In the process of developing the projects that we have going on here at Red Lily Adventuring we came across a problem: How do we make these systems unique and having their own feel while maintaining the feeling that they were developed by the same people? We wanted some sort of “brand identity” for lack of a better word. A specific hook that answers that the question “Why Red Lily Games over game from any other tabletop company?”. (Which is a very good question as a lover of tabletop games in general.)

After a lot of deliberation we came up with an answer: We need a unique dice mechanic/game engine that can be transferable across games while being able to be varied slightly to serve the needs of each game. So we buckled down and blew through dozens of ideas until we settled on what is now the RLA Tabletop Games Engine.

The simple version can be explained as follows: When rolling a Skill Check, the player rolls 2d10 + a number of d10s equal to the Skill Level of the rolled Skill + the appropriate Ability Modifier as determined by the Referee, they are trying to equal or beat a variable Difficulty Value that has been set by the Referee.

The first 2d10 are the Aptitude Dice which consist of the “supernatural” causation die (the Will Die, the Mana Die, the Matrix Die, etc.) and the “natural” causation die (the Body Die). These Aptitude Dice represent the fact that any player character has some level of baseline skill regardless of their level of training in a specific field. The “supernatural” causation die represents the “animating force” that pervades a setting (the net, the quintessence, the spiritus mundi) and the “natural” causation die represents the baseline physical capability of a player character. Rolling 1s and 10s on these dice can have varying effects on the results depending on the specific game system/setting and the specific sort of check (for example a 1 on the Mana Die when rolling to cast a spell could increase a pc’s corruption by demonic forces).

Skill Levels vary from 0 to 5 and denote how many d10 should be rolled as Skill Dice. Ability Modifiers vary from -5 to +5 (we haven’t worked out the underlying scores). We settled on 0 to 5 (no Skill Dice to 5d10 Skill Dice) because the particular curves created by these values mean that we can set the Average DV as 25 and have that remain challenging to middling skill and only really becoming truly trivial when you max out a particular skill (end game characters should feel powerful in their specialties).

Ability modifiers of -5 to +5 allow the system to feel like the Stats have an effect without it being outsized and overshadowing the Skills and powers that the player has chosen to invest time and effort into.

There are a lot of other nuances to the game engine and it will also probably see some minor revisions post playtesting but I have a feeling this core system will remain relatively intact as time progresses. Bloodfall and its weird/dark fantasy super far future pseudo-Renaissance remains our main focus but we have a couple of other projects simmering in the background: a low fantasy truly medieval setting currently codenamed “Mythic Europe” and a cyberpunk/near-future science fiction setting currently codenamed “Net Jockeys/2091. I expect to be able to provide updates on the work usually once a week unless life intervenes.