Fronts Universal Roleplaying System

FRONTS — Universal Roleplaying System

Alpha Playtest

FRONTS is currently in Alpha. Rules, balance, terminology, and entire subsystems are subject to change during development.

FRONTS is the master rules engine behind the settings I am building.

It is an idea I have been working toward for years: a tabletop roleplaying system designed to address some of the things that have always frustrated me in other RPGs.

The waiting.

Not knowing what you can do.

Combat feeling like one game while everything outside combat feels like another.

Roleplaying being important to the story, but often barely connected to the mechanics.

FRONTS approaches those problems differently.

Six Dice Are Your Time

The core idea is simple:

Six Dice Are Your Time.

Your dice represent your opportunities to act.

Instead of waiting for your turn to come back around and then making one isolated choice, FRONTS asks you to decide when and how to spend your available time.

Those same core ideas are used across combat, investigation, relationships, work, travel, command, trade, ships, businesses, organizations, and other kinds of play.

The goal is to keep the system connected instead of building a completely different mini-game for every activity.

Roleplaying matters mechanically

FRONTS is not meant to replace roleplaying with dice.

You can still talk, joke, argue, flirt, threaten, negotiate, lie, make promises, or simply have a conversation without rolling every few seconds.

The difference is that when a relationship actually changes, the game can remember it.

Relationships can be affected by:

• what your character says and does,
• abilities and Training,
• favors and promises,
• lies and betrayals,
• shared experiences,
• reputation,
• evidence,
• trust,
• affection,
• fear,
• suspicion,
• and the consequences of earlier actions.

An NPC might come to Trust You, Respect You, Believe Your Lie, Owe You a Favor, Feel Betrayed, Become Suspicious, or even Love You.

Those states can matter later.

Player characters still control their own feelings, consent, beliefs, dialogue, and personal choices. The system tracks how the world and NPCs respond to what you do.

One engine for many kinds of play

FRONTS is intended to support:

Combat. Investigation. Relationships. Work. Exploration. Survival. Command. Trade. Businesses. Ships. Vehicles. Organizations. Politics. Horror. Fantasy. Science Fiction.

A simple uncertain action may take one meaningful roll.

A larger goal can become a Front: a changing situation that tracks real progress toward a concrete outcome.

That might mean:

• repairing a damaged ship,
• solving a murder,
• earning someone's trust,
• convincing a council,
• building a business,
• surviving a siege,
• tracking a fugitive,
• completing a research project,
• breaking an enemy position,
• or changing the course of a larger campaign.

The goal is that players should usually understand:

What can I do? What does it cost? What changes if I succeed? What happens if things go wrong?

Settings being built with FRONTS

I am currently developing two major settings with the system.

Ralah: Roads of Crimson Dawn is a fantasy setting connected to my novel work. It is being used to test fantasy adventure, magic, travel, relationships, investigation, ships, trade, and larger campaign systems.

CORRIDORS is a science-fiction setting built around exploration, starships, politics, trade, war, and contact between civilizations. It currently includes 8 major Peoples and 8 minor Peoples, each with their own histories, cultures, technologies, ships, relationships, and place in the wider setting.

Those are settings.

FRONTS is the master rules engine beneath them.

The long-term goal is for the same core system to support many different worlds without requiring players to learn an entirely different RPG every time the genre changes.

What this Alpha is for

This is not a finished commercial edition.

It is a public Alpha playtest.

I am releasing it because the next stage of development needs people who did not design the system to sit down, read it, make characters, build missions, test the rules, find confusing sections, discover exploits, and tell me what happened.

If something is unclear, that is useful feedback.

If something is too slow, that is useful feedback.

If something works better than expected, I want to know that too.

And if you find a way to completely break the system, please tell me how you did it.

FRONTS will continue to change as it is tested.

This is the current master rules set, not the final word.

FRONTS Six Dice Are Your Time.

Created by Emerson Star (Shane A. Fortner)