Orbit Design Guide

This page adapts the design notes from the Orbit workspace into the same site format as the rest of the website.

Why Orbit

Orbit needs tailoring. That means it takes a little bit of effort. It also means that there’s no excess cloth. Unlike other generic systems like GURPS (which I adore, to be clear, no shade), the tailoring aims to still be founded on minimalism. This should result in a fast building experience for the GM, and a simple, but expressive system for the players.

Flexible

The core (or the star, if you will) of Orbit is the resolution system. It links with the other systems through the metacurrency, which you are free to name for your setting. Different subsystems use different names for it and you’re free to use them or take them as inspiration.

Hackable

It’s very easy to design a subsystem, or hack away at one to get something more to your liking, and in fact I’d encourage it!

How to Tailor Orbit

First, take the resolution system.

Now, you can think about what you need: do you need magic? Guns? Horse-riding? Latch onto the system the magic subsystem, the guns subsystem, the horse-riding subsystem. Not there? Invent one. The simplest subsystem might just be a skill. Let me explain.

Take for example horse-riding. We can choose to make it a very complicated subsystem, with three custom skills, one for caring, one for taming wild horses, and one for riding. Or we can choose to keep it simple, as I did in the example Western system, and just have riding be a Ride ability.

There’s a few systems you probably need to add:

• a damage / hp system (player characters will get hurt eventually, even in a game with no combat)
• a basic skill system
• an initiative system (doesn’t need to be linear, can be reaction based like the one in western)

Why not add them by default? I hear you ask?

Well, a damage / hp system can be more or less lethal. It can rely on hp or wounds. A skill system can be granular or paint in broad strokes. I’ll provide modules, but it’s up to you whether your game needs the one or the other.

Mechanically, how do I tailor Orbit

The system is written in typst. You can pretty much just concatenate the contents of the files (ie: copy paste the texts) and it all should pretty much work, to be honest. I’ll work to try to make it as seamless as possible. Contributions are welcome. Or you can just take the pdfs of different submodules and use those separately.