Project Introduction #Poise

According to etymonline : Umpteenth comes from Umpty + -teen. Where Umpty was originally slang for a dash in Morse Code which came to mean "of an indefinite number."

Background (Skippable)

I was introduced to Tabletop Roleplaying Games (TTRPG)s in early middle school at a friends house, where I played a original system called "Arena." The game had little to no roleplay, and was mostly built around a deep, very exploitable, combat system.

Soon after I joined a couple of my friends in making our own TTRPG that would fit our desires. Every one of my friends in high school worked on the system, but the project was mostly run by myself and my friend Nick. This original system was deeply inspired by Arena. It had roleplay elements, but all the logic of the system was in the abilities based combat.

Come to my Junior (Nick's Senior) year of high school, and we'd become enamored with the idea of giving the players more choice. Less war game, more roleplay.

This would become a theme as we drafted new systems in the same world with strange thoughts and ideas to create interesting combat, while giving the players a heavy amount of choice and expression.

Toward the end of college Nick and I would decide we had different interests and goals in our TTRPG designs and started working on our own systems separately with input from the other.

Poise is my first real attempt designing as a lead designer rather than a colead on a Tabletop RPG system. It's inspired by wanting Cortex Prime to be something closer to the old tactical rpg we had in high school.

Goals of Poise

"Poise" is the name I chose 15 minutes ago when I decided I didn't want to use the old working name "Tact." Where Tact was short for 'tactical' while also communicating the idea of thoughtfulness or finesse. "Poise" is meant to conjure the idea of a fencer ready to fight, while also embodying the ideas of self-composure and dignity. As a small bonus the ideas of poise as meaning "to carry" fits in nicely with the modular nature.

Modularity

I fell in love with Cortex Prime because of Modularity. A good RPG works with the world to create a complete experience. I actively dislike when an RPG is disconnected from its world.

I don't want to design an RPG every time I want to run a campaign. That isn't me. I've liked Cortex Prime's ability to spin up a campaign easily, and feel related. I'm also okay with the legwork I've had to put in to make those work.

I want Poise to be "Modular" like Cortex Prime.

I like Powered by the Apocalypse, and Vincent Baker's blogs about it are a huge inspiration. But PbtA isn't "modular" it is philosophical. An approach, not a guide.

Tactical

Imagine an axis which plots "how wargamy" a system is. With Warhammer 40K living towards on side, and Fate living towards the other. Poise is looking to be on the "more wargamy" side of the equation.

I love my AoE spells, my cool passives, and my flaming swords. I love collaborative storytelling (please someone run an Amber DRPG with me) but I love tactics just as much.

I want Poise to have everything you need to put Tactics into your experience.

User Experience

Coming from software I think a lot about user experience, not just for the player playing an implementation of Poise, but also for the person designing that implementation, and for poor little old me creating the system in the first place.

I want Poise to ship an experience. It's okay if that experience isn't for everyone. A modular system risks appealing to everyone, and thus catering to no one. Poise should be opinionated.

Addendum

Poise has been in development since the start of 2025, and a second draft is already done. At this point I'm actually using Poise to make an implementation and then iteratively developing the two of them alongside each other. So most posts on Poise will probably be about that side of TTRPG design.

I've read a lot of systems, and there is a lot of inspiration in Poise. I do want to call out one system which I started reading last week since it is top of mind: Lancer. I read through this book to find that I had independently implemented much of the same system while designing the core of Poise. So hats off to Lancer.