TL;DR: This post converts Dexter Magic to Cortex Prime, from a previous conversion of Castle Falkenstein’s Sorcery to Dexter Magic—but everything could apply to any magic system. A while ago, Dexter Dunbar from the Fate Core | Accelerated RPG FB group left a comment about a post and was nice enough to let me develop a Fate hack…
Author: The Polverine
I'm a philosopher, logician, Sherlock Holmes buff, former amateur girevoy sport competitor and on-and-off role-player. I've helped people get stronger since 2011, and better at RPG prep since 2021. Also, I've beaten Acute Myeloid Leukemia twice, and I still look like I lift.
Tweaks—Play-by-Post & Blurring the GM-Player Line
My first Cortex Prime build was a hard-boiled/noir novel emulator, with a short but satisfying test run—also, my first-ever play-by-post (PbP)—but after the initial enthusiasm, the game lost momentum, and eventually entered an indefinite hiatus. Since then, all my PbP experiences have been similar: initial enthusiasm, satisfying run, loss of momentum, and indefinite hiatus. So…
Saturday Special—HARD/WIRED: A Pace Opera
This post illustrates a point about narrative TTRPGs’ pacing and turns Walter Jon Williams’ Hardwired into a game—thanks to the Cortex Prime engine, almost literally so.
Off-Topic—Cortex: Prime Iron
TL;DR: Cancer is a bitch, and getting over it long-term is not easy, even when you know what you should do for it. In this post, I pay back (and hopefully, forward) my role-playing friends for their help with that. It’s been a while since my last post, for a bunch of reasons, but the…
Wonky Wednesday–Self-Compels, Everywhere
Player-facing metacurrency earning is not a thing in Fate, but this post includes a recipe to make it work. Probably.
Theory Thursday–Snatching Success from the Jaws of Failure
Narrative fallout is often offered as a way to escape failure in narrative TTRPGs. This post analyses three systems implementing “costly success” and concludes with an observation, a hypothesis, and a gameplay option.
Cortex/Apocalypse–Cortex Got Moves
TL;DR: This post turns Apocalypse World’s moves into a Cortex Prime gameplay trick to make dice-rolling even more narrative, and if you don’t care for the reasons, you can jump right to it. Apocalypse World (AW) and Cortex Prime (CP) share more similarities than meet the naked eye. It’s a leitmotiv of this blog. I…
Wonky Wednesday–Mechanics or Roleplay?
In the inaugural post of this new series, I discuss narrative support and cognitive organization, with examples from Fate RPG and Cortex Prime. The ideas are half-baked, but I got this. Probably.
Lipsum-U–Lorem Ipsum 101: Dolor Sit Amet
This is a lorem ipsum adumbratio lectionis series. Translate nisi audes
Theory Thursday–Fair Games
A relatively benign communication problem in a virtual TTRPG game sent me down memory lane and into the pits of the Theory of Fairness, and I saw no good reason to spare you that.
The Polverine 