Explanation...
If you don't know what a roleplaying game is, find somebody to explain it
to you, because that's hard to do on a couple of lines of text here. I can
recommend trying one to everybody; in my experience most people like them.
So, that's what Simplex is - a roleplaying game. It
was originally written in Dutch but there's an English translation here.
The aims of Simplex are simplicity, realism, and development. As with all
roleplaying games, it also calls for fantasy and improvisation.
Simplicity - the number of rules and amount of dice rolling is kept
to a minimum. This simplicity also accounts for the great flexibility of the
system. All rules work more or less the same, so it should be easy for
beginners to understand. Character creation is easy even for those who never
played a roleplaying game before. Realism - the world is one of fantasy and magic, but within those
limits it's supposed to be realistic. This means the rules should be
balanced, and that logical things happen. This also means that combat is
very lethal, as you're not likely to survive half a dozen of sword hits. Development - your character starts out weak but gets the option of
improving every session by gaining experience. I've noticed my players
looking ahead to see what they were going to specialize in next time. They
are also encouraged to be creative, as they can add own inventions of skills,
traits, spells or equipment to the game at any point.
The system does call for a slightly experienced GM (game master) because he
will have to improvise to fill in some details. The system only explains how
one succeeds in a 'difficult' task, not exactly which tasks are considered
difficult. If you want detailed rules on the percentile chance of hitting a
ten point seventy-three yard dragon on the left front teeth with a massive
steel axe, you should take another system.
Thanks to Anata, Bruth, Eelke, Fey, Grumpf, Gwaeron, Joris, Las, Lyth, Mar,
Marcus, Marijke, Martijn, Martin, Molly, Mieke, Paul and Sauli for testing.
Legal Notice:
Simplex is copyright 1998, 1999 by Pieter Simoons. It may be freely
copied and distributed by any means desired. This legal notice must
be included with each copy of Simplex. No charge may be made for Simplex
without written permission from the author.
A publisher who wishes to include Simplex in a book of copyrighted
source material or adventures may not do so without express written
permission from the author.
The author (i.e. me) would appreciate to hear from anybody who reads and/or
uses this work.
This is version 0.2 beta. The previous unnumbered version was 0.1.
Index
Index