James Nicoll Reviews

Clarence Redd’s¹ The Comae Engine (V. 1.0) is a tabletop roleplaying game. First published in Beta in 2022, the most recent update came out in 2024.

The first thing buyers will notice on receiving the perfect-bound rulebook might be Axel Sauerwald’s striking cover art. The second would be the book’s length, or rather lack thereof. Comae is just fifty-four pages long. As they say, more words, deeper hole. Brevity can be strength.

Although The Comae Engine is of recent vintage, veteran tabletop role-players may be reminded of Chaosium’s venerable Basic Roleplaying (BRP). Not the current 264-page Basic Roleplaying: Universal Game Engine or the 384-page Big Gold Book that preceded BRUGE. Rather, Comae recalls the original sixteen-page BRP that came with the Worlds of Wonder box set.

It’s no surprise that the resemblance exists, as Comae belongs to the lineage of games descended from Chaosium’s RuneQuest, of which BRP was an early distillation. That said, there are dramatic differences between the core lineage of BRP-related games and Comae.

As developer Redd explains in the preface, while designing M‑Space he arrived at an interesting idea for conflict resolution, something he called conflict pools. In M‑Space, conflict pools were more or less shoehorned in. In Comae, they are the core of the game.

First: the negatives. Some pages are black with white printing, which is harder for me to read. At least the paper isn’t glossy. There is no index, which meant that it was harder for me to determine if I was overlooking elements because of the stupid manner in which I read unfamiliar TTRPGs² or because they were not there. The rules as presented are sufficient for a mundane setting but lack rules for fantasy or science fiction embellishments.

All of which is more than balanced by the advantages of the lean rule set. Comae is an excellent introductory game for new gamers. The price is also low enough (as low as USD 4.95 for the PDF) that gamers will be willing to take a chance on something new. The game mechanics as written are fully functional in the realm they do cover. Comae’s BRP-lineage suggests that it should be easy to import such SF or fantasy elements as a specific campaign might require (elements either already worked out elsewhere or ginned up on the spot)³.

The Comae Engine is available here (DriveThru).

And now the fussy details!

There is no index!!!

Characters

There are no physical or mental characteristics as such. The game runs on skills. The first decision that players must make is to allocate predetermined percentile skill success odds (as provided in the rules) to specific skills. There are nine basic skills (Awareness, Combat, Cunning, Knowledge, Move, Science, Social, Tech, and Willpower). Player characters have enhanced success odds with seven of them⁴. Which seven is their choice.

Exactly how highly rated each skill is depends on whether the game master is running the most basic version of the rules or if they are using the optional focuses rule. In the first case, the percentile chance of success for skills is one skill at 70%, two at 50%, and four at 30%. In the second, one skill is rated at 50%, while the other six are rated at 30%. However, focuses — specific applications of the skills such as astronomy for science, for example, or deceit for social — have an additional 20% chance of success. The developer has provided options for gamers who prefer very short skill lists and also for those who prefer long skill lists.

Players then select two tags, which are life-experience-derived advantages such as high status, advanced gear, wealth, and so on.

Players then allocate or randomly roll the value of their four conflict pools: Body, Intelligence, Power, and Charisma. While these resemble conventional characteristics, they are actually much closer to hit points. They measure respectively one’s ability to withstand physical stress, intellectual stress, mental/magical stress, and social stress.

Next, each character gets either two or three luck points (determined by whether or not they selected the tag that provides an additional luck point). Luck points can be used to orchestrate various advantageous outcomes. They may well be what keeps a character alive. Players may use more luck points than they have… but there are consequences for doing this.

Finally, there is a straightforward experience system.

The resulting character will easily fit on an index card:

Conflicts

There are three ways in which task resolution is resolved. Simple challenges might involve a single percentile dice roll⁵, successful if the number rolled is equal to or under the relevant skill rating, which is expressed as a percentage. Two or more people attempting simple opposed tasks would both roll, with the higher successful roll prevailing.

More complicated challenges involve the mechanic around which the developer constructed his game. An extended struggle requires repeated skill checks by the involved characters. Success reduces the relevant conflict pool by an appropriate amount. The character whose pool is exhausted first loses the challenge. Because the four conflict pools cover four entirely different domains, the conflicts are not limited to combat. The system covers any situation where individuals have conflicting goals.

This straightforward system may be embellished with the use of lenses, effectively conflict strategies that confer benefits… with a price.

Other necessary elements — a simple weapons and armor list, environmental hazards, and such — are also covered.

NPCs

Finally, there is a quick and simple method of generating the non-player characters with whom the players interact.

1: The full credits are as follows:

Written by Clarence Redd

Game mechanics by Clarence Redd, Michael Larrimore, and William Yon

Design and layout by Clarence Redd

Cover art by Axel Sauerwald

Illustrations by Martin Bergquist, Huleeb and Clarence Redd

Special thanks to Pete Nash, Lawrence Whitaker, and Shawn Medero

2: The correct way to read rulebooks is to begin at the beginning and then read the text linearly. I flip back and forth. I don’t know why but I’ve always done this. The result is I am increasingly frustrated and baffled until suddenly, just after I almost give up, it all makes sense.

3: A quick comparison with Redd’s M‑Space, for example, reveals that whole sections are easily imported.

4: Technically, PCs have some experience with the last two skills as well, but only enough for a 5% chance of success.

5: Which is to say, by consulting either some source of random numbers between 1 and 100 (electronic method) OR two ten-sided-dice, one designated as the ones column and the other tens OR the abomination known as the hundred-sided die OR some possibility I have not thought of.