (why is it that game designers obsessed with rules-heavy systems also always invent settings that have dozens of unnecessary languages?), two pages of basic prices for products, and seven pages of details on "spiritual powers and ideologies" in the setting.

Ok, enough of the setting, on to the system, which is the bulk of the book. The character creation rules begin by telling you to think of what your character is like beforehand, where he comes from and what his story is. You also have to choose an alignment (between good, chaos, law, or evil), and the author emphasizes that this is extremely important, but then states with an underline and boldface that this "doesn't affect the individual's moral character". So, apparently alignment isn't actually alignment in the sense of either what you do or what you're forced to do. Its only which powers you are connected to; in the system-terms limiting which "spiritual powers" you can choose.

Now, here's where get into the muck of the system.  You have 15 principal ability scores, which you select through a point-buy system. Not a straight, unlimited point-buy, of course. That would be too easy! No, instead you have each attribute costing a different amount of "character generation points" (GPCs); Alacrity, being the most important, costs 9 per point, while others cost 4, 5, 2 (strangely, marksmanship only costs 2), or 1 (for looks, which I guess are the least important). There are a series of guidelines which basically suggest that the closest to the average you keep your guy, the better it is. Characters then get secondary attributes of "Size" and "target" (which are inversely related), then a bunch of traits (advantages), and then feats (special moves; which are only used in the advanced basic game, not the basic basic game).

Next we get to the combat chapter. In Omnifray, in the most basic basic basic version of the rules, you determine your chance to hit by comparing your combat ability (your melee prowess plus weapon bonus plus other mods) to that of your opponent's, and the resulting advantage or disadvantage you have is referenced on a chart giving you a percentage chance to hit. Once you hit, there are two different choices for how you apply damage; you start by doing a comparison on that same to-hit chart of your strength (plus mods) to the target's toughness (plus mods), find the percentage number, and roll; where if you make the roll your opponent is killed, and if you fail your opponent survives.  This is what you would use for mooks. For important characters, you would instead just write down that percentage number as your damage, without rolling it, and when your damage value reaches 100, you are dead. Note that this means that if you are in a fight against an equal foe (50% to hit) in two blows either you or he will be dead.

This system seems a bit unwieldy, but in and of itself its not bad, just slightly dumb (any RPG where any character is likely to die from two hits from his equal is going to be a game where there'll be LOTS of character creation, and this is NOT a good game for sitting around making characters with). Its after that, when you get into all the details and modifiers that the game becomes truly byzantine. The effects from being damaged, for example, mean having to keep track of a ton of different effects (loss of ability scores, blood loss, consciousness) as your injuries increase.

And good god, the initiative system! Omnifray is the only game I can think of where, with a straight face, they say "in an Omnifray game, time is divided into segments. Each segment lasts one-tenth of a second". That's right, the basic unit of action is one-tenth of a fucking second! Of course, the average human doesn't get to act every 0.1 second, instead you roll to see how many segments of 0.1 seconds it takes for you to be able to act again. An average character with an alacrity of 7 will act every d12+14 segments, so about every 2 seconds. But it will mean that if you have four characters with alacrity 7 fighting each other, you might have one acting every 1.5 seconds, one every 1.9 seconds, one every 2.1 seconds, and another every 2.6 seconds. And, here's the kicker, after each action, you roll your initiative again! So someone's first attack might happen in segment 20, and then they roll again and determine that their next action will be allowed on segment 37. Jesus fuck.

Rules are provided for different types of actions an options; you can do a single full action, two half actions, a half action and a "hasty attack", two quarter-actions and a half-action, a quarter action and a "hasty attack", or a quarter action half-action and "hasty attack". Good god, what the hell were these people smoking?!

Then you get a dozen special combat rules, in point-form, presenting exceptions or special circumstances. Things like "you do not get an Immediate Free Attack if you are attacked from behind", or "the rules on shorter weapon reach apply likewise to all forms of unarmed combat (including grappling attacks)".

You have movement and encumbrance rules. Surprisingly, there isn't a really complex encumbrance system (I would have expected it at this point), but instead you get the basic movement of 4m per action, but in light difficult terrain and/or wearing chainmail armor you are reduced to moving 3.5m, in medium difficult terrain its down to 3m, or in dense difficult terrain you are reduced to 2.5m per action movement.

Weapons are listed by mode of use, category, reach, melee prowess modifier (offensive and defensive use), alacrity modifier, attack type, and bonus to strength for damage check. You get all kinds of juicy rules modifiers like "the modifier to the wielder's alacrity... does not apply to time spent stepping inside an adversary's guard... (only) to combined moving and striking actions".
Then you have optional "more detailed" rules for weapons and unarmed combat. Good grief.

