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In Short

The Good: Many options are present, allowing for groups to make just a few changes as they move the same core system from setting to setting. The text is very efficient, with clear writing and no wasted space. Examples clearly explain all of the rules.

The Bad: The lack of discussion of implementation of these rules makes it a little unclear when a GM would want to use some packages of rules and when those rules should be left out. An awful lot of the system is left up to the GM.

The Physical Thing

The editing, formatting, and reference options are all well done and the book is easy to work with. An impressive amount of content is incorporated into these 158 pages, though at times I wish there was more elaboration on the concepts briefly discussed.

Under the Cover

Active Exploits is the default system and it is diceless. Characters have a set bonus applied to tasks based on their Abilities and Skills. Points are taken from Abilities and combined with free points from Skills (and potentially Luck, a special pool of points) to create a total. If this total meets or exceeds the difficulty the GM has in mind then the character succeeds. In effect this is a sort of resource management / guessing mechanic that focuses more on how important it is to succeed and how much effort the character thinks is required than on the fickleness of fate.

Character creation is simple, focusing on a few points being allocated to five Abilities – Fitness, Creativity, Reason, Influence, and Awareness. Any special powers, like magic, are treated as additional abilities so characters with special powers end up having fewer points to spend on other Abilities. Skills are purchased in three levels (Novice, Proficient, and Expert) and characters tend to have few Skills, but the impact of the Skills on the mechanics is notable. Thus, instead of many Skills that provide little bonus when an Active Exploits character has a particular Skill it’s a big deal. With a Luck pool to provide players with more influence over what happens and a simple injury condition track for combat the game remains simple and rules light at its core.

The majority of the book provides various subsystems and suggestions for how to expand on Active Exploits in order to incorporate more advanced rules, magic, and specific genre conventions. The only downside is that these system often are only flavorful and add little, if anything, to the core rules. The idea is that the GM is the one interpreting everything and dictating how any special ability functions in her game world, so any additional discussion is often left up to the GM and whatever game world the group has chosen to use with Active Exploits.

Rules for using Active Exploits with LARPs and the Impressa System are both included. The best I can say about the LARP rules is that they include a nice flow chart to use in play and are very similar to the core Active Exploits system. Impressa is an alternative dice pool based system that also retains many similarities. For more detailed discussion of Impressa see my Iron Gauntlets review.

My Take

If you have a cool setting in mind and want a simple diceless system to run it with then Active Exploits will work for you.

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