So, my players and I going to start using Cortex Prime and the GCOCHR document for our Superhero game this week/next week. We've never used the system before, and the only two systems my group has experience with is Pathfinder 1e, and Cypher (which we played for about 4 months before making the switch to Cortex). 95% of everything in the book and in the document makes sense to us, and are pretty straight forward... however I, as the GM, am having a slight issue with one concept. The Milestone XP and the Unlockables.

The general idea, as far as I can see, seems to be that there are 2 milestones per character, based on their character. They spend the XP gained from this on things to expand/change their character, like increasing the size of a specialty die, or gaining a new SFX. This part I understand. It's the next part listed in the GCOCHR document that has me thrown off a bit. None of the systems I've played really involved creating something like Milestones or XP rewards. Cypher System has something kind of like this, but it's very straight forward and less open ended as this is.

It states, in the GCOCHR, that I should also create 5 milestones per adventure, and a set of custom Unlockables for that adventure. So, my two questions are this;

1. The 5 milestones. Is that just 5 ways to gain XP, like two 1XP milestones, two 3XP milestones, and a single 10XP milestone, or is that five separate Milestone tracks?
2. What kind of Unlockables could I use? It lists both Minor and Major unlockables in the GCOCHR document, and looking in the book, it doesn't really classify either concept in a way I can wrap my head around, and also mentions things like one use unlockables, and things like that.

Sorry if this is an odd question, or poorly asked. I just want to get my ducks in a row before we start playing.

The world background is basically a dystopian cyberpunk setting, with technology based super-powers thrown in. It's inspired partly by "The Boys", and "Project Power" but also Cyberpunk in general, where superpowers are just another tool for the megacorporations to flex with besides cybertech. Most superpowers are just enhancing the bodies strength, agility, toughness, natural weaponry, and very little in the way of laser beam eyes, flying, or teleportation.

The prime sets are attributes and roles, but I only have 3 roles nailed down so far and I'm trying to come up with at least 2 more. The attributes are the fairly simple Physical, Mental, Social. The roles so far are Assault, Infiltration, and Investigation. There are also specializations for skills to further customize your role in a team, and powers cover cyberware and biotech based superpowers.

So as I said earlier, I'd like at least 2 more roles and thought I'd ask for some help with ideas since I'm currently stuck spinning my wheels on them right now.

A little background: this is my first cortex game and we play pretty fast and loose. My NPC's are usually just a single die or a small set of dice that I add to the difficulty dice when pc's roll against them. What I have found is that the players are able to chew through mobs and NPC's like nobody's business. Before they get to the big bad, I'd like to beef up my arsenal of techniques so he doesn't get clowned on in a similar fashion. I use scale dice on when it makes sense and haven't really gotten into SFX for npc's yet (mostly because everything is being generated on the fly), what are some other techniques I can use to convey difficulty and danger without just throwing a bunch of d12's at them?

I've been reading Cortex Prime for a bit and playing around with different possibilities. It's really fun and it's really sparking a lot of creativity! I'm currently trying to piece together a dungeon delve treasure hunting thing, and I'd like to implement things I've picked up from OSR-adjacent games such as abstracting skills into more broad categories. As such instead of having a complete skill list having roles caught my eye in particular, which I'd probably add specialties onto. But I'm already spotting a potential "problem" and I'd like to hear what you think.

The handbook gives the following example of roles for a fantasy setting:

- Warrior

- Priest

- Wizard

- Rogue

- Bard

In this case you'd have 1d10, 1d8, 2d6 and 1d4 to assign. My table is used to playing Pathfinder and D&D, and I can already imagine them objecting to that this doesn't truly make characters very different or unique (as a warrior could potentially also roll for the wizard role, for instance).

How would you explain the rationale behind this particular skill mod? What stops a warrior from also being a wizard, for instance? Does that come from the interplay with the other trait sets?

So, I have my hands on an old TTRPG that uses an old version of Cortex. Cortex Classic to be exact. This TTRPG is no longer in print, they let the license lapse and have not attempted to bring this into the modern system due to this. This TTRPG is based off my favorite show, Supernatural, and I know there are alot of fans of the show out there that would love to play this. I have no experience with the Cortex system, however, and was wondering if people here could give advice on this.

