TTRPG Roll 24-8 ~ Blood and Fury wargame leads to a new RPG vision with Vizor Roleplaying System v1.07 (Crenshupiter Networks, 2020)

How do you develop a character for your roleplaying games? Do you prefer the risky “Death in Character Generation” die-rolling used Classic Traveller or the Min/Max approach seemingly used in most every dungeon crawling adventure RPG? Point buy? Lifepaths? With so many choices and with each RPG system having its own peculiarities sometimes players need help developing a character, which is why your group might want to look at The VIZOR System.

Cold War visionary

Keith Tracton, designer of the soon-to-be-released wargame World at War 85: Blood and Fury (Lock n’ Load Publishing, forthcoming) took note of my recent spate of tabletop RPG postings and sent along a copy of a RPG that he was involved in (“Special Credit to Keith Tracton”). As he wrote in the email to me:

…attached is my roleplaying system (30 years in the making) that I gave to friends as they had ideas to add and the energy to publish it. 🙂
The system is only 18 pages long, and for good reason. It is a system that can be adapted to any genre.

Email from Keith Tracton, 14 Jan 2024

What Keith sent along is The VIZOR System. The VIZOR System was a Kickstarter campaign in 2020 that is now available for download from DriveThruRPG. In the Kickstarter campaign Crenshupiter Networks described VIZOR as: “A fast-play, rules-lite role playing system that encourages collective storytelling. Great for pick-up games, and for creative players!”

VIZOR vision

The VIZOR System is a rule-lite, collective storytelling roleplaying game. As the “infomercial” above shows, VIZOR is in many ways a rebuke to rules-heavy tabletop RPGs. That rebuke in VIZOR starts at character creation where the designers use a game mechanism they call Dynamic Character Creation. As the introduction of VIZOR explains:

Now there are some great RPG systems out there, but almost all of them force us to make choices and decisions about our character way too early — long before we’ve gotten to know the system or the world. Sometimes, the process of character creation just simply takes up so much valuable game time! So how can we model the process of character discovery dynamically, remove the time constraints for actual gameplay, and free our creative thinking and build a direct path to discovering our own complex characters as the story unfolds before us?

Vizor uses Dynamic Character Creation, a system which provides a basic core set of stats, simple guidelines for skills creation and acquisition during gameplay (WHAT?!?!), all using a percentile system which empowers all players to influence rolls and events in order to free our ability to tell a great story.

And here is the best part. No tables and no charts. Nothing to interrupt the flow of collective storytelling. We’re big believers in “the system should never get in the way of the story” and “you shouldn’t have to look anything up during game play.”

The VIZOR Roleplaying Game, Introduction

The VIZOR System consists of three parts delivered in an 18 page digital download. The first part is The VIZOR Roleplaying Game rules (13 pages), the second is a single-page character sheet, and the third is the Kickstarter bonus Vizorkhan rules for playing one-shot VIZOR adventures at conventions or the like. To play VIZOR you will also need a set of percentile dice for each player and GM as well as a deck of playing cards (Jokers included). Oh yeah, don’t forget to bring your imagination!

See yourself in VIZOR

In VIZOR Dynamic Character Creation players start with nothing more than a concept. From that point on the character is built in a collaborative storytelling manner. While the intent of character creation is to build a character the players imagine, the rules specifically note that are times that elements of a character must be negotiated with the GM.

While highly narrative and open to the imagination VIZOR still has some lite rule structures. Characters are defined by Basic Attributes (Brainpower, Strength, Dexterity, Presence, Stability, and Elan/Luck) with each rated using percentiles (50 – Average, 70 – Exceptional, 90 – World Class). There are also several Derived Attributes (Adaptability, Movement, Combat, and CORE).

