It’s been a while since we’ve seen an extended System Hack at Cannibal Halfling Gaming. Genesys Mecha concluded in September of 2019 and Cyberpunk Chimera concluded in May of 2020. And yes, neither of them were ever expanded into standalone products; while writing did continue behind the scene the scope of the ambition of both of the projects was simply too high to be completed in the spare time of one or even two nerds who also had jobs (and in one case, kids).

With all those caveats out of the way, I’m trying it again anyway. Both Genesys Mecha and Cyberpunk Chimera provided great deep dives and game design ideas, and with that in mind I wanted to set my sights on something that’s both been a personal quest of mine for a little while as well as something that will add to the game design conversation in a positive way (whether or not the article series leads to anything more). Cortex Prime is, in my opinion, one of the most flexible and powerful rules toolkits on the market. It’s also a toolkit that takes some effort and consideration to set up, which has prevented it from taking off in the same way as the similar but much simpler Fate. Cortex Prime also has many fewer worked examples than Fate, which has the exemplary Fate Worlds series as well as a number of Fate System Toolkits; instead, Cortex only has Tales of Xadia as a fully implemented Cortex game outside of its three in-book examples which are too short and a bit too unconventional to be accessible demos (their genres are police procedural, rescue team, and neo-classical fantasy). A good system hack will walk through the various mechanics, mods, and character options and discuss why each choice is made and how they’re going to work in the final product.