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How I discovered Omnifray...
Omnifray is a roleplaying game created by Matthew West in 2005.
I became aware of it after Matthew West himself - using the RPGnet tag "Omnifray" - appeared to be shamelessly plugging his roleplaying game at every opportunity he could on just about any thread that could justify him mentioning this game.
Bastard that I am, I wanted to call him out on this, so created a thread challenging him to define the following:
- What is it about?
- What makes it cool?
- What makes it different?
- In short, what's the unique selling point?
Why did I ask these questions? Well, basically because I'm a born curmudgeon, and I guiltily admit I like finding fault in people and games. I fully expected the answers to the above questions to be:
- Some fantasy heartbreaker rubbish.
- It's cool in the writer's imagination, and that's it.
- Nothing at all.
- There isn't one.
But Matt proved to be a real gent rather than a shameless self promoter, and it turned out that Omnifray isn't just his game but his labour of love.
Halfway through the thread he made an offer to send out copies to rpg.net reviewers.
I accepted, with a warning that I'd return the game to him if it sucked. However, I also promised to give the system a decent amount of time, and to playtest it thoroughly before posting a review.
So the challenge began... With five players, I ran the game for eight sessions. We went in search of Omnifray's Unique Selling Point.
We found it.
What Omnifray is not
Omnifray is not beautiful. It has likeable cover art, and clear black text on white pages in a readable font. However this is not a stylish book. It seems thrown together with little understanding of good layout and little attention to the importance of appearance. The black and white art is sparsely scattered across the book, so for the most part you're looking at page after page of solid text, admittedly broken up with clear headings, but still resembling a Microsoft word document rather than a professional product.
It isn't the most readable of books either. Run-on sentences are often unwieldy, and both rules and background text are more akin to engineering manual or academic treatise than readable prose. This is dense, hard reading. Normally I get through at least one novel a week, and can digest a new roleplaying corebook in a couple of weeks. Omnifray took me a month to read, and hurt my eyes and my head to do so.
So basically, its an ugly beast, akin to the Palladium books of the 1980s rather than the sleek design of White Wolf in the 1990s or Dungeons and Dragons in the 2000s.
In addition to this, that first read of the rulebook did nothing to make me love this game. The setting seemed generic, the rules uninspiring and the style archaic. This seemed to be yet another heartbreaker fantasy, set in a heartbreaker fantasy world, with nothing special going on, and no clear guidance as to what you're meant to do with it save for run generic fantasy stories.
The setting, sadly, doesn't really come alive till you reach the (separately purchased) Expert Manual. This is one of the flaws of the Basic Manual - there's not enough in there to make you feel engaged in the world. You get the feeling that there's a beautifully realised world inside the author's head, but that he doesn't have the writing skill or focus to enthuse his readers. No doubt I would love to play a game in the author's world - if the author was running the game - but I found that reading the setting did little to fire my imagination or make me want to use this game world. It feels as if rather than being designed for others to play in, its just a description of a world which the author has mostly in his head.
Why this game is great
The eagle eyed amongst you will have noticed that my damning words aren't consistent with the score I've given this product.
The thing about Omnifray, is that you have to start using it to appreciate it. You have to play the game to appreciate its substance.
Imagine, if you will, a dirt-smeared rag-wearing tramp on the street corner. You'll walk by, just like everyone else does, because who wants to talk to a tramp?
But then, if you stop for a second, you notice that tramp has a nice smile. So you pause.
Then that tramp peels off the rags, and cleans away the dirt. You watch in fascination as thus apparently replusive creature transforms into... Summer Glau in a bikini.
That's Omnifray.
This is a game that really runs the risk of putting you off from first appearances alone, but which has true beauty underneath. This is a game that deserves to be loved, even if it may seem daunting to do so. If you manage to look past the amateur layout, the paucity of artwork, the sheer wordiness and the seemingly generic world then you may have a chance see it for what it actually is.
Omnifray is a crafted product. It has depth. It is precisely balanced.
