Getting Started

in Limitless Primitive (Alpha)

  I created Limitless after years of being a DM in Pathfinder and Dungeons and Dragon, seeing players and DMs struggle to make combat feel like more than a grind. As a gamer of the video and board game type, I knew that solving problems in game could be fun and rewarding if only given the appropriate framework. I think of the tension created in games like Pandemic and Forbidden Island, where with everyone working together, the games seemed to move quickly and were filled with tense moments - it felt like how combat should feel!   Another problem I notice happened before the game even started. Players would waffle on what heroes they wanted to create, torn between the story they wanted to tell and because of some mechanical deficiency that would hinder the team. Meanwhile, if the table had any min/maxxers, DMs had to struggle to deal with them, often at the penalty of the other players. It could be such a mess and sometimes immersion would be completely broken not because players could tell a good story, but because the system was too rigid in places.   The classes in traditional systems are archetypes and distillations of an ideal state by western authors like, J.R.R. Tolkien, Robert. E Howard, Fritz Leiber, among others. The issue here is that trying to make a dynamic class around a pre-conceived character who has the benefit of an author with complete control of the circumstance and knowledge how a heroes adventure will end doesn't fit very well for situations where anything can happen. That framework, in my opinion, leaves little room for players to create something really tailored to the story they want to play. With that in mind, I realized that if the players were part of the world building and had a pool of heroes from which to create stories, it could alleviate the concern of creating a single character that needed to be near perfect for whatever was thrown at them. After all, as the saying goes, "it takes a village."   Finally, I just simply had some gripes about how the systems worked. "Why can't magic users were armor?" "Where does bard magic come from?" "Why can't a person with magic cast a cantrip or two AND be proficient with a sword or bow?" and, for heaven's sake, "Bows require a LOT of strength!" So the Limitless system is also my attempt at a more realistic but no less fun ruleset for designing combative heroes. Players are completely free to pick how their character fight off the dangerous creatures trying to eat them and if they run out of spells or their weapon breaks, they have a reliable back up.   I've tried to do all of this pulling respectfully from multiple cultures around the world, not as a side additions but core to the world and system.   With all that said, I hope you enjoy my system and I would love to have your feedback in the forums, discord, or DM me directly on twitter!   Thank you and happy wordlbuilding.   ~ Makoto ~