Today on the Discord, someone brought up a good question which it is time to clarify.
The essence of which was, which of these books go together precisely?
And here is the answer. At Codex Integrum we do historical research, which is the subject of our two Baltic books (The Medieval Baltic volume 1, and The Medieval Baltic volume 2), as well as our history videos and HEMA interview videos on the Codex Integrum Youtube Channel. These are just about history, and are not directly related to any RPG games.
Our original game is also called Codex Integrum, now consisting of eleven books. It was originally limited to the Codex Martialis combat rules, which includes our historically based combat rules, but has since been considerably expanded to include the following: The very popular Melee Weapons of the Ancient World, and Armor and Missile Weapons of the Ancient world, which are respectively rules expansions with additional detail on arms and armor used in the pre-industrial world. These correlate to the weapon and armor tables in the Core Rules. We then released the Codex Integrum Player’s Guide, which includes a full “Lifepath” character generation system and a complete setting for late medieval Central Europe, the Codex Superno which is a complete magic system based on medieval grimoires, and now five “Codex Adventum” historical adventures, which include both adventures with some structure but also at least some sandbox elements, and setting information for a particular historical time and place. These include The Reiver’s Lament set in 16th Century Scotland, and The Devil’s Pass set in 15th Century Franconia (Germany), The Road To Monsterberg: Crypt of the Raubritter, Road to Monsterberg: Secret of the Golden Hills, and Road to Monsterberg: Curse of the Mad Princess, all set in 15th Century Silesia, a region between modern Germany, Poland, and Czechia. All eleven of these books share the same Codex Integrum rules and are designed to be used together.
Our OSR friendly and somewhat simpler system is called Codex Martialis: Stara Szkola. It now includes three books, the Core Rulebook Stara Szkola, which includes the combat system, full character generation, and a short sample adventure; the first rules expansion Stara Szkola: Streets of the Fencing Master which includes expanded combat rules, two new character types, rules and setting info for medieval urban settings, and another short sample adventure, and our first full scale SSk adventure, A Dark Night, a semi-structured, historical sandbox adventure set in mid 15th Century Thuringia (Germany) which is meant to provide both a setting and a “ready to play” adventure. A fourth SSk book, called “Drum and Pike: The Fog World” is also currently in development for Stara Szkola. All three of the current SSk books and the new one share the same SSk rules and are designed to be played together.
So what is the difference?
Both systems rely on the same core mechanic, the so called Martial Pool, a modified dice pool of 20 sided dice which allows players to allocate resources to attack, defense, or movement, and to control their luck to some extent within a fight. SSk combat, though based on the same “Martial Pool” roll many / keep one system, is different and simpler than Codex Martialis, which is more granular. Codex includes die roll mods and tracks three different range bands, whereas SSk only uses Dice with no mods, and handles the combat ranges in a simpler way with less to keep track of. SSk Character generation is also much simpler and quicker, though it’s based on the same “Lifepath” idea. Some of the terminology between the two systems is different.
Can I use Stara Szkola books with Codex or vice versa?
Combat rules and characters are more granular in Codex, with more detail. But keeping that in mind, game play is similar between the two systems, and they essentially share the same default setting. So for example the Codex Integrum Melee weapons or Missile Weapons book will have more technical specs for each weapon than SSk has, but the historical detail is the same. The adventures for either system are written in a similar way and should be fairly easily ported from one system to the other.