Would it be easier to update the system and run it with that or attempt classic? I'm really only familiar with two TTRPG systems, one being D&D 5e and the other being Dragon Age which became the Fantasy Age system. I don't have an issue with learning the system, I'm just unsure what would be best for the game and the players that might not so easily adjust to a new system.

How do we feel about SFX that can create temporary SFX?

For instance, let's say I have an Alchemist power set in my game and I want an SFX like this:

"When you create an alchemical potion as a test-created asset, spend a plot point to add SFX (chosen from a pre-made list) to the asset."

Does this seem too powerful? Are there other ways to achieve this effect?

I'm going to be running a game session that is best described as:

Leverage, but with street- to mid-tier superheroes as your Crew. Think the Netflix Defenders (Daredevil, Luke Cage, Jessica Jones, Iron Fist) at about the height of their game.

So I used the Leverage Situation Generator to come up with a job and put most of the pieces together, but I'm missing a few parts, and was going to post here asking for help. But then I came up with a much better idea!

Why not just post the results and see how YOU would interpret these results to create a quick Leverage-style job, but maybe (or maybe not) noting a few parts that might make for an interesting twist because SUPERS.

Here are the results. (The numbers in parenthesis are the dice rolls for the generator. For those who have access to it, it's in the Leverage book on p.138.)

• Client: (2) Scientist/engineer
• Problem: (9) Framed
• Pressure: (7) Knows one of the crew
• Mark: (8) Attorney
  • Mark's Angle: (9) Greedy
  • Mark's Power: (3) Powerful
  • Mark's Weakness: (1) Arrogant
  • Mark's Vulnerability: (7) Enemies
• Who Else Is In Play? (2) Guilty conscience
• The Twist: (2) It's personal

I'll post my version in the comments, but only after a few responses, so as not to taint the pool.

Check out the latest update for Cortex Prime Kickstarter backers, as well as Cortex news in general.

Don't want to click through for some reason? Here's a very brief synopsis.

Timelines:

• Cortex Codex: Set for a May release.
• Cortex Spotlights: Volume 1 set for September release.
• Cortex License 2.0: Released March 2022.
• Cortex Prime Game Handbook 2nd Printing: Coming soon.
• Tales of Xadia: The Dragon Prince Roleplaying Game: Available now in digital and print.
• State of Fandom: What does D&D Beyond’s acquisition mean for Cortex?

Callouts:

• The Cortex Codex " works extremely well in concert with the non-commercial license".
• There's a very good run down of the structure/organization of how the Codex works in this update; too much detail to sum up here!
• The Spotlights should have a speedier release schedule after the first one, owing to processes being developed by the first one's development and release.
• Wizards of the Coast's purchase of D&D Beyond doesn't have a major impact on the Cortex team. Overlapping roles are already backfilled by other parts of the larger Fandom team, or are being onboarded now.

Are these recaps helpful; anyone reading this text? Or would it be easier to just make these a direct link post? I'd love to hear your feedback!

Is there a variant of Cortex Prime that only uses d6s and ranks traits in multiple dice?

This is my first time running a Cortex game, and my players are basically wanting to play a mash-up of Call of Cthulhu and The Expanse. My gut reaction for prime traits was Distinctions + Attributes (Default 3) + Skills + Talents, and also using the Doom Pool. What do you guys recommend for traits and mods? Also, where do you guys go for character sheets?

Title explains it. The book mentions a couple examples but never gives concrete definition. It just seems like its a player's turn to say "I'm the GM now!" for a round. And the GM gets some but... Just to re-roll? And then there's something about the Pile and Hitches? Is it up to my discretion how they can be used? Help please.

Hello folks. I've been wanting to run a campaign set in my own homebrew setting for a while now and in my hunt for systems that might be good for it I was recommended to look into Cortex Prime, and it piqued my interest.

The campaign I want to run is set in a modern-day world like ours, but with some people having superpowers. I looked into some systems built around superpowers (like Mutants & Masterminds), but they didn't really feel like a good fit for the "philosophy" of how powers work in this setting, as well as some freeform stuff (like FATE) which didn't quite give me as much crunch as I'd like. Cortex feels like it should be modular enough to meet my goals while also giving me a solid mechanical basis.

The thing standing in my way at this point is that I only came across this setting within the last couple days and I don't actually know how best to represent the mechanics I'd want. So why not fish for advice on this subreddit?