You might be wondering about armour.  Armour provides you a bonus to your toughness for damage checks if you are hit. The bonus is variable, depending on the armour you're wearing and the attack type of the weapon that hit you, a reference table is provided. You also get another table for "blast protection", indicating how much of a bonus the armour worn gives you against a blast, which is variable according to how much of your body is covered by armour when you are hit, you have to determine (by adding the "armour coverage value" of your armor, just how much that is, and the percentage is figured to the first decimal place. So for example, if you have 12.5% armour body coverage, you have 0 Blast Protection Value, whereas if you have 12.6%-37.5%, you get 1 Blast Protection Value. I think it was right around here I suffered my first stroke.

Thrown weapons are given ranges in meters based on the PC's strength (yet another table is provided). Ranged weapons are given a basic loading time in segments required, bonuses for marksmanship wielded one-handed, penalties for holding in one hand, missile speed, and the strength damage bonus.

I could go on and on; there's countless different special rules and modifiers and conditions.

Non-combat action resolution is based on essentially the same table as the basic combat resolution, with rules for opposed and unopposed actions. Again, you get a bucketful (20 pages!) of rules for special actions (though the author does state that these rules are presented as guidelines and the GM is free to do what he wants). Here you get such gems as the rules for swimming which have a table determining your swimming speed, based on agility, again down to the first decimal point (a PC with a modified agility of 16 or less will swim 0.4m per action).
The one that takes the cake is the "jumping" table. To figure out how far you can jump you calculate alacrity x 2 + size, and reference it on a table to figure out how it modifies your movement.  So, a character with alacrity 7 (average for a PC) and size 6 (again, average), will add up to 20, which on the table indicates he jumps at his movement x 0.55. The jumping distances vary from "movement x 0.23" to "movement x 2".  Yup, that's right, we've graduated from one to TWO decimal places! Because one decimal place just wasn't anal retentive enough.
The rules for cold or hot weather reference a table of air temperatures (ranging from -70ºC to 70ºC), which give you a "bitterness" or "swelter" score, which you then have to check against your toughness (with a frequency of check score, varying from 2 per minute down to 1 per hour for cold and varying from 1 per hour to 1 per 15 seconds for heat), the failure of which checks will generate a level of "chill damage" or "heat exhaustion" which give very specific penalties to a number of different abilities and checks over the course of five different levels of severity.

I'll spare you more of this stuff. I think I've made my point.

You have a brief chapter on Traits, listed with their GPC costs, and descriptions of what they do. Traits are things like Acrobatic expertise, Armour Use, Climbing, Cookery, Holy Faith and Hardened Drinker. Some Traits, like "Hardened drinker" only cost 0.5 GPCs. others can cost as much as 5, and you can buy more than one level of them. These Traits do not work like direct bonuses, instead each level you take in a trait (or a single purchase in the case of those that don't have levels) will give you a specific bonus (different for each trait) to particular attributes for different purposes. So taking one level of Climbing will give you a bonus of +1 to Agility for climbing purposes or +2 if you have climbing gear. Taking two ranks of Acrobatic Expertise gives you +4 to Agility for acrobatic maneuvers, including jumping.

Next you get a list of sample "mooks" (less-important NPCs); the mook statblock takes up half a page, so you get 2 mooks per page for 30 pages.

The chapter on monsters includes details about creatures in the setting of the Enshrouded Lands. In the setting, on the whole, there are no supernatural races or creatures, they are instead creatures that exist in the hidden or occult world, and each is essentially individual. You have no monster races or generic humanoids. We are informed that rules for creating your own supernatural creatures are included in the Expert Manual, and here instead you get a list of creatures. These listings are one full page long, and utterly filled with stats. The book comes with almost 100 pages of creatures. Sadly, among these 100 or so pages there are a grand total of 3 illustrations. Instead, what you get is a wall of text for each creature with brief descriptions, ability scores, attacks, special abilities, and "advanced game notes".

In chapter 8, you get (an introduction) to the Advanced rules; what I've decided to call the Advanced Basic Rules. Curiously, the section on experience and advancement is here. The other main feature here are the Feats, which are special maneuvers you can buy for a PC.  A PC has 88 "versatility points" to spend on purchasing feats, and using a feat costs "energy points", another new addition to the rules. To give just one example, "Berserk rage" costs 5 VP to buy, and costs 40 EP to use. The berserk rage raises a user's alacrity, strength, melee prowess, toughness, intimidation and will power, but loses 1 point of perception and understanding, and the rage lasts until no enemy is within "short reach" for at least 2d12+17 seconds.
You have physical feats (like berserk rage, above) and concentration feats (like careful shot or empathic insight). There are also elder and unholy feats (magical feats, basically) like "Animal Form", "fire blast", "mind control", or "words of terror".

The next chapter includes rules for illness and insanity, including wound infections (as if the damage system in this game wasn't deadly enough). A great deal of sample diseases are included. The insanity rules are just as complex as everything else; you'll just have to trust me on that because I've had my third stroke while trying to summon up the willpower to bother writing details about them.

