Cortex Prime Game Handbook

Orc revolutionaries in love! Giant-sized mythic mecha! Swashbuckling cats in the far future! Hard-boiled and haunted police detectives! Whether you’re a fan of genres and genre mash-ups covering the full spectrum of RPG worlds and settings, or you’re just looking for a tabletop game system you can customize to your own specifications, Cortex Prime is primed for you. Includes three sample Spotlight settings ready to go: Eidolon Alpha, Hammerheads, and TRACE 2.0.

GAMEPLAY BASICS

• Narrative-focused traits and abilities that quickly bring your character and stories to life in ways that make sense for the genres you prefer.
• A simple dice-pool-based mechanic in which you add two of your dice results together and compare against an opposing roll. Uses polyhedral gaming dice of four, six, eight, ten, and twelve sides.
• Player-centered choices allow for flaws and limits to manifest when the player feels they’re most effective. “Hitches” (dice results of 1) generate interesting immediate complications and long-term player benefits.
• Session-based play recognizes that both one-shot stories and extended campaigns are made richer by focusing on the immediacy of what happens at the table—either in person or online.

Key Selling Points

• An exhaustive, award-winning tabletop roleplaying game system. Refined and redesigned for a new, digitally supported generation.
• Entirely modular and packed with advice, examples, and options. Build your own roleplaying game primed by Cortex using hundreds of mods, traits, and mechanics, using themes and genres you already know and love.
• Flagship evergreen product with full digital support. Cortex has existed in one form or another for over twenty years, powering multiple licensed roleplaying games. Two exciting new games have already been announced for 2021: Tales of Xadia: The Dragon Prince Roleplaying Game and Legends of Grayskull: The Masters of the Universe Roleplaying Game.
• Designed by Cam Banks, lead designer of Marvel Heroic Roleplaying, Smallville, and Leverage; lead developer of more than fifty RPG sourcebooks and supplements; and winner of multiple ENnie and Origins awards.