CyberORE:Main Page
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Introduction
The One Role Engine
Most in-game actions are handled in one of two ways: Either the GM (the Game Master, or referee; the person running the game) tells you whether or not it works and that’s that, or you roll a few dice to see if it works.
For an action that’s not particularly challenging or important, or if you have plenty of time to work on it until you get it right, you don’t need to roll. The GM will tell you what happens based on the circumstances and what your character can do.
For an action that’s both challenging and important, roll the dice to see if you succeed. In most cases, the action is based on a stat rated from 1 die (abbreviated 1d) to 5 dice (abbreviated 5d) added to a skill rated from 0 dice to 5d.
Stats & Skills
Each character has six stats: Body, Coordination, Sense, Brains, Command, and Cool. Each stat has at least 1d and no more than 5d.
Each character also has a number of skills, which are specialized applications of stats.
Each skill has an associated stat—the Piloting skill with Coordination, for instance. Add the stat and skill dice together to get your dice pool, or how many dice to roll.
Resolving Rolls: Height & Width
When you roll, look for matching sets: dice that come up the same. If you have any matching sets in your roll, the action succeeds. If you don’t roll any matching sets, your attempt fails.
You can gauge how well your action succeeds by looking at the matching set: the higher the matching number, and the more dice that came up matching, the better.
What number is on the matching dice? That’s the height of your roll. The higher the roll, the more effective your action. The lowest possible height, 1, means you just barely succeeded. The highest possible roll, 10, means you succeeded spectacularly well.
How many matching dice did you roll? That’s the width of your roll. The wider the roll, the more speed and power you put into the action.
We abbreviate the results as “width x height”—so if three dice come up “5,” that’s 3x5. If two dice come up “7,” it’s 2x7.
What Kind of Failure?
A failed roll is worse than usual if you roll all low dice; instead of just missing the turn, for instance, you might crash your speeder into a building. The results are up to the GM.
Hard Dice and Wiggle Dice
Normally you just roll dice and use whatever number comes up. But some characters have special kinds of dice that work a little differently.
- Hard dice (hd) represent raw power or an intense but poorly controlled effect. They’re powerful but inflexible. A hard die is automatically set to “10.” You don’t even need to roll it; just set it at 10 and roll the normal dice to go along with it.
- Wiggle dice (wd) represent complete mastery and instinctive control. A wiggle die can be set to whatever number you want, after you roll your other dice. That means you can have a matching set whenever you want, even with only one other die.
Difficulty
If an action is particularly challenging, it may not be enough just to make a successful roll. You may need to roll higher than a certain number to succeed. This is the difficulty of the action. If your roll’s height doesn’t equal or beat the Difficulty, it fails.
Penalty Dice and Bonus Dice
Sometimes when circumstances make an action particularly difficult and uncontrolled, or when you attempt a particularly difficult action, you don’t have to beat a Difficulty number—you actually lose a die from your pool. This is a serious penalty for most characters, especially those with small dice pools. If you have hard dice or wiggle dice, you lose them in this order:
- Drop hard dice first (they’re inflexible, remember), then normal dice, then wiggle dice.
By the same token, if an action is easier than usual but still requires a roll, you might add 1d or even 2d to the dice pool.
Dynamic Contests
Sometimes your action is directly opposed by another character’s action. Say you’re running a race—only one can come in first. We call that a dynamic contest.
In a dynamic contest, the wider roll goes first and takes effect as normal. The roll that goes afterward—was less wide—must beat the wider roll’s height as a Difficulty number.
If it doesn’t matter who goes first, or if width is a tie, just look at the height of the rolls; the higher roll wins.
Multiple Actions and Multiple Sets
Want to do two challenging things at the same time? Easy. If you roll an extra matching set, you can use it on an extra action with no penalty—but only if your extra action has a dice pool equal to or larger than that of your primary action, and only if the two actions are mutually compatible.
When in doubt, ask the GM.