With a game that is so crunch-heavy and old-school as Omnifray precise balance is something to be treasured. So few crunchy games on the market are properly balanced. Otherwise high quality published games often require house-ruling to fix problems of balance that defy common sense, or demonstrate lack of playtesting in their ill thought out game mechanics. Omnifray in contrast, is a game that was clearly playtested till it bled, and balanced by the mind of a natural born game system designer. Omnifray works perfectly, out of the box. The only house ruling you'll need to do is if you want a simpler game, and want to throw out some of the (expertly crafted) rules. Helpfully the game even gives you ideas on how to do that, providing alternate rules at multiple stages, and marking which rules are optional, and which rules are designed as "add-ons" to the basic game.
The sheer craftsmanship here is impressive. The core mechanic might be old fashioned in that it requires reference to a table of numbers, but it is actually elegant, clever, and self-balancing. It is satisfyingly crunchy rather than intrusive in its complexity, as the complicated rules all flow naturally from a simple core mechanic, and no rule is ever stated as being indispensable so you can assemble your chose ruleset in a modular way.
The setting as well, while its presented in a way that is uninteresting to read is clearly one that has been carefully fleshed out over the years. I would love to see a good editor rearrange all the setting information in the basic and expert manual, and put it into a more readable form. It became clear through play that the setting had a great depth of information provided and that this was a world that was both interesting and engaging.
That's the game we're looking at: let's look at the chapter by chapter breakdown.
Chapter Breakdown
Chapter 1: The Enshrouded Lands
The setting chapter takes up just 39 of 300 pages - a good indication of how crunchy this game is.
Matt has come up with an interesting idea in that almost all his background has three versions presented to the reader. First is a version that is most likely to be true, then comes a version that is less probable but stll grounded, then finally what is far-fetched but there as a possibility. This approach is there so that even if players know and have learnt the setting as written, they can never be sure which truth the GM has selected, if any.
It's a nice idea, well implemented, but has the downside that space is even tighter than it could have been.
All in all though, I have to say this chapter is fairly dry reading. The problem here is that the author is trying to describe a world of great complexity in a very limited space. The broad strokes, even if painted in three versions, result in a world that seems generic and bland. You get hints that there is more to this world, but there's not nearly enough here to run a game with, and very little in the way of plot hooks. Occasionally the odd sentence jumps out as imaginative and indicative of a deeper setting... "In Northolme... a man who offers sufficient monetary compensation will be forgiven his crimes." You feel like there is a whole world there in the author's head, but that he's only showing you glimpses of it.
This is proven true if you ever get to the Expert Manual which thankfully expands the world's detail in a multitude of interesting ways. The problem here is that the Basic Handbook setting chapter will leave the reader unsatisfied.
Chapter 2: Characters in Omnifray
Character Generation is points-based with no less than 15 different attributes, each of which costs a different number of Character Generation Points. Costings appear arbitrary up front (for example, Alacrity costs 9 points, Melee Prowess 4 points, Marksmanship 2 points, Looks 1 point) but there is clear thinking behind the costings tat become apparent with play.
My player group found the points-based system somewhat against their natural tastes, especially when it became clear that the default way to play the system was to minmax by buying down attributes you don't want to use and taking disadvantages. Essentially this is the sort of game system we (as self proclaimed pretentious narrativists) have studiously avoided for the past 20 years. Sure, we played complex points-buy chargen games back in the 1980s, but that was then and this is now. We'd much rather play freeform character generation, with aspects and loosely defined traits, and no arithmetic running into double figures.
We had to admit though, that despite our prejudices against systems of this sort, the points buy was well constructed and well balanced. There was a lot of thought put into the costings, and the designer's choices of weighting at this stage were justified all through the game system later in the book.
Chapter 3: Basic Combat System and Action Resolution / Chapter 4: Miscellaneous Action Resolution
For all its claims of being a game where you can do anything and be anyone, this is very much a game where you are humans who fight. Yes, there are magic rules and faith rules and the like that let you emulate various D&D classes, but ultimately what we're looking at is a classic fantasy game with a classic fantasy rpg emphasis on combat.
