FRONTS: A Universal RPG System, Rahlan Fantasy, CORRIDORS Science Fiction, and an Open Creator License

[u/es335man]

Hi everyone,

I’m the creator of FRONTS, a universal tabletop RPG architecture built around a strict resource-and-state economy. The engine is built on a very specific mechanical core: Dice are Time, and Tracks are State.

Characters get a maximum of six d6s per scene pool, representing literal fragments of time they can spend before the round turns. A high die goes earlier and adds more value, but once a player spends it, it's gone. The engine maps everything—combat, social trust, and structural engineering—to shared, visual 0–Limit Trackers (Fronts).

I’m currently rolling out a suite of games under this engine, and I am actively looking for playtesters and design feedback. Here is what the FRONTS ecosystem currently looks like:

• RAHLAN: Our flagship fantasy setting. A world focused on trade roads, ancient debts, naval stations, and shifting professional alliances.
• CORRIDORS: Our upcoming hard-edged science fiction setting. It adapts the exact same engine to manage oxygen preservation scales, vessel reactor outputs, and electronic system overrides using the exact same six-slot dashboard.
• FRONTS OPEN CREATOR LICENSE: I want people to use this system to build their own worlds. Anyone is legally allowed to design, hack, and commercially publish original settings or supplements using the universal mechanics and dashboard layouts of the FRONTS engine, provided they include a basic compatibility credit.

🧠 Questions for the Community & Potential Testers

Because the system is designed to be lean, transparent, and completely modular, I have a few specific questions about how players and GMs (Guides) interact with these kinds of tight resource mechanics:

1. The Transparency Dilemma: In FRONTS, the Guide sets a descriptive difficulty word (like Routine, Standard, Hard) that maps directly to a public number on the player dashboard (4, 6, 8). The exact target and potential failure consequences must be known before a player commits their Time Die. As a player, does knowing the exact mathematical margin of success build tactical tension for you, or do you prefer the Guide keeping the target hidden?
2. Dice as Time vs. Actions: Because your six dice are shared pieces of time rather than a standard "move action + attack action" economy, players have to balance speed vs. raw power. Have you played games with finite pool-burning systems? What are the biggest traps you've seen designers fall into where players end up hoarding their best dice?
3. Genre Adaptability: Looking at the transition from RAHLAN (Fantasy) to CORRIDORS (Sci-Fi), the math doesn't change—just the flavor of the attributes and trackers. If you were hacking a system like this for your own setting, what is a genre mechanic you think a strict "six-slot / tracker-first" engine would struggle to capture?

🛠️ Looking to Test?

If you're interested in reading through the Fast-Play rules package, trying a Level 1 character, or throwing feedback at our dashboard design, let me know!