Sharkpunch Studios

Want to understand it a bit better? Think of any movie starring Bruce Campbell or Jackie Chan, or Sylvester Stallone. That feeling of fun, adventure and excitement you get from those movies is what we've captured here in one of the simplest, easiest to use rules sets you’ll ever play with. It ensures you can make the kind of character you want to make, rather than your personality being dictated by the rules or, worse, your class role, but thanks to the Stunt System and the clever new combat system we've included, you can still have fun when getting into the crunchier aspects of the game, regardless of whether your character is optimized for it or not.

So what’re you waiting for? Experience every setting you've ever wanted to, but in a totally new light.

Why Play The Awesome System?

I enjoy the "exploding dice" mechanic that has become a mainstay of the RPG industry and I wanted to take a typical RPG concept and expand on it, which is where stunts and the speed dice system come into it. So, I'll try to explain what makes The Awesome System different from other rpgs here.

So, for a typical dice roll, you'd be looking at something like the numbers below.

This gives you a roll of 10, which is pretty normal so far, right?

Anyway, if you spend 2 Awesome Points to make the ability a Stunt, you get the following:

Basically, stunts are the glue that hold the whole system together and open up all the cool stuff you can do. I wanted to take it a step further by making Stunts able to be picked up for free under the right circumstances, which is the direction I took the combat system in. In combat, you roll your Speed Dice, which is based on how much Speed you purchased for your character and can be anything from 2 to a million, and place them on the Action Grid to see what kind of actions you're taking. Here's a pretty cool mock-up of how it's going to appear on the character sheet.

The chart there has "Stunt Levels", because the higher your Stunt Level, the better the Stunt is. Basically if you spend your Awesome Points on extra dice, you get a number of bonus dice multiplied by the Stunt Level. So you know, like you spend 3 AP on a Quadruple Stunt, you get 12 bonus dice, for example.

So if you rolled your Speed Dice, you could be looking at something like:

... which, as you can see, would give you two stunts to play around with for free. High dice rolls directly translate into more damage dealt on a 1-for-1 basis, so a large part of combat is planning your combat actions around responding to the kind of roll you got on your Speed Dice. Some weapons have high "Handling" scores, which allow you to move the positions of your actions around, so if you're not happy with your roll you can spread the actions out or bunch them together by spending more Awesome Points, while other weapons can't Stunt, so there's that sort of back-and-forth play and you're doing something different every round. If you have a Stunt at the start and then some regular actions after that, you might want to use your fists or a high-accuracy pistol at the start, then switch to a weapon that can't Stunt quite so well, but has great base damage, like a rocket launcher or a Sledgehammer, for the rest of your actions.

It's really my personal response to the situation in a lot of rpgs right now where every combat round is exactly the same, and you're plugging away at the same kind of attack every time your turn comes up, and it kinda makes you think on your feet. Everyone I've played with has always found it really exciting and used the system to kinda grandstand and blow these crazy actions out of proportion, or do silly stuff like push all their actions into one turn with Handling for a super-mega-ultra stunt that blows all their points.

Do You Want an RPG That Is Fast?

The Awesome System is fast. Players are be on the edge of their seat, anxiously waiting for their next action, hastily rearranging actions and trying to work out if they want to go for that Stunt or spread their actions thin.

Do You Want An RPG That is Customizable?

Players are able to make anything.

Do You Want A Cinematic Game?​

Characters are able to plough through Mooks and Henchmen like there's no tomorrow. They hang off chandeliers, slide down banisters and kill three guys in the time it takes to eat an apple.

Are You Afraid Of Unstoppable Player Characters?​

While the characters are able to surmount any ordinary foe, there are things lurking out there in space that could make even the strongest Player Character cower in fear. If the players are built with 30 points, build monsters worth 3,000. If the players are built with 100 points, build monsters with 10,000. The game is very flexible!

Do You Like An Epic Scale?​

Players are be able to play a game of any Power level and events will flow just as smoothly whether they're a bunch of pint-sized 30 point characters or city-crushing 500 pointers.