Cogent Roleplay

[SeeksForTruth]

I think I am the first one to bring the Cogent Roleplay System to the forums.

It is a more simplistic system that is available for free here.

It takes martial realism into account and is very genre neutral.

It took me less than an hour to learn the system, including it's alternate rules.

I really like this game's combat system, because as a HEMA (Historical European Martial Arts) practitioner it allows me to enjoy a game that does not unnecessarily break realism for me in martial combat.

Does anyone have any thoughts to share on this system? If so please share them below.

Thanks in advance.

[Beil]

I love this system! I agree with everything you said. However, on the downside, it seems they have stopped development of it for the time being. The good news is that it's playable as is, but there are still a few things that could be clarified better, and I would love it if I could help them edit the rulebook. There are some things that could be polished up a bit.

I would really like it if either they or we could get started on some monster manuals and other supplemental material to help a GM. So far, I have GM'd a bit in this system but it was a challenge since I had to come up with stats for typical monsters on the fly, and not being too experienced with how the system is meant to be played, picking balanced stats was difficult.

Have you tried the system in gameplay? Was there anything you didn't quite understand? I have a question or two myself. I'll just ask 1 here for now:

My understanding concerning ranged combat is that if an archer shoots at a swordsman from range, the archer rolls a regular combat roll using proficiencies and weapon modifiers. The swordsman would roll a combat roll using the rules for a defensive roll. Since they cannot realistically use their sword to any advantage at range, their sword proficiency and weapon modifier wouldn't apply, but the +2d from defense would make up for that a little. Okay, so far everything makes sense, and the outcome is that at range, an archer has the advantage in terms of # of dice, which makes sense. However, my problem starts when you complicate the issue by adding in another character. What if the swordsman is fighting another swordsman, and getting shot at by an archer? The swordsmen both roll using all proficiencies and weapon modifiers for their swords, and usually in the case of fighting multiple foes at once you use a single roll to test against theirs. But, in this case, the swordsman still shouldn't get the proficiency or weapon modifier from his sword when compared against the archer, but he needs it to compare with the other swordsman. Should he roll once against the other swordsman, and again against the archer? Also, does this count as flanking, so the archer gets the flanking advantage? None of this is clarified anywhere I can find in the rules. If you have an insight that would really help. Thanks!

[Agamedes]

I am considering using this to run a no-magic campaign (basing it somewhat on the Mount&Blade world). I have watched the games run by Shad and his friends (on Youtube, channel called "table top time" and it really seems to be a nice system. Very simple and, at the same time, quite flexible. The realism helps a lot as well.

[daniel_ream]

To be honest, it looks like a fairly unremarkable D6 Legend heartbreaker.

I'm also not seeing the "martial realism" in the system, it seems to more perpetuate typical RPG combat tropes.

[Ts_]

I have only read the rules and only just now ...

I think there are some flaws in there, in particular the Assist roles.

The standard roll mechanic is:

Roll X dice, count the number of 4+ results as "Wins".
Success is when Wins >= Challenge Level.

The number of dice X for skill rolls is 3 (base) + corresponding Attribute (0/1/2) + Skill Points.
Since you have 2 Attribute Points in total and around 10 Skill points (8 if you don't have INT, 14 if you put all points in INT), and Skills Points are capped at 4 you can have up to 9 dice in a Skill max ever, and that's quite an investment.

The "Vocations" skills (Soldier, Baker, Con Artist ... kinda like classes according to the rules) do not have a base attribute, so the roll is always 3 + Skill Points dice, again capped at 4 skill points.

By the way, Combat and Perception rolls use the sum of all attribute points instead of a single attribute, and this sum is always 2 for characters created under the default rules.

So, what do assists do?
Roughly what they do is if you want to use a skill or combat roll, you pick a suitable secondary skill/vocation/combat roll with Y dice and argue that it helps for this particular task. Mechanically you add all the Y dice from the secondary skill, but you also add 3 to the Challenge Level. (There is a minor math detail that makes this imprecise if you're really luck on the assist, but still. And the Narrator/GM could sometimes increase the 3 to 4 or so, but never reduce it according to the rules.)
So you get +Y dice vs +3 Challenge levels to your original roll.
If Y > 6, assists are helpful (and at least make the result more reliable) and are broadly applicable for smart players.
If Y <= 6, they just make the task harder, with the only benefit that with some really, really rare chance you might pull something off that you usually couldn't have done.

The trouble is:
Putting 1 skill point in a skill meant to assist can help many skills as if you had put that point into each one of them. So you should maximize one broad skill so that you're good at much more. (The game has 13 skills, so most skills are rather broad. Useful skills to assist would be Acrobatics for physical stuff and Deception for anything from combat to social situations, imho. Perception could also be very useful.)

