Action! System 2.0 Kickstarter now live!
The Kickstarter campaign for the Action! System™ 2.0 is now live!
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/neonnecromancergames/action-system-20
The Action! System™ was the second commercially-supported set of tabletop RPG rules ever to be published under the first edition of the Open Game License (OGL). It was originally released by Gold Rush Games in 2001 and used by multiple publishers between the years 2001 and 2005. It is a generic system that was designed to be incredibly similar to a variety of late-90s RPGs, specifically to ones that were used in anime RPGs.
After using it for our home games starting in 2013, Neon Necromancer Games finally bought the rights to it in 2020 intending to publish a second edition for its twentieth anniversary and then, well… *gestures broadly to the news events of the past couple years*.
Now that a certain company is being evil [censored]holes about the Open Game License, we feel it is necessary to revive this OGL pioneer. The Action! System was an entirely new creation upon release, with no text taken from other “system references”. The intention is that A!S 2.0 will be released both under the original OGL 1.0a as well as Paizo’s new Open RPG Creative License (ORC) once it is ready and released. (In the event that the ORC license sucks we will also release it under another open license, such as Community Commons.)
We want to put out a professional quality rulebook for the second edition of the Action! System. For this we need artists, and artists require money for their art.
The primary output of this project is:
▶ Action! System™ 2.0 Core Rules: a book of the updated rules. Available as a printed book or a PDF. Estimated to be approx. 120 pages, softcover with full-color art inside commissioned specifically for it.
The Action! System is a universal, class- and level-less, attribute + skill + 3d6 system. It’s a meat-and-potatoes system without any gameplay gimmicks such as special dice, dice pools, etc.
The art style we are trying to go for will be ’90s anime and manga. While it is not an “anime game”, this is the art theme we think will work best with its multi-genre and late-90s ethos.
Fulfillment for the book will almost certainly be through OneBookshelf/DriveThruRPG, since they are reputable, easy to use, and well-known in the hobby.
In addition to the book, we will eventually be distributing free electronic copies of just the rules without art for public and professional use. We want other publishers to use the Action! System if we can get this book completed and out to the public.
Why do we—and by extension you, the discerning role-playing game consumer—care about this specific set of rules enough to try and publish a new edition?
A couple reasons:
▶ Preference. We think it’s actually a pretty good system. We prefer the Action! System to other generic systems, both from when it was first released until now. It’s more generic than others but still has some “crunch” in its combat, unlike a lot of the free-form narrative based games that have become popular in indie circles recently. This allows it to be used in different types of games—more specifically games that transcend more than one genre. So you can have your epic pulp fantasy hero smite hordes of robots without ignoring an entire block of core stats that are clearly only there for computer hacking or gun play. It’s cohesive and consistent. Everything feels like it has a purpose and nothing feels shoehorned in.
▶ Disappointment. We feel the newer versions of the systems closest to the Action! System have let us down recently. Specifically, Hero System (used in Champions), Interlock (used in Cyberpunk Red), and Tri-Stat (used in Big Eyes, Small Mouth) have disappointed us in different ways in their newer releases. Updating this classic system let us fix what we think needed fixing.
▶ Unabashed nostalgia. We were all nerdy teenagers at the turn of the millennium. Fantasy gaming’s “Old School Revival” was all about recreating fantasy gaming from the ’80’s, but our nostalgia is different. We remember gritty urban fantasy and hard sci-fi campaigns. We fought cyberpunk corporate hackers and then vampire soldiers using the same set of rules. We relished the ability to create the most specific characters we wanted from scratch (invariably based on whatever crappy movie or anime we rented that weekend) and then pit them against each other. Attributes should go from 1 to 10, every roll should include Attr + Skill, and combat should be tactical and lethal!