The book closes with some sample characters, a blank character sheet, some notes on basic animal stats, and notes about alignment (which nations in the setting have which predominant alignment, and what the powers of each alignment are basically about).

If any of you are still reading at this point, I hope I've managed to capture the tedium that the byzantine nature of these rules impart. The expert manual, which I only barely managed to page through, has advanced rules and also more details on the setting (including stuff on guilds and groups).

Honestly, I wish I didn't have to be so cruel with this review. The guy writing this isn't Swine, he's not full of himself, he's just a dude who likes decimal points way too much for his own good. You can imagine him having tinkered with multiple versions of this system, over and over again, revising and working on all the different rules before this is what he finally published. And I feel sad having to destroy his "magnum opus" in this review. It gives me no pleasure, but its the truth as I see it.

I can't really recommend this game to anyone. I'm sorry. I'm so sorry.

RPGPundit

Jeebus, I think I almost went blind just trying to get through that review.

I skipped to the end in 2d12+7 seconds. :eek:

surely you mean 2d12+7 tenths of a second.

RPGPundit

I have to say that although i like crunchy games, this sounds a bit too.....anal.  I like fine-grained initiative systems, but 1/10ths of a second?  Possibly one to avoid, but it does sound like an awful lot of effort has gone into it!

I could feel your pain.  You tried and tried to find a positive.
I love it when GMs have easy rules to cover a lot of eventualities.  as soon as it goes from a formula to a chart, I'm out of there.

Thanks for the review! It's clear Pundit put a lot of effort in and got to grips with the basics of the game. Everything that he says is factually accurate as far as I can tell, although obviously I'd put a different spin on it!

The jumping distances chart is a bit crazy. Although it won't cause problems for the game if you just ignore it.

To be completely fair to my beloved game, the main action resolution table only has 31 entries (of which you mainly need the 15 or so around the middle), and can be very easily memorised. It basically goes

50
(+9=) 59
(+8=) 67
(+7=) 74
(+6=) 80
etc. until (+2=) 94 then it gets a bit weird

And the same the other way
50
(-9=) 41
(-8=) 33
etc.

It's the values in the middle that you mostly need to know and they follow that pattern. Only at the extremities does it change.

Not counting charts of weapon stats etc. which you copy the relevant bits of onto your character sheet anyway, and other background information-type charts which are just tabular ways of presenting text, the only other chart of vital general importance has about 20 entries, of which you really only need to know the entries from about 2 to about 12. You can remember those pretty easily if you play often enough.

For instance:-

7 => d12+14
8 => d10+11
9 => d10+9

It ain't exactly rocket science...

Combat gets less dramatically deadly using the advanced combat system (modest hits do one third the damage of full hits, clear hits do two thirds), and especially with heavy armour - it can be very survivable with the right armour, almost too survivable sometimes.

I think the majority of people I've played with have really liked the speed of action system in practice. It may sound byzantine, but honestly it works!

There are other perspectives on this game out there. I'd never deny that it requires a lot of effort from the referee (and may require effort from the players depending on how much the ref is willing to do to help them out), but I do think it's worthwhile.

By the way, charts v formulae? - the main charts are all based on formulae, they're just not formulae that you'd want to be working out on the hop (and you never need to know what they are to play the game).

Ah well. Good to have the review. It's quite witty really and you have to respect the fact that Pundit comes out and says exactly what he means!

Thanks again, genuinely. I do appreciate that Pundit had an embolism in the course of duty, and spent what must have been an age poring over my text. As I've said elsewhere, it'd be nice if one day he had an Omnifray epiphany while playing it and realised it's actually the best game in the whole world ever - but I won't get my hopes up too high ;-)

Matt [Mr. Omnifray]

Good to see you staying positive, as i said before, it looks like a huge amount of work has gone into it.  As the review over at RPG.net showed, different people have different takes on the same game.  As long as there are people playing and enjoying it, then it is worth the effort.  
Good luck with the game!

Matt,
I am the first one to say that a game one plays is totally different than the game one reads (though Pundit has done so many reviews he is somewhat immune to this).

I also think that the game (and mine as well, so I speak from a somewhat sympathetic viewpoint) is a throwback to the days when GMs were exploring ways to add to the experience by rule creation, as opposed to todays throwback to the simplicity of playing a game.
(hence the 50-zillion old vs new threads)

A bit about formula vs chart...when you start adding rules, you need to find ways to reduce 'look-up' time.  I understand that most charts are bsed on formula, but when you can change the mechanics so that many rules follow the same formula, it makes the player acclimatization much quicker.  

By the way, I find it most intersting that we both use a continuous initiative.  
And I don't have 'hardened drinker' on my skill charts...trying to figure what ranch that would be under.

Anyway, here's to idiosyncratic niche systems.

Thank you for taking it so well, Omnifray.  Anyways, they do say that no publicity is bad publicity, I hope that turns out to be true in your case.

RPGPundit