Download the Lucky 13 game engine here
The Lucky 13 Game Engine is the core set of rules that power our flagship game, Top Secret: New World Order. When we originally wrote Top Secret NWO, we named its core game engine “Lucky 13” with the intention of using it for other genres of our own design.
With everything that’s been going on lately, we decided to publish Lucky 13 as a game engine that anyone can use to make their own role playing games. Along with the Lucky 13 game engine, we’re including a license to ensure that it can be used for free, forever, in any way you like.
All the details are in the PDF that’s attached to this post, but here’s the basics.
Lucky 13 is a game engine that has one simple idea at its core: whenever your character is trying to do something, you’ll succeed if you roll a 13 or higher. That’s it. No more asking “what do I have to get on this roll?” The answer is 13. What changes is the kind of dice you get to roll. You get three dice that represent your innate abilities, your learned skills, and a difficulty rating. The dice range from a d4 to a d12. The better your chances, the bigger dice you roll.
There’s more to it of course, but that’s the basic idea, and we’ve found that new players can get that basic idea in about a minute, and they’re ready to start playing. Other concepts, like opposed rolls for combat, specializations, backgrounds, initiative, and all that can be picked up as the game goes along. The Lucky 13 PDF provides all the details you’ll need for that.
We’ve written our own license for this, and called it the Everlasting License for Free (ELF). It’s at the end of the Lucky 13 PDF, where you can take your time to peruse it in-depth. Here are the basics:
- The license is entirely free
- You keep the copyright to anything you create
- The license is perpetual and irrevocable
- There’s no “morality clause”
- You can modify anything you like in the Lucky 13 game engine
- You can use the Lucky 13 logo on your own products
You’re not required to get our approval to use Lucky 13, or even to tell us you’re using it. But we’d love to see what you make if you’d like to show us!
