The Aurora RPG Engine is a core resolution system designed to form the heart of a complete role-playing game system toolkit. With genuine advantages for play, it can be the foundation for many different games and campaigns, suiting their genre, tone, feel, and playstyle while supporting both crunchy and narrative mechanics for excitement and storytelling delight.
It’s been a multi-year journey in the making, and I’m chuffed and giddy and just a bit nervous to share it all with you. But I can’t wait to see what you all think and, even more so, what you do with it and the games and awesome times and stories it supports.
Thank you for reading, and may Aurora inspire your next great campaign. (Update: Scroll down to find an example RPG using the engine.)
Intentions, Advantages, and the Core Resolution Engine
Base Underpinnings and Dice Pool
Fixed Target Number and Difficulty as Dice Modifiers
Baseline Values and an Aside on Probabilities
Handling Difficulty and Modifiers
The “Extra Die” Beauty: Creating a Margin of Success
Additional and Common Subsystems and Considerations
Postscript – Breaking the Core Mechanic (In a Good Way)
Postscript – Further Probabilities, Hidden Rolls, And Discoveries
Download the complete Aurora RPG Core Resolution Engine PDF
An more ‘complete’ set of RPG rules, this example demonstrates how the Aurora RPG Engine can be used and to demonstrate some of the core engine’s ideas, advantages, and creative oomph! Includes character creation, the core resolution system and skill tests, and a small portion of conflict rules to illustrate how the Margin of Success system interfaces feeds into it. (Future expansion will add character growth, advanced resolution systems, and the complete conflict module.)
Download the Aurora RPG – Example A PDF
The Aurora RPG Engine is released under a CC0 license.
Technically, the above is not strictly necessary as in many countries games rules are not copyrightable. And, certainly, I am standing on the shoulders of giants, both building from and borrowing from many other games over the years. I include it just to be clear that you are free to take and use this RPG core engine however you wish. I hope it proves to be wonderful for you and helps you create an amazing campaign!
That said, if you would like to use the Aurora RPG Engine in your game, I would love it if you would let me know, and be delighted if you included attribution to me, Oliver “Kannik” Bollmann. And if it will be published, I’d love it even more if you’d involve me in the project! Either way, if you’d like to contact me please use any of the contact means listed in the sidebar to the right.
The Aurora RPG – Example A is released is released under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (“CC BY 4.0”) available at here.
You are free to use this content in any manner permitted by that license as long as you include the following attribution statement in your own work:
“This work includes material from the Aurora RPG – Example A by Oliver “Kannik” Bollmann available at https://lynxthoughts.com/aurora. It is used here under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (“CC BY 4.0”) available at https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/legalcode”
If you’d like to use Aurora in designing your game, I would love it if you would let me know, and doubly so if you’d be interested in involving me in the project! Either way, if you’d like to contact me please use any of the contact means listed in the sidebar to the right.
Thank you and happy gaming!
Lynx Thoughts 