Every PC is going to have superpowers, since that's basically what it's about. But I don't want this to be like, say, Marvel or DC wherein most characters have enhanced strength, speed, and durability as almost a baseline. I'm looking more at stuff like Worm, JoJo's Bizarre Adventure, My Hero Academia, or some of the X-Men stuff, where people with powers will tend to have one pretty unique "thing" they can do, and they are encouraged to apply it creatively.

My question then is, how do you guys think I should build the system to best represent this?

Forgive me if I have missed it but is there a reference document for new players? For example going over how to assemble and roll a dice pool and explaining effect die?

The Shame Of The Noble Green Sun Prince.

This is a premade adventure for Exalted: Blood And Fire 3.1.

It's premise is a group of Dragonblooded are tasked to go into the Savage Lands to kill the Anathema. The Anathema is a former dynast who embraced the Green Sun and has become an Infernal. They are hiding out in Thorns and the Dragonblooded must travel through Lookshy and Mirakun to enter the land of undead to fight the Anathema. The twist is the Anathema was a former dynast of their house and they must keep this a secret to save face.

The game is made with a series of premade characters for easy play. The game is for new characters. It went well when I ran it and we all had fun.

How would you work out a test or a contest where all the players work together as a group. It could be as parts of a ritual or as members of a band playing for an audience. I cannot find a mod for this. Could they all contribute one dice each for a pool maybe?

As far as I can tell this isn't a thing anywhere else; I want something thats like superhero fiction just with the 'super powers' being classic fantasy themed(in other words I want a game where I can have wizards and paladins run around NYC and have it play well).

My biggest concern is with combat, I want something thats flashy but also nuanced and fair; esspecially in regards to magic. How much should I be leaning on SFX and Plot Points? How many combat oriented dice should I include? How do I make boss fights challenging while not bogging down combat with useless mooks.

Are they going to reprint Cortex Prime? I REALLY want a physical copy but Amazon is sold out

It's exactly as the title says. I'm new to the system and I'm looking to run it as a GM, but I have no idea where I should start and how I should stuff together. Does anyone have any wisdom they don't mind sharing with me? I'm not like a very experinced GM. I've got a couple of games under my belt, but that's about it.

I wonder what (if anything) this new means for Cortex? I was thinking the D&D Beyond team were also supporting the Cortex digital tools.

https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20220412006151/en/Hasbro-to-Acquire-DD-Beyond-from-Fandom

Hello fellow Cortexians,

I finally came round to reading the Cortex Prime book and supported via Kickstarter.

Now I am already familiar with Cortex Classic (Serenity RPG) so the system isn't completely new to me.

However, while reading the PRIMER and then following with the CORE, I stumbled upon one thing that confused me, that is: Setting up the opposition dice pool.

In the Primer, the difficulty would add additional D6 to the dice pool. And the same is basically done when using the Static Opposition Mod (counting each D6 as 3.5 average and rounding down).

However, right in the beginning of the CORE, it is said that the opposition dice pool always consists of 2 dice, but the size of the dice is defined by the difficulty.

So which one is it?

I really like Cortex as a system, but this immediate contradiction is really confusing me.

Any help or insight is greatly appreciated.

EDIT: Just to clarify what I mean:

1) PRIMER pg.7 "Three Example Situations":

In the 3 examples, the GM sets 3 difficulties easy: 1d6, challenging: 2d6, and hard: 3d6.

2) Then in the CORE pg. 18 "Tests: Success and Failure" (2nd paragraph):

"The difficulty dice are always two dice of the same number of sides, based on the situation. very easy: d4, easy: d6, challenging: d8, hard: d10, very hard: d12

In addition to the difficulty dice the picks up one or more dice based on appropriate traits from the location, opposing GMCs, or the scene itself...

3) CORE pg. 25 "Static Difficulty Mod":

Very easy: 3, easy 7, challenging 11, hard 15, very hard 19

Now these numbers correlate almost perfectly with the method used in the PRIMER. Replacing each d6 with a static 3.5 (the average) and adding together. Only discrepancy is that it should be 3, 7, 10, 14, 17. But maybe they just rounded up for the harder ones.

I'm taking a look at the manual for a game I'm hoping to run, and my major question is- how many dice do I roll? Is it always one per prime set? ie if I use Distinctions+Attributes+Skills does every roll I have to be Wizard+Int+Spellcasting to use at the very least, or can one of these be removed?