You Have The Power! New Masters of the Universe RPG!

Legends of Grayskull is an upcoming tabletop RPG based on the 1980s Masters of the Universe cartoon show.

The game is being produced by Fandom (the owners of D&D Beyond) who announced a Dragon Prince RPG just a week ago. Like the latter, it will use the Cortex Prime system, which the company acquired from Margaret Weis Productions last year, and it's coming out in 2021, with public playtesting in advance of release. It's a 250-page hardcover book with pull-out maps.

"In the Legends of Grayskull tabletop roleplaying game, players can customize or create characters to overcome high-stakes challenges and find epic fun in Eternia, a world where magic meets technology. The experience brings together the core roleplaying game, a digital companion and toolset, a community content creation and sharing platform, and an organized play program that gives fans the opportunity to participate in a connected, living story with other players around the world."

 

[Cam Banks]

Cortex uses opposed rolls by default, it's one of the things that makes the system work the way it does. It doesn't really slow things down. Most of the time a 5e combat takes much longer than its equivalent in Cortex, because the rolls in Cortex generally cover a lot more or handle a lot more than the many swings and misses of d20+bonus vs AC in 5e. It can certainly look like there's a lot going on, but all we're doing is rolling dice and adding two numbers. Sometimes you fiddle with the dice. The rules are pretty smooth, play-wise.

It's even easier when you have those fancy digital characters and dice to do much of the work for you.

Cheers,
Cam

 

[doctorbadwolf]

Please, do not laugh, but this was a thing in the 80s. Super cheesy and not channeling Masters of the Universe.

View attachment 124589

It absolutely channels MoTU!

 

[Aaron L]

Abso-FREAKING-lutely!

My love of Fantasy and Sci-Fi and D&D are all tied in together with my early love of Masters of the Universe. It is a wonderful Weird Fiction seting, mixing magic and superscience, with laser blasters and dragons and space travel and an evil skull-faced wizard who has a legion of robotic soldiers

 

[aramis erak]

In the Leverage Cortex+ game, the character has just Attribute and Role, as opposed to the Affiliation, Distinction, and possibly multiple Powers, seen in MHRP.

Actually, it also has distinctions (see p 10 & 33), Assets, and Complications (p 10).

Every released-by-MWP CortexPlus game I've seen¹ used distinctions and at least 2 other ratings as default minima, with gear of some kind often adding a fourth. So, in all flavors, you're rolling at least 3 dice — and one of them is either a d4 or a d8, as those are the options for distinction.

¹: Smallville, Leverage, MHRP, Firefly, and the preview for Dragon Brigade, as well as the hackers guide's core approaches.

 

[aramis erak]

My family loves that show too. I was wondering if this RPG would work as well for She-Ra. I didn’t watch the original shows, so I don’t know how similar they are.

They have multiple crossover episodes, similar tone, but She-Ra emphasising female leads.

Unless the guys doing it are seriously retrogressive¹, it should do both equally well.

I'll note that She-Ra's writers sometimes produced more nuanced content than He-Man's.

-=-=-=-=-=-
¹: Cam's one of the more woke-culture-embracing folks I've encountered online, so that's extremely unlikely.

 

[Aldarc]

That is an excellent point, unfortunately, I prefer games with hit points and generally won't run games without them. This could be the exception though.

"Life points" are discussed as an option in the Cortex Prime handbook that went out to backers (p. 43 for those who have the pdf).

 

[Tonguez]

Is that my cue? I saw these images on the Cortex Discord of one of the player characters:

Affinities/Attributes:

Spoiler

Machines, Magic, Might, Mind, Mischief, Mobility, Mystery

Distinctions:

Spoiler

Abilities? SFX:

Spoiler

Assets:

Spoiler

Having now looked into Cortex, I think I much happier to use Fate Accelerated since it appears to do the same thing with less complexity than the effect die and hitches of Cortex do.

Approaches - Aspects - Stunts - Modes do they same thing as the Cortext structure does especially as the Affinities easily substitute for Approaches.

I also think that Fates four actions and adverb system and simpler dice roles makes for better play in MoTU.

 

[Aldarc]

Again, if you would prefer FAE, then Masters of Umdaar is already available.

 

[Tonguez]

Again, if you would prefer FAE, then Masters of Umdaar is already available.

Yup, just been and downloaded it
I do like the bioforms, expecially with the generator here and the cliffhangers too

 

[Sunsword]

"Life points" are discussed as an option in the Cortex Prime handbook that went out to backers (p. 43 for those who have the pdf).

Thanks for the heads up.