Theory Thursday–Success or Failure? Yes

Cortex Prime changes the very concepts of success and failure, there’s a cognitive science theory that can prove it, and a few visuals are all that’s needed to show how.

Bronze Rulz!–Bronze-Plated Crafting, Cortex Style

After trying to hack Fate for crafting and nearly breaking it, I re-evaluated my expectations, and jumped off the Fate hacking ship onto the Cortex lifeboat, with a sketch of a crafting mod, that won’t break anything (hopefully).

Peter’s Principle*–Hum(e)an NPCs

Improvising NPCs with Apocalypse World’s motto—“Name everyone, make everyone human”—David Hume’s philosophy, and Cortex Prime’s ruleset. What could go wrong?

Monkeying Monday–Emergent Gameplay (NPC Edition)

A go-to game design move leverages PC-to-PC backstory for “emergent gameplay,” but there’s a possible alternative based on PC-to-NPC relations that may complement it or suit some players better.

Apocalypse/Cortex–A Conversation

This post explores how Apocalypse World and Cortex disrupt the old “let’s just role-play this!” attitude slightly differently, and how to use these differences to enrich roleplay.

Fiddling Friday–Fate Dice, Less (Often)

This post offers guidelines to to get a lot out of the Skill pyramid, the Adjective Ladder, and Fate points, without breaking too much the narrative flow with pesky dice rolls—and call them “Dice-less Rules” because why not. But it’s not a hack. Promise.