We are very happy to announce the arrival of our new “OSR Friendly”, lite version of Codex Martialis – Stara Szkola. At just under 40 pages, Stara Szkola (SSk for short) provides a complete combat system, equipment including weapons, armor, and basic gear, a complete point based character generation system with six classes, and a micro adventure: The Ghost Ship.
Stara Szkola uses a stripped down, faster version of the Codex combat system, relying almost exclusively on the Martial Pool and Free Dice mechanics, and eliminating any arithmetic. This is quick and easy to learn, while giving your players the ability to exercise a lot of options in combat: Attack, defend or move in the same turn, and with varying degrees of emphasis on each option, as easy as dropping dice out of your palm and onto the table!
In addition to this, we have already also released the first expansion for SSk, Streets of the Fencing Master. This includes two new classes (the Fencing Master and the Patrician Merchant), special Fighting Traits that your character can learn to enhance their combat abilities, a complete setting – the quasi-historical medieval town of Stromburg, and another micro adventure: Trouble for the Town Watch.
Both of these have been playtested and have been in release as PDFs on DriveThruRpg for a few weeks. We are happy to announce that as of today with the arrival of good ‘proofs’ from the printer, both are now also available as Print on Demand titles. Printed copy of SSk is $13.17 and Streets of the Fencing Master is $12.82
Both of these titles are available on DriveThru for both print and PDF, and we should have them here and on Itch as well soon. For now you can go to our Publisher Page on DriveThruRpg to get these games. https://www.drivethrurpg.com/browse/pub/2481/Codex-Integrum-LLC
(sorry for my bad english, I’m italian)
About SSK
I appreciate a lot your job. As an ex historical fencer I see you put a lot of realism in gaming: passive defence, binds, armour bypass, shield parry are great rules.
But I have some questons:
– DISTANCE: in a fight, if i have a longer weapon, after the fisrt round the othe fighter allways gets advantage? May i move (spending 1 MP) and get advantage again on my turn?
– ATTRIBUTES: what are attributes rolled for? they have very little influence over gameplay. They should be the difference between the mass of 4MP fighters in a game: one is faster, the other stronger, and so on. I have some ideas on how to use stats in game if you like.
– SETTING: do you mind about writing a setting in central Italy 1200? Empire, free commons, medieval lords, horsemen, infantry, strong “burger” class, Rome and so on
– RANGED WEAPONS: aren’t ranged weapons a little too easy to use? You often hit the target at medium or long distance.
– ARMOURS: plate harness seems useless since half armour has the same protection without the penalty. Do I miss something?
– PERIL: this rule is nice. I see in your video you rolled all the D6 for peril, but on page 13, 2° pargraph on the right you write that during character generation the total is halved and the rolled. Did I misunderstood?
– HIT POINT: I think thath pre generated characters and in particular npc have very few hit point. Why?
Thank you for your support
Ciao Alessandro!
Thanks for your questions.
Distance-
In SSk yes you can attack, and then spend MP (one or more) to move, and then wait attack later – probably after your opponent. Your opponent with a shorter weapon will have to move (1 or 2 or more MP depending how far you moved back), attack at a disadvantage (at least one more MP), and then they can try to attack with an advantage (but still requiring another MP)… if they get that far and have enough MP. If they don’t save some MP for defense you’ll have a big advantage in your next attack (or if you generate counterattack).
Attributes –
You can use attribute modifiers to combat die rolls as an optional rule. Str mod for damage, dexterity mod for defense, etc. They are also applicable to skill rolls.
Setting-
We will eventually do some adventure settings in Italy but that takes a great deal of research and therefore time. Maybe next year! The first one will probably be in the 15th Century.
Ranged Weapons-
There are many ways to evade ranged weapons which give you defensive advantages. If you are running you gain a Free Dice on defense for every 2 MP you spent running. If you are behind cover or in concealing terrain (like in the trees) you gain 1 MP on defense for every 25% of cover or concealment. Shields as you already notice also give you a Free Dice.
Peril-
We changed that rule to what is in the book after the video was made.
Armours-
Looks like there is a typo on the chart – Bypass for Plate Harness should be 3 Free Dice penalty. I’ll fix that in an update immediately.
Hit Point-
The pre-generated characters just came out as we rolled them!
You are welcome on our Discord by the way, at https://discord.gg/Cphpe6WG