Cortex

Cortex or Cortex Roleplaying is a series of game engines and role-playing games used extensively for licensed role-playing games. It was developed initially by Margaret Weis Productions in 2005, and has been owned by Fandom since 2019.

Cortex is an adaptable game system focusing on characterization and story development.

Game mechanics

Cortex is an extensible and modifiable game system, but a few elements are common to all games. Characters are described with a number of trait sets, such as attributes, skills, relationships, or powers. Each trait within a set is a statistic rated with a die size (usually from d4 to d12). For example, a strong but unintelligent character might have Brawn d10 and Brains d4. When rolling dice, players select one trait from each set and roll their dice together as a dice pool. Dice that roll 1 represent something going wrong in the attempt. The highest two die results are added together for the player character's effective total. Another die not used in the total may be selected as the effect die, the size of which determines the magnitude of the die roll's impact.

Players also have access to a limited pool of plot points, which can be spent in a number of ways. Prominent among these is to roll more than one die from a single trait set, or to add additional die results to the total.

Most Cortex games include Distinctions as one of the trait sets, which describe what makes the character distinctive on a personal level. In most versions, these traits are rolled as a d8 when they are beneficial but as a d4 when they could hinder the character (which means the player earns a plot point).

History

Cortex Classic

Main article: Cortex Classic

The earliest version of Cortex was simply known as the Cortex System and is now generally called Cortex Classic. It was based on the Sovereign Stone role-playing game by Larry Elmore and Don Perrin, produced by Sovereign Press and published by Corsair Publishing.

In 2004, the rights to Sovereign Stone was transferred to Margaret Weis Productions and became the basis of the first Cortex System game, Serenity Role Playing Game, published in 2005. The same game system was used, with minor amendments, for Battlestar Galactica Role Playing Game in 2007 and Supernatural Role Playing Game in 2009. The game was released as a standalone, generic roleplaying game in 2008 as Cortex Role Playing Game System.

Cortex Plus

Main article: Cortex Plus

In 2009, Cortex development was passed to Cam Banks, who refined it into "Cortex Plus" by introducing its roll-and-keep system and streamlining all ranked stats to use die sizes that could be rolled in various conflicts. Cortex Plus saw its debut in 2010 with Smallville Roleplaying Game, followed by Leverage: The Roleplaying Game in 2011. These first games were developed concurrently, with design notes passed between writing teams, but each game featured unique variations on the basic Cortex Plus engine.

The next round of development saw Banks lead the design of Marvel Heroic Roleplaying, published in 2012. This game focused on action sequences and fights. The core game was originally intended to be followed by a long series of supplements, each focusing on a different historical period of Marvel's fictional history, but in 2013 Margaret Weis Productions announced that it would not be renewing its Marvel license, and the game went out of print.

The Cortex Plus Hacker's Guide, an anthology compilation of many different 'hacks' of Cortex Plus, was initiated in January 2013. Without the licenses for the three existing games, the Hacker's Guide presented three 'flavors' of Cortex Plus: drama, action, and heroic. Monica Valentinelli then developed the Firefly Role-Playing Game, published in 2014. Firefly was primarily based on the Leverage rule set.

Cortex Prime

Main article: Cortex Prime

On 1 November 2016, Margaret Weis Productions released a statement announcing that Cam Banks and his new design studio Magic Vacuum had licensed the Cortex system and would be "taking over the design, development, and publishing of games based on these rules... for 2017 and beyond," coinciding with "Margaret’s retirement from RPG development to focus on her current novel and film projects."

Banks then set out to normalize the four games of the Cortex Plus era as well as the preceding four Classic games into a single, unified system. This iteration, Cortex Prime, was funded via Kickstarter in April of 2017. Prime discards the 'drama, action, and heroic' flavors of Plus and instead offers an extensibly modular system that can be custom-built for vastly different play experiences. As part of the Kickstarter stretch goals, five volumes of "spotlight" mini settings, compiled by 22 authors, were also planned and funded.

In September 2019, Fandom Tabletop acquired the rights to Cortex from MWP and hired Cam Banks as their new Cortex Creative Director. The Cortex Prime Game Handbook was released in August 2020, with the five volumes of spotlights and two licensed games, Tales of Xadia (based on the Dragon Prince TV show) and Legends of Grayskull (based on the Masters of the Universe franchise) expected in 2021.

External links

• Cortex RPG Official Site
• Cortex System at Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
• Cortex RPG at Twitter