The ’Verses RPG System

’Verses is a streamlined, open, & extensible Table-top Role-Playing Game system created by humanist science-fiction & fantasy author K. N. Brindle.

Learn More About ’Verses Dive In to ’Verses & Get Playing Download ’Verses Resources

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Learn the core rules & features of ’Verses, and explore a library of skills, abilities, & gameplay elements that can apply to any setting.

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Adventure in an original fantasy world created by K. N. Brindle for the ’Verses RPG System.

Designed from the ground-up to work for any game setting in any genre.

A single set of easy-to-learn Core rules applicable to any setting capture most basic character actions and abilities
Made to be expanded into different universes, technology levels, & systems of magic as desired
Supports any genre of play, from fantasy to sci-fi; horror, steam-punk, & contemporary settings
An open rules system & technology scaling can model even the adventures of your favorite space-and-time-hopping bohemian professor

Dynamic & Fast-paced gameplay focusing on narrative and functional agency for players.

No rigid classes; Skill- and ability-focused character building for well-rounded & unique characters
Players manage their own characters' action economy through Action Dice
Advanced features like active defenses, action chaining, damage conversion, exhaustion binding, and others
Success margins allow a single roll to determine success & effects for fast moving play

Published under a Creative Commons CC BY license for maximum freedom to play, share, & extend.

’Verses Core is Free and open-source.
The ’Verses Core rules are published under CC BY 4.0, allowing anyone to read, use, extend, & play
Game Designers are free to build on top of ’Verses Core to share, publish, & sell their own Universes, supplementary Rules, & Adventures—the only requirement is attribution
No sign-ins, accounts, subscriptions, or monetization

An Example of Play

In this imagined exchange, Jamie and her three friends are playing an adventure in the Spellweavers universe.

Jamie The GM

Dave Filch the Burglar

Priya Bratha the Warrior

Tomoki Bix the Lifecaller

A small village has hired the party to search the northern moors for the source of creatures from the In-between that have been attacking the villagers

GM (Jamie): You set off to the north. There's a narrow trail for grazing livestock, but no road.

Bratha (Priya): We'll follow the trail for now.

Bix (Tomoki): I'm going to Call » Awareness of the In-Between, and continue it while we march.

As a Lifecaller, Bix is able to channel life force from the In-between, and uses that life force to power various abilities. "Awareness of the In-between" allows Bix to sense creatures that originate there.

Doing so is not free, however. Each use of this power incurs some Exhaustion, which limits Bix's ability to take action, unless she rests.

GM (Jamie): Okay. Go ahead and make the first roll.

Bix (Tomoki): Um, I have one die allocated to Call » Awareness, two in Channel Life, and... let's see, it also says I add in my Toughness attribute, that's two more, and I'll spend all five of my Action Dice.

’Verses is a Dice Pool system. Tests of capabilities are made by rolling several six-sided dice at once and counting the number of dice that roll successes (fives or sixes).

Tomoki rolls 10d6 with
Die 6

Bix (Tomoki): Nice! Five successes. I needed two to succeed at the Call, and leaving three more, that's a Success Margin of four. That gives me a forty meter radius of detection.

The Success Margin (SM) of a roll determines the degree of success.

GM (Jamie): You'll get some exhaustion doing that.

Bix (Tomoki): Yeah, with my two dice in Channel Life, I bind three AD into exhaustion. After I get the Call going, I'm going to rest to recover that exhaustion.

Exhaustion limits character action, but outside of Fast Action it's generally not necessary to track in detail. Here, the GM and Tomoki acknowledge the exhaustion, but keep the game moving.

Bix's awareness leads the party to a cave

GM (Jamie): As you approach the cave, you realize that there's a narrow opening in the stone, leading into the darkness. You think you can just all squeeze through it. Bix, you feel that sensation much more strongly here. As you get closer, you notice a rich, almost overpowering stench of foulness and decay emanating from the cave.

Filch (Dave): Um, how much are we getting paid again? I'm not sure I want to go down there.

Continue Reading the Example

About the

’Verses is a d6 dice-pool system with advanced features like a player-managed action economy, active defenses, action chaining, and social interaction modeling.

The idea for the ’Verses RPG System came indirectly from a reader of Common Accord. What would an "open world" exploration of the Common Accord universe be like?

From that spark came a set of simple rules which gradually expanded to encompass a variety of gameplay styles. Along the way, the rules evolved into the generic and universal system that is presented here.

About K. N. Brindle

K. N. Brindle played their first table-top roleplaying game in 1982 and was immediately hooked. They've played many, many, many different RPG systems across many different editions since.

They wrote A Memory of Blood and Magic, their first novel, while in grad school after leaving a 20+ year career in the software industry. They've since published three novels, including Common Accord, a "blue-collar space opera found-family heist."

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