The core of the system is a percentile system, that works out an advantage level (one stat minus another) then ascribes a % chance to success. A melee prowess of 10 versus a melee prowess of 9, for example, is an advantage of 1, which translates to a 59% success chance. Its set up so that you get diminishing returns on increasing advantage, so for example going from 9 to 10 only increases success chance from 96% to 97%, while 1 to 2 takes you from 59% to 67%.
This is nice and balanced in itself, working well to naturally balance the linear points-based character generation in a smart self-aware way.
The system gets even more clever though, with smart ways of taking the core mechanic into damage tracking and calculation and into working out complex rolls through a clever number-flipping mechanic.
The only departure from this clever unified mechanic is speed of action, which has higher Alacrity resulting in your actions taking less ticks, and the clock counts continuously from the start of the combat. I was quite disappointed that the system at this stage suddenly switched for percentiles to demanding multiple dice types, and a table of reference to tell you what die to roll and what to add. This sort of disunified approach to rules design is very 1980s, and somewhat jarring. It has to be said though, that once we started playing we found that rolling for speed of action was one of the most satsifying parts of combat, and the manipulation of this aspect of the game system through fast and slow actions was a large part of tactical play. Through this, and through various manoeuvres the game system manages to achieve a level of tactical decision making in combat that is on a par with 4ed D&D, but without the need for miniatures and tactical grids.
The way the system pans out, the game is satisfying gritty as well, with even a light injury causing problems. Combat equipment is handled well also, with a good feeling of realism in how weapons, shields and armour work. I had some concern over the place of bows, which vary from being almost pointless in the hands of a man of average skill, but overwhelming deadly in the hands of an expert, even against skilled targets. This is purely becase for the most part the determining factor as to whether you hit at range or not is the size of your target and your own marksmanship skill, whereas in melee, its melee skill versus melee skill. This seems to come across as a feature rather than a bug though, and melee/ranged comes across as a tactical decision according to situation rather than a choice of paths that you have to follow from character generation.
Chapter 4 is the extra options in the rules, again mostly relating to non-combat situations.
Overall these two chapters are the main appeal of Omnifray to me. Here the craftsmanship shows, though admittedly only once you play the game. If I were into crunchy old school games (which I have to admit I'm normally not), this is the level of attention to detail and game balance I'd demand.
Chapter 5: Basic Traits
The trait system essentially fills out the gaps that the core attributes don't cover. The only problem here is that the chapter reads like an alphabetised shopping list, and that anyone wanting to generate a character will either need to read through the full list, or have an expert GM to guide them through.
I admit to finding the way this part of character generation works to be deeply inelegant. The selection of what is and isn't a trait seemed to be arbitrary. Why is Tell Wounds a trait? Why Bravery, Tracking and Sea Fishing? Why not Survival, Medicine, Herbalism, Politics or Intrigue? Why is the tracking trait absolutely essential to have any chance at tracking someone ( 10 per level), while the poetry trait is dispensable to perform poetry ( 1 per level)? Why does Bravery give you increasing returns for each point you put in while other traits don't?
What this chapter needed, I am absolutely sure, was breaking down into categories to make it more accessible and a more unified approach in deciding what is a trait, and what is not. Why do seemingly equivalent traits have different costs?
Some of these decisions become apparent early in play - weapon specialisation (an effective 1 to stat) costs twice as much for melee weapons as ranged weapons because a melee specialisation helps you defend as well as attack, for example. Others are more obscure - Poetry costs 2 CGP to Navigation's 1 CGP, for example.
Nonetheless, I can't help but feel that for the author's vision of the game, these points costs make absolute sense and have been carefully selected to encourage a certain style of play. My distaste for the process I am sure stems mostly from a distaste for points-buy in general, and I am confident that more crunch-headed individuals will really enjoy playing around with the options presented in this chapter...
Chapter 6: Minions of Malice
This section is a compressed monster manual, which proved to be fairly complete for the purposes of gameplay. It works well, but like the rest of the book demands artwork.
Chapter 7: The Beast Corrupt
An oddly named chapter that introduces the idea of mythical and supernatural creatures in Omnifray.
