SHIFT

[Senkusha]

This game is amazingly simple. It uses, like, all the dice-- except for you, d20. Take a break.

Character Creation is a pretty straight forward process. You have three Core Traits, Mind, Body, and Soul, and you assign each of these one of the following unique choices (d6, d8, or d10), one for each Trait. Then you make up two Focus Traits. These are keyword phrases that describe some major aspect of your character concept. Your Primary Focus Trait is assigned a d4, while your Secondary Focus receives a d6. Your Focus Traits also get assigned two Keywords.

My first time creating a character literally took me like ten minutes. The hardest part for me was figuring out what wording to use to describe my Focus Traits. You don't want something too specifically defined, but yet nothing that's too broad either. And keeping in mind that I don't have the full rule set (due to be released digitally in January, I believe), I'm already off to a good start, considering this is the first game that I've played where you define your character using Traits, Tags, or other keyword Descriptors in a freeform nature.

The Dice Mechanics is where this game shines though! You have one or two dice that you role. Each Trait is assigned a Dice. That's what your roll when determining if you succeed or fail at a task. So long as you can convince the Game Master why a Trait fulfills your narrative mechanic, you're good. So, a result of one (1) is a Critical Success. This mean YES, you did the thing, AND (you can Shift Up a dice, potentially -- more in a moment). A two (2) or three (3) are just success results. Any other result is a failure, and if the die lands on its maximum value (a 4 on a d4, or 10 on a d10), you not only fail, but that Trait Die is Shifted Down to the next size (a d4 becomes a d6, a d10 becomes a d12). So far there are only two ways that are listed to Shift back Up (Critical Success or Rest).

What I love about this game is there is no math. There's also no resource tracking (that I can see yet). Damage is indicative by the Trait Dice. Whenever a Trait is Exhausted (you roll a 12 on a d12), you can no longer use that Trait. This is also how you eliminate your foes. An Adversary is assigned a Scale rating between one (1) and five (5). This number relates to the number of Traits that must be Exhausted before that foe is rendered moot (rendered unconscious or flat out killed). So your Trusty Sword breaks when it's Trait Die is reduced beyond a d12. You might become unconscious if your Mind Trait is Exhausted. (I'm still trying to figure out a good term for Soul Exhaustion.)

Another point where SHIFT shines is the expandability. Users (Game Masters) are encouraged to create World Sparks. This isn't a full Module, or Adventure booklet, but it's meant to be a Creative Seed. It defines a the Setting. Locations, NPCs, Adversaries, Techniques (which I'm still learning about), Equipment (known as Pack Traits), but you can also tweak the Core Traits. You can rename the Body, Mind, and Soul to fit your Setting better. It's also mentioned that you can add your own Core Traits. Like, I'm going to work on an Anime Comedy World Spark, and I'm going to add a Core Trait of Chaos to facilitate the unhinged nature of the World. When you create additional Core Traits, your dice pool increases. Instead of d6, d8, and d10 being the only options, you add an additional middle die to the list (four Core Traits would be d6, d8, d8, and d10. And five Core Traits would be d6, d8, d8, d8, and d10). Are you seeing the pattern here? There's even a handy-dandy workbook that you can fill out (PDF form fillible) to assist you.

I genuinely can not wait for January to come along so I can really get into all the nuts and bolts of this game. It's also going to be released under an Open Gaming License, so people can customize the game engine to better align with their World Spark ideas-- something I may consider doing. This game has already been play tested using a Solo mechanism, and verified that it works well as both a traditional Table Top and as a Solo game. Being that there's no math, and damage is internalized into the Trait Dice, I could see the SHIFT system being a great use in Discord and Forum gaming too.

Currently the game is in KickStarter, but has already blown past it's goal by a factor of like 11! And although the game is free to preview, there's a set of three downloads you can grab, totally for free to give the system a try. I'm so impressed by it, that I pledged the All of It tier. This game system does much of what I was attempting to build on my own, which I'll probably still do, although, I rework what I've been building because SHIFT already appears to work very well. (And it's had a three year head start, and is practically already published.)

[Demonskeith]

Sounds fun, I love to back it but money is extremely tight for me right now. Wish it luck!

[Senkusha]

It's pretty well backed already, by a factor of 12 this morning!

I've found a bunch of Works in Progress documentation to help flesh out how to build the game too. I'm super excited for the Kickstarter to be finished. Note, although I did back it, you don't get charged until the Kickstarter ends, and I split my pledge into three payments.

[Ravenfreak]

It's great it's been funded already! Too bad the d20 is retired for this game, it's my favorite die lol. But this sounds really dang cool! I'm hoping the product actually does fully come out though, I'm a bit weary about Kickstarter ever since I backed Mighty No. 9. (Demonskeith can also vouch for that, he too backed the game.)

[Senkusha]

It looks to be solid. The developers have stated on their Discord that the written material is completed, and that the digital version (without the artwork) will be released sometime between November (when the Kickstarter ends) and January 2026.

[1stop]

SHIFT sounds clever, I like the Mind, Body, Soul idea. It’s simple but deep, and makes you think about the character instead of just numbers. That dice combo thing too sounds fun and different. To be fair, I love when small indie devs experiment with things like that.

[Senkusha]

What's really cool about this game is that you can make a World Spark. You can rename, add or even subtract the Core Traits from the game! So, like I could just rename Body to Strength, Mind to Focus, and Soul to Charisma, and add a fourth Trait named... Wealth (say the game has a spending mechanic that you'd need to roll for to buy stuff). The Wealth Core Trait would then determine how wealthy you are! d4 means that you're super rich, because you'd only fail the roll 25% of the time, whereas d12 means you're really poor, you'd end up failing 75% of the time! This means that you don't need to set prices for anything. The GM could just say, "Roll your Wealth" if you wanted to buy that Fighter Jet.

I love how flexible and customizable this system can be.