On the other hand, Assists only help if you're good with the assisting skill.
Say I put 2 precious skill points into my Soldier vocation. Now my Soldier roll is an astounding 3+2 dice ... Meaning if I apply my Soldier vocation, I actually net a loss ...
It's much more effective to assist with skills, because they incorporate attribute points for free!

So ... this seems broken. In particular, the nice idea of vocations is essentially broken because you either need to put the maximum 4 points in a vocation (at which point it's kinda useful mechanically, but not as useful as a skill with the same 4 points) or none at all. Of course, in rare circumstances you simply roll against the vocation skill (the example from the book: Baking bread for a baker ... Because that's how I want to spend my points.)

The combat system is streamlined (a single roll per round for every combatant, with some weapon modifiers) and the results seem deadly and slightly Apocalypse World like with the winner choosing the effect (damage or, say, disarm). I mostly like that, but the math is wonky ... A dagger in the main hand gives a weapon bonus of +0, and no bonus for an unarmed first "in" the off-hand. A dagger in the off-hand gives a +2 bonus when dual-wielded with a -1 unarmed fist "in" the main-hand. (And you can wear gauntlets to mitigate that -1.)
Close Combat is also a big deal but there are no rules how you get out of Close Combat. (The rules seem to suggest that you could move away but the other person could reasonably follow ...)

Well, they say it's an alpha and some of those things could be adjusted, but it would lose some of the simplicity I'm sure.
I also don't think it's very generic. It has many more physical skills and combat rules than social skills. The resolution system might not scale to "Superpowers" very well either.

Also, do we need a penis joke in a rulebook? And the examples for the lucky outcomes for the (imho too random) Destiny Roll mechanic are:
* A siege weapon preparing to fire, but it seems to be constructed late, and might fall apart. (This was triggered by the enemy, but they failed. A dragon could have shown up just as likely ...)
* The players enter an alley and are greeted by... An attractive nurse leaving a homestead
* You fall through the floor ... into a whorehouse which has been desperate for new customers!

Right.

Regards
Ts

[Goodkill]

is it better than GURPS? i love GURPS but i don't know too much about HEMA ... for my own playing around with GURPS's rule set i once looked at some kendo material on the web, that's about as far as i got with my familiarity with medieval martial arts. a lot of it seems pretty brutal ... like how you would use a poleaxe. just devices of mass slaughter.

[Genieß]

Im not very experienced with RPG. Played 5th for about 2 years, and touched Pathfinder. Didn't quite like it and came across Cogent.
It looked interesting from the mentioned youtube channel and after reading through it and ended up with some questions to it. Now also DMd a two hour one shot battling goblins.

Leaving my questions here in hope for some answers:
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Shouldn’t a successful sneak attack be able to negate armor?

Is it right that gauntlets and bracers are better than daggers, hatchets and shortswords?
And why invest in a greatsword when you can bring a simple pole with a spiked tip?

How much do you get to know of the declarations of an opponent? Example: The troll declares to throw a stone at mister handsome. How would you declare this for the players?
Would you say it as I just did? Or something like:
“He bows down towards a rock.” Or “He picks up a rock looking at mister handsome”

Can you Brace before a charge has been declared, believing a high reflex opponent might want to charge? What if he then doesn’t charge, what can you then do instead (probably already declared as a plan B)?

What happens if one shoots into a group of characters (single shot or exploding)?

What about skills you should know in order of being able to at all try to handle it? Example: When you try to comprehend a rare language, would you use an intelligence check combined with any vocation or backstory element making you potential to know this language (might be in same language family or something)? Does any of the skills apply in this case?
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Any thoughts or experiences with these?

I also missed a beastiary and looking for some more insight on how the vocations works (Thanks Ts).

[Knaight]

This looks like a pretty standard generic system to me, with no particularly distinguishing traits - this one happens to use a dice pool, but they all happen to use some mechanic and it varies a bit. There are some small points of cleverness in it (I'm liking the multiple opponent handling rules, for instance), some eyeroll worthy bits (there's a definite "teehee sex" attitude that crops up every so often, there's some extremely pretentious explanation of extremely basic concepts), and overall nothing particularly remarkable.

As for martial realism in particular - I'm particularly unimpressed there. The multiple opponents rule is neat, but it's not particularly realistic. The rules for being slowed by armor are a total mess, both because the penalty for being slowed by armor is all sorts of dubious from a realism perspective and because from a pure disjointed mechanical perspective armor is, if anything, an overall negative.

The comparison to d6 Legend has already been made, but that seems more like one of several obvious ones. For instance, there's the Ubiquity system - all three are dice pool generic systems with some focus on combat, all operate pretty quickly, and all have their particular quirks. Of them Cogent seems the weakest, both in terms of the substance of the rules and the style behind them.