Don't forget to add the game intro Era Imperium for a quick game explanation.

Words from the author

This is the first public release of the game.  Era started as a new combat mechanism for RPGs and quickly evolved into a melting pot of my ideas and desires I have as a player and game master.  It is my personal quest for a set of simple yet useful rules that allow flexibility and content to prevail over rule making.  Era is a toy, a game and an experiment.  Some ideas and concepts will seem familiar to old time players.  Others will seem odd, strange and even awkward.  To be honest I have not hit the sweet spot with a few of the rules and ideas, but in the good spirit of open source I believe in “release early and release often”.

The underlying force behind Era is a quest for balance not through limitations and constraints, but by empowerment.  The cover art was chosen to represent what is important in Era.  Power and balance.  The dragon headed triskel represents power and equilibrium.  Characters have strengths that come at a cost.  Players will have to make compromises when creating and later improving their characters.

Old school gaming is strong in my mind when thinking about Era.  A quest for a game in which the spirit of discovery and adventure overcome rule play, rehearsed play patterns and excessive optimization.  It is an experiment to set a base framework that allows game masters and players alike to create new and captivating settings.  A point buy system was chosen because it allows a simple yet deeply impacting modification to be done by adjusting a multiplier or base values.  The quest is for a simple set of concepts that provide a clear framework for play that limits arbitrariness, but still allows for innumerable options that are hard to predict and will keep players on the edge as they adventure through deep dungeons and broad wildernesses.

I hope you enjoy reading through the early building blocks I put forward in these rules.  I write them in the hope that these blocks and the huge amount of combinations they can create will be more valuable and easy to learn, grasp and expand than a larger volume of rules.

Good gaming!

Gerardo Tasistro

This is the players handbook that will guide you through the creation of your character.  It includes:

• Attribute and race descriptions
• Power point explanations and how to use them during the game
• Movement, combat, fatigue, skill and magic mechanics
• Character advancement
• Equipment