Hi folks,

The lead designer of WFRP3, Jay Little, has launched a new project, the Coriolis Defect. Right now it's on Kickstarter, and apart from Jay there seem to be two more WFRP3-guys on the development team: Dylan Owen and Dave Allen.

On the Kickstarter pagethe game is summed up as follows: "The Coriolis Defect is a roleplaying game where characters have the ability to rewind time, allowing them to re-load the story from a "save point" earlier in the narrative." It's set in the modern day "with a sci-fi twist", and the characters have their time-tinkering ability from a genetic defect, the titular Coriolis Defect. Rewinding time is very straining, however, and the characters might suffer from it.

Suprisingly, there seem to be no custom dice or cards.

It's definitely quite a different beast compared to WFRP3 or the Edge of the Empire, but I find it interesting to see what Jay comes up with. He's founded his own indie publishing LLC, and says there are more games to come. But he's still with FFG, for all I know.

Anyway, here are the links, if you want to check it out.

http://www.coriolisdefect.com/

Would be a cool superpower for Perfect-Man, but basing a whole RPG around the concept seems a little weird. Perfection is achieved through trial and error, not avoidance. Learning to deal with consequences and man-up is part of normal adult development. If you haven't faced the consequences of your mistakes, then you probably haven't developed the wisdom to recognise them when they occur, and therefore wouldn't know when to click rewind anyway.

Quite right, but I'm not sure if that's what the game is about. On its web page it says:

"So even with this near-omniscience, despite your best efforts you may still fail, but in a different way. So the character gets snapped back to try again. And again. Until he gets it right. Even if it nearly kills him. Perhaps not physically kills him, but wears away and erodes his mind and soul to the point that the line between the future, present, and past blurs. The distinction between success and failure becomes unclear. The events of time and re-history become muddled and unfocused." www.coriolisdefect.com/

Of course, the Coriolis Defect (that is, the time-rewinding ability) might only be used by the characters when the stakes are high enough. That might be tricky on the GM and players, building and maintaining the pressure - or even putting the time loops to some extra narrative use beyond "you failed, try again". Like, get somebody to tell you his former password, and then go back to the time when he still used that password?

Considering it's called a "defect", I guess that leaves room for underdeveloped manchildren who've never had to deal with any serious consequences in their lives. I'm sure Jay & co. will put together a good game, it just seems like a very narrow premise based on the vague info presented. I'd like to see the game explore other aspects of reality manipulation in addition to time-jumping (e.g. time distortion ala Matrix, spatial distortion, sociomancy & subjective realities). Although perhaps that would be too much like M:tA.