There is no skills list in VIZOR. In keeping with the storytelling collaborative character development process (i.e. Dynamic Character Creation) skills are not defined as much as they are described. The core rules shows us this list of skills from a character in a game that lasted five years:

• Aim
• Flamboyancy
• Do you know who my father is?
• I have a tool for that
• Martial Arts

You also won’t find an ironmongery listing (or full supplement) in VIZOR. Equipment is denoted on Resource Cards which are tracked using 3×5 notecards. In keeping with the narrative storytelling approach of VIZOR resources are rated not by the specifics of what they can do but as to the importance, or influence, the character values them for the current game session. In a VIZOR session, for each Resource Card turns into an Influence Card that is drawn from a deck of standard playing cards. The Influence Cards in turn form a connection between player characters and the core game mechanism of VIZOR.

Seeing VIZOR in play

The designers of VIZOR obviously intend the game to be played during character development, though playing afterwards is also possible and encouraged. Pre-generated characters can be used; indeed, the Vizorkhan bonus recommends pre-generated characters (in a limited way) be used for conventions to jumpstart the action.

The core game mechanism is VIZOR is a percentile roll against a target number. That target number is based on the Attribute being called upon suitably modified by the GM to express the difficulty—or importance—of the test. The player’s goal is to roll as close to, but not over, the target number. How close the die roll is to the target number determines the degree of success (or failure). Players can use their Influence Cards to modify the die roll; different cards have different effects ranging from simply modifying the number rolled to forcing rerolls to even bringing about Heroic Moments.

VIZOR zero-day exploit

One of the problems I face when generating a character in almost any RPG is that I have a concept but it is never fleshed out enough when I crack open the rule book. This is exactly what VIZOR addresses (“…almost all of them force us to make choices and decisions about our character way too early — long before we’ve gotten to know the system or the world.). As I work through character creation I all too often must go back and restart, or even give up, because the character doesn’t turn out the way I imagined. This problem becomes worse—even overwhelming—when introducing players to a new game system. Those new players often have a concept of what they want to play, but lack the rules awareness to turn that concept into a playable character in that particular system.

In those cases it is useful to be able to make a more fully formed character first and then work to describe them in system terms rather than letting a (potentially unknown) rules system define your character, or worse find out that your character has some rules “flaw” that breaks your immersion in that game.¹ Avoiding these types of issues is exactly where The VIZOR System can help.

To me, The VIZOR System is highly suitable for use as a “Session Minus-Zero” tool to help players better define their characters before jumping into a particular gaming system. To better understand my position just take a look at what The VIZOR System tells us it is trying to do:

…the purpose of the Vizor System is to bring everyone together to tell great stories, have a bit of fun, and get creative with character development and gameplay.

Heroic Moments

Also:

As Players and GM(s) start discovering the details and subtleties of their characters, Attributes and Skills are created and adjusted, and perhaps even Resources are negotiated and developed.

VIZOR Gameplay

Imagine starting a new adventure by taking your prototype character concept through the Dynamic Character Creation process of The VIZOR System. Once complete, or at least to the point you feel the character is what you want to play, then go to your RPG game system of choice and generate that same VIZOR character using that game’s terms. The Basic Attributes, Skills and Resources from VIZOR provide you good “guidance” on how to generate the character’s attributes, skills, talents, specializations, stunts, ships, vehicles, mounts, equipment, weapons, armor, allies, enemies, and more. Now you have a character that you generated that you anxiously want to play.

For just a few dollars, VIZOR is the ticket to a clear vision of a RPG character for play in most any game system in every genre. Adding this title to your RPG toolkit is very likely to result in more playable characters at the gaming table, for enjoying your game is the ultimate purpose…which The VIZOR System can help with.

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1. Yes, I recognize that my beloved Classic Traveller or Cepheus Engine RPGs basically hand you a character that must be dealt with. That is a conceit of those games I am comfortable with. Other RPGs, however, are not designed that way and a “flawed” character is apt to become a liability in play rather than a source of inspirational adventure. ↩︎

Feature image courtesy Crenshupiter Networks

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