Essence20: The New RPG System Which Powers Hasbro Licensed Games

Renegade Game Studios announced last year that it would be making official tabletop RPGs of various Hasbro properties, including Power Rangers, GI Joe, and Transformers. This week, they revealed the d20-based Essence20 game system which will power those games. https://www.enworld.org/threads/rpg-for-power-rangers-coming.675103/ Elisa Teague from Renegade spoke to Forbes about the system...

Renegade Game Studios announced last year that it would be making official tabletop RPGs of various Hasbro properties, including Power Rangers, GI Joe, and Transformers. This week, they revealed the d20-based Essence20 game system which will power those games.

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Elisa Teague from Renegade spoke to Forbes about the system.

“The Essence20 Roleplaying System is a d20 based system that uses what I call a ‘fashion plate’ system for character design, drawing from three aspects: what type of person are they, what is their function as part of the team, and what experiences have they had in their life prior to becoming a hero?”


The system has three elements: Origin, Role, and Influence, and uses different dice for different skill levels.

"When rolling Skills Tests and Attack Rolls, a player will always roll a d20 plus the applicable die for the type of roll they are making, resulting in a total that must exceed the Skill Test’s Difficulty in order to succeed. Essence20 also includes a ladder mechanic, where if a character has specialized in a particular Skill, they may roll their Skill Die plus every other die type under it, choosing the highest die result to add to their d20 roll. A critical success is made when any Skill Die shows its highest number, giving a huge chance of rolling crits, mathematically, and of course, then being able to roleplay those epic results in the most heroic way possible!"



In Power Rangers, characters don't die. They can be defeated and taken out of combat, but the threats they face are not lethal. The core book covers the period of the show when Zordon was the Power Rangers' mentor. The main villains are Lord Zedd and Rita Repulsa.

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This weekend, at Renegade Con, they will reveal more information.
 

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Voadam

Legend
Sounds neat but a d20+ another die plus possibly a cascade of dice and keep the best of the non-d20 and look for max on each of those dice is going to be slower at the table than d20+ mod and look for a 20.
 

Voadam

Legend
I particularly like the don't die rule for heroic d20 games like the power rangers type genre.

As a kid in the 80s I remember a friend getting excited for D&D and playing a mid-level magic-user then being so turned off by dying on his first action (fireball blowback) that he never chose to play again.

I hope they have good options for handling the don't die situations.
 


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