Tell Me About Cortex Prime

[Umbran]

But as developers often do, they underestimate how much more complex something is for others. He still thinks "toolkit first".

Um, no.
Sovereign Stone, the first game on the first iteration of Cortex, came out in 1999.
Then there was Serenity (2005), Battlestar Galactica (2007) and Supernatural (2009).

Cam Banks was given the reins in 2009. He regularized the system, (calling it "Cortex Plus") and co-wrote the Smallville and Leverage games, published in 2010. Then came Marvel Heroic Roleplaying in 2012...

All this before a single toolkit.

Cortex Prime didn't come along until a kickstarter in 2017. Assertion that he thinks "toolkit first" do not stand up to how many Cortex games there were in the nearly two decades before Cortex Prime was designed from the precedents.

Also, that assertion doesn't hold up to how Prime contains three examples: Hammerheads, Trace 2.0, and Eidolon Alpha!

He overestimates how important a toolkit is / how easy it is to use. I bought Cortex Prime to support the system, but honestly I find the book pretty useless. I get soo much more value from Tales of Xadia. Even if I would make my own game, I would choose Tales of Xadia as a starting point, and not the toolbox.

Having a single implementation will tend to channel people's thoughts on what the bits of the system represent, while the extant examples - including the three in the Prime book - tell a different story about what you can do with the framework.

Thats what people make with 5E homebrews etc. Its a lot easier to start with a working game and tweak it than make a game by yourself.

Sure. But they are all pretty much D&D clones with tweaks. Cortex Prime teaches you to do a lot more than tweak Xadia.

Well Cortex Prime did also sell to some degree. What I say is that "Cortex Prime" should have just been Tales of Xadia without the Dragon Prince + some additional material about "how to homebrew it for different worlds" etc.

The problem with your argument is that they did also do Xadia. If what you want to do is tweak Xadia... there it is!

So, your complaint is really that ... they made the product you actually wanted second, rather than first? That's it? You weren't first?

Dont waste effort to make a toolkit.

Counterpoint: Creators should make what they want to make, and have a passion for. Following their passion is more important, and more likely to yield good results, than following the business advice of someone not in the business.

 

[Umbran]

OK, fair enough. Just seems like a factor thst limits uptake for the game.

Yeah, well, having any distinct style of its own "limits uptake" for a game. If you choose to do anything specific or different, there's someone who won't like it, right? That becomes an argument that everything should just be D&D, because everything else is "limiting".

The other side of the coin is that doing something different also drives uptake within the body of people who like that different thing, or are tired of the mainstream offering.

Yes, Cortex is not really built for the "game qua game" crowd. Nor is it for folks who want a physics engine. Cam admits Cortex is at its best when used as a genre emulator. So, choice of action should be less about odds and more about appropriateness for the character in the moment.

 

[Parmandur]

Yeah, well, having any distinct style of its own "limits uptake" for a game. If you choose to do anything specific or different, there's someone who won't like it, right? That becomes an argument that everything should just be D&D, because everything else is "limiting".

The other side of the coin is that doing something different also drives uptake within the body of people who like that different thing, or are tired of the mainstream offering.

Yes, Cortex is not really built for the "game qua game" crowd. Nor is it for folks who want a physics engine. Cam admits Cortex is at its best when used as a genre emulator. So, choice of action should be less about odds and more about appropriateness for the character in the moment.

As I said, I like the idea, but I'm a weirdo. I can't really see selling my friends and family on this as opposed to PbtA or the Free League house system.

 

[jian]

I'd be leery of trying to switch to some static bonuses, that gets the math really wonky (the Roll Many Keep 2 + die type for effect would be very disrupted by adding a non-die value). So I'd keep it only to the fixed difficulty number (or the hybrid of fixed for the base difficulty + dice for assets). The only thing is that without the base difficulty dice there's no chance for Opportunities (where the dice roll a 1) for the players to engage with, and so I need to review what Opportunities are possible and ensure they're covered in another way.

Yeah, I think you’re probably right. The question is when to even use any static bonuses - which Trait, when are they allowed, etc. I’d personally make them Skills (because they seem the trait most linked to competence) and make them +1 to +3 (trained, expert, master) but that would probably make Skills too good and people would always want to use them.

In MHR I toyed with making Specialities d6-3d6 for similar reasons but the maths isn’t great there either.

 

[Umbran]

As I said, I like the idea, but I'm a weirdo. I can't really see selling my friends and family on this as opposed to PbtA or the Free League house system.

Well, of course, not all games are for all people. We have different games to serve different tastes.

But the flip side of this is... a bit like kids and new foods, right? If you don't try it with an open mind, how do you really know you won't like it?

But, I work with a group that, while they have their preferences, are willing to at least try pretty much anything I put in front of them.

 

[Thomas Shey]

But the flip side of this is... a bit like kids and new foods, right? If you don't try it with an open mind, how do you really know you won't like it?

Well, after a certain point there's always "Looks a lot similar to a lot of other games I haven't liked" or "Has this feature that actively puts me off and I don't need to see it in play to know that."

 

[Umbran]

Well, after a certain point there's always "Looks a lot similar to a lot of other games I haven't liked"

Well, if you can name "a lot of games" that are similar to Cortex, I'd be interested in seeing that list.

 

[Kannik]

Cam Banks has said that the difficulty of estimating probabilities is a deliberate feature: it encourages building your pool of dice based on what you think is going on with your action in the scene, rather than trying to calculate probable outcomes.

-nodnods- Aye, I should clarify that when I talk about probabilities it comes more from the GM side for setting an appropriate (for the situation) level of opposition, both base + add ons and assets. I use the Icepool Prime calculator, and working to create a simple baseline chart that notes some die pools required to get a reliable chance of success for the baseline difficulty pools. Then I can also telegraph it better to the players as well.

And double aye, that it encourages immersion into the moment and not into a probabilities headmatrix (and thus, as noted before, sometimes characters making "sub-optimal" actions) is great.

 

[Thomas Shey]

Well, if you can name "a lot of games" that are similar to Cortex, I'd be interested in seeing that list.

I'm not talking about Cortex specifically. I ended up deciding that to get it to work right the Cortex toolkit seemed to require more work than I'm up for, but I was one of the backers of Prime.

That said, if you're looking at them the right way, I'm sure there are games that are similar to Cortex. Its just a question of what element(s) you might consider important. I mean, it could be as simple as someone who doesn't like dice pools.

 

[jian]

A lot of games are in the same space as Cortex but of course use very different mechanics. Fate is quite close, as is PbtA and Blades-like games, assuming you use whatever attributes work best narratively. Masks is a particularly fine implementation of PbtA, with its very narrative stats (Labels: Danger, Freak, Mundane, Saviour, Superior).

One I thought was good recently was Blue Sky Beam (free on itch.io) which is a very simple but functional supers system that reminds me of the simplest version of Cortex in the Cortex Plus Hacker’s Guide (“roll 2d6. Roll 3d6 and keep 2 if you’re good at something”).