One of the cool things about Omnifray's setting is that superficially its a medieval world - there are humans, feudal kingdoms and different cultures. There isn't any magic, and there aren't any non-human races. The setting, however, is called the Enshrouded Lands because hidden from the view of the massses there are supernatural threats.
In a way, this reminds me of the approach taken by Deadlands where the Weird West is hidden from plain sight, and known only to adventurer-types.
Another extended Monster Manual section continues, and this accounts for by far the largest section of the Basic Manual.
You definitely get the feeling that this is where the love comes through - this is where the author has put all his imagination and effort.
The Setting of the game? 39 pages, back in Chapter One.
Supernatural beasties? 100 pages in the Beast Corrupt chapter. That's fully one-third of the rulebook.
The GM is definitely trying to tell us something, and to me the unintentional subtext is that this is a game of monster-hunting... a brutal mix of WFRP's grittines, Call of Cthulu's elder threats and Hunter: The Reckoning's taking back the night, one monster at a time. If you like those themes, you'll probably appreciate this game.
Chapter 8: Advanced Rules; Chapter 9: Physical and Concentration Feats; Chapter 10: Elder and Unholy Magical Feats (an Introduction)
The author helpfully tells us at the start of the chapter that the advanced rules aren't intended for first time players, and we duly followed this advice and abandoned these rules till our later game sessions. When we finally tried to introduce the rules for feats... we failed. This is the section that takes the WFRP-like grittiness of the core rules, and adds D&D 3.5 style feats to the game, along with a Hero-system like set of Energy Pools to track. The structuring of the chapter again left a lot to be desired, though undeniably it was well thought out.
I think that anyone who uses this chapter will have to pick and choose which advanced rules they add on, though they can do so safe in the knowledge that every rule group is capable of being added on in a modular fashion, and that every rule is balanced.
The saddest thing about these chapters is that they are made pretty much obsolete by the Expert Manual, being reproduced in full and expanded on significantly. This to me, is sloppy design.
Chapter 11: Malady and Madness
It seems bizarre that physical and mental illness get their own chapter, whereas other aspects of non-combat rules are relegated to small sections in Chapter 4. Truthfully though, this section is one of the finest in the book, using the rules in new and interesting ways and introducing such imaginative ailments as Mucal Blood, Zibaliel's Stench and The Hatching Plague. Do I need to sell this chapter any further?
This sort of imagination is part of wat makes this game fun.
Chapter 12: Vigilante Heroes of Izlavia
Or, as I prefer to call it, "here are the player characters from my campaign". A selection of completed character sheets that are both uninspiring and space-wasting at the same time.
Appendices
Appendix 1 is a handy compact table giving stats of ordinary animals, where Matt demonstrates that he is entirely unlike the writers at White Wolf, in that he knows how to assign sensible stats to normal creatures.
Appendix 2 is a section on Miscellaneous Notes on Alignment. Not much you can say about that, except that it seems added as an afterthought.
Index
The index is large, but sadly not comprehensive. Its great if you want to look up a named character from the setting, or one of the already alphabetised traits or feats, but hopeless if you want to look up rules. We struggled to find rules for Range, for Reloading, to find out the speed of bows, for example.
The Final Analysis
Sadly, as a professional modern product, Omnifray doesn't justify its cover price. Its ugly, unwieldy and unedited.
However, as a sheer mass of content, as a labour of love full of balanced rules, full of moments of imagination and just as a toolbox full of well conceived system ideas that you can pick and choose from, Omnifray is well worth the money. It cries out for a heavy handed editor's touch, and if someone with a sense of book layout could rearrange the Basic and Expert Handbook into a concise and properly arranged volumes, this game could really work. The game doesn't need house rules - it is balanced perfectly - but it does need rearranging and organising.
I've presented you already with the disturbing simile of Summer Glau in a tramp's outfit, so let me offer you another metaphor to tell you about Omnifray.
Omnifray is a diamond mine.
You've got to dig deep, work hard, separate out the crap and accept that its not going to be easy, but in there somewhere are some little gems that make it all worthwhile.
