Medium Known Systems

Ok, so there's always posts in communities like this asking about recommendations on lesser known systems - and that's a great thing! Plus, many of us already know who the 500lb titans of the industry are, or at least ones that are very popular to hack and create with.

But what about medium known systems? Those that have a handful of games based on the same system, but haven't grown to the explosive heights of something like Powered by the Apocalypse, Forged in the Dark, or even the d20 SRD. Medium known, I think, are some of the trickier ones to highlight.

Tension Engine - Sure, I'd want to give a nod to the system that runs my own Party First and the upcoming Honorbound, as well as Legends of the Khurst Riders, Mastika, and The Infinite. It's a d6 based roll and keep system that focuses on creating cinematic pacing and tension "explosions" with an aggresive metacurrency spend back and forth between players and GM.

But lets also look beyond that to a few others I enjoy. Apologies up front if I don't list every game available for that system.

Year Zero Engine – Ok, this one might be a tricky one to list here, as Free League is certainly something of a name in the industry. This system started with a d6 dice pool version which powered Mutant: Year Zero, but has expanded to other tweaks that use polyhedral dice as well. It also powers games like Alien and Vaesen and more, but interestingly to my knowledge seems to be mostly just Free League using it, despite the open SRD.

Honestly, I see a lot of similarities in YZE to the Tension Engine from the themes of the games they started in, double health pools (Health/Sanity or Health/Resolve), similar pool building, opposed rolls, and so on. Even concepts like pushing your roll, stress, and Doom Points in YZE fill some very similar functions to Tension Points in that system. That said, I keep meaning to really sit down and examine YZE deeply and take a look at some items that it handles better and see how they might be applied to my own work. For instance, stress dice and conditions seem like very useful ground to cover and I think there’s probably a lot to learn from how YZE handles gear as well.

Caltrop Core – This one by TitanomachyRPG actually has hundreds of games utilizing it, so I might be stretching things to say that it’s a medium known system, but as always, it’s tough to weigh exactly where something lays in general community awareness, size/budget of products using it, etc, which I would personally all factor into what is small, medium, or big. That said, this is a gloriously straightforward d4 system that divides those results neatly into fail and get worse, partial fail, succeed with complications, and succeed – and it really doesn’t simpler than that for more narrative leaning systems using die rolls. Truly elegant. Hexfall and Lordsworn are a couple of the real standouts to me.

Breathless – This is a great one from FariRPGs that I personally am still enamoured of, though I think several others have taken greater prominence and popularity more recently. Fari’s own Stoneburner is likely the biggest name based on it, but there are several games based on it thanks to itch.io jams such as The Foundation, The Breach, and Nomadic.

The system itself has a really great mechanic of dice (possibly starting with a d12) that become progressively smaller as you roll them, which is a fantastic way to illustrate resources, energy, or motivation being used up. And then of course, you can “catch your breath” to reset the dice to their starting sizes at the cost of the GM introducing a new complication. This is another one that really lends itself well to the types of grimmer settings that I enjoy, but one of these days, I really am going to get around to working on the more positive and possibly Dragonball Z inspired game idea that I had which flips this on its head and builds your dice larger and larger each time you roll until they must eventually be reset. I think that would be a fun twist on this system.

Ok, so there’s a few of mine. What do you all think are some ‘medium known’ systems that deserve some further attention?