Frukathka said:
The best free taste of ORE probably comes from
Nemesis, an adaptation of the system suitable for use in horror games set in modern settings (mainly modern
Call of Cthulhu). It's short and to the point, self-contained, and apart from the ORE itself it includes a slightly altered form of the "madness meters" that were originally part of Greg Stolze and John Tynes'
Unknown Armies RPG (Stolze is, by the way, the creator of the ORE engine).
Nemesis can be downloaded freely from the
Project NEMESIS webpage located here:
http://www.nemesis-system.com/
You have to register to download it, but the process is quick and painless (and I've never received any spam from them). There are many other goodies in there, but I would recommend checking
Nemesis first.
A very basic rundown of the system: it uses only d10s. Characters' stats (attributes and skills, mainly) are defined in terms of dice; ie. you could have a Body stat of 3d, meaning three dice. When the characters attempt any action, players roll a pool of dice that usually comes from adding the relevant attribute and skill, and look for matches -- ie. dice that come up with the same number. So if you roll 6 dice and come up with 2, 4, 4, 4, 7 and 8 you have a "match" of three 4s, which in ORE terms is called "3x4". 3 (number of dice that match) is the "width" of the roll, while 4 (number in the dice) is the "height". Very roughly, width represents how quickly you do things, while height represents how well you perform.
The whole idea behind the ORE system is getting as much information as possible from every single roll of the dice; for example, if you hit somebody in combat, your attack rolls also tells you how fast you attacked, how hard you hit, and where exactly in your opponent's body you struck the blow -- all at the same time and from a single glance at the result.
A little tidbit that I find very interesting: in combat there's no initiative
per se; everybody declares first what they want to do, and then roll their appropiate dice pools. Those who get matches get to do what they want, but the *widest* rolls go first (they are faster) and can affect the slower actions. For example, you can declare that you are going to roll for cover behind a table, and may roll a 2x10 match for it -- which means you perform the action flawlessly, but are not particularly quick about it. If a guy is shooting at you and gets a 3x1 result, his shot is going to hit you before you have the chance to perform your action -- yeah, his dice only showed "ones" while yours showed "tens", so his shot was poorly aimed; but still, his match was "wider" (three matching dice versus your two), so he got you before you could avoid it. Very elegant, IMHO.
There's a lot more to it, of course -- different types of dice (some of which you can "set" to a number before the roll, which is very handy), handling multiple actions, hit locations, physical and mental health, etc., but since it's free (in its
Nemesis form, at least) you can check it out for yourself.
