Leap Engine RPG
LE RPG
Leap Engine is a ruleset for playing a role-playing game with your friends. One person acts as a Game Moderator (GM) while others experience the story as player characters (PCs). They lead the story in a direction of their choosing by narrating their characters’ actions. The GM controls non-player characters (NPCs) and presents different scenes, plots, twists, and drama for players to engage with. The name comes from the idea of focusing on the fun parts and leaping through the story to the next interesting situation. The aim is to avoid wasting precious time on minutiae, bookkeeping, and micromanagement.
The only things you need for play are a bunch of 6-sided dice and some pens and paper.
About
LE is a narrative-first kind of game. All rules needed for play fit on 40 player-facing pages, but the game doesn’t cut itself short when it comes to gameplay depth. Rules are simple and streamlined, but still flexible enough to allow for complex characters, actions, and situations.
The game is built for players’ agency and puts the depth of action resolution into their hands. Players can play it safe or, if that isn’t enough, escalate conflict and deal with consequences. This promotes meaningful decision making during play with choices that shape the world around you, sometimes directly and other times just subtly.
Rules
LE is a passion project, built on a simple premise that players should be in the drivers seat when it comes to how much their characters are willing to risk. Instead of getting a natural 20 or other specific numbers on their dice, players are the ones who decide which task is meaningful enough to risk critical consequences trying to achieve it.
The design choices behind the engine steer it towards stories about realistic characters; fragile and vulnerable but with heroic tendencies. Characters that are invested and connected with the world they occupy. Story, theme, and flavour are yours to create, while the engine provides you with the means to do so.
GM First
The Engine tries to simplify and streamline the game as much as possible, especially on the GM side. Preparation is helpful but not a requirement to lead a fun and interesting game. The players will, inevitably, create complications for themselves and give the GM an opportunity to build on that.
The game is made with the goal of making GM’s life easier. The better part of the document covers numerous procedures and helpers to support the GM in adjudicating the game. The rules are player-facing and invite them to be proactive and bring complications onto themselves, leaving the GM free to focus on embracing the story and players’ decisions.
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Click the above button to download the current version of the core rules (0.9.6). This version is tested and ready for play, but it could use more eyes on it. So if you have any feedback, good or bad, please send it my way at mats.madison@gmail.com.
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