Centennia. A long time coming, and where did it come from?

November 12, 2023.

Welcome, and thank you for reading. My name is Brian, and I’m the author of Centennia. To the left is the concept cover I did when I was preparing to print the rules for the first Centennia playtests. It was pretty bad, but I knew what I wanted the cover to look like and I wanted the players to see it. The players helped so much and I truly want to thank them. Their willingness to spend their Saturdays testing Centennia means a lot to me.

A Long Road

Years ago I was at a friend’s house and we were waiting for players to arrive so we could play a tabletop roleplaying game. I have a tendency to talk a lot, and this time was no exception. I began talking about elements that I liked and disliked within the particular RPG we were going to play. In fact, I was the one running the game. When I paused at some point, one of my friends remarked that I should create my own roleplaying game. He's a good friend who never said a word about my harsh reply. I said I thought it was a terrible idea. Turns out, it was an idea I could not let go of.

Every time I work on Centennia, I save the draft as a new filename with the current date. I have over a thousand drafts now. I found my first use of the term “10GINE” in my 2015-11-10 draft. I think it’s interesting that it’s almost exactly eight years later that I’m writing my first blog, and the blog is for Centennia. My first use of the term “Centennia” appears in my 2018-08-27 draft, nearly three years after 10GINE.

To be fair, I wasn’t very dedicated to the project in the beginning. The early drafts bear no resemblance to the Centennia of today. At least twice I thought I had a dice pool mechanic that worked, and I proved myself wrong by using random number generation spreadsheets to mimic dice pools. The mechanics were so broken that I had to start over from scratch. In fact, the only content unchanged from the early years are the three principles I established for the game mechanic:

- It must be concise, consistent, and easy to understand,
- It must not slow the speed of gameplay,
- It must allow expansive customization of characters and their abilities.

In 2020, I began becoming serious about Centennia. By 2022, it was a passion. Somehow along the way, better ideas replaced the original ones. Don’t ask me where they came from. Most of them popped into my mind while I was sitting in the recliner and sipping coffee before going to work. Maybe it’s the recliner.

What Centennia Is, and What It Isn’t

I’ve played “crunchy” RPGs for years, and enjoyed them. In creating and running adventures, I’ve seen the disparity of the characters played by casual and veteran players. I’ve also seen the frustration it can cause. I’ve seen over-optimization “min-maxing” at its max, and characters sidelined by overpowered characters. I wanted to create a balanced, engaging, and in-depth system that’s not “fluff” or rules-lite, that had no “dump stats” or unused skills, and that would not require hours of reading and explanation to create a character. I also did not want it to provide undue advantages based upon an individual’s knowledge of the rule set. 10GINE is that system.

Originally, I gave no thought to creating a campaign setting. I wanted to create a game system that could be used in any genre; a proverbial better mouse trap. The end. When I finally accepted that I had to tailor it to a genre, I had no idea what it would be. I enjoy fantasy, horror, medieval, modern, and science fiction genres, which didn’t help limit the possibilities. So I approached it from the viewpoint of what I didn’t want it to be.

I knew I didn’t want to include magic. There’s nothing wrong with RPG magic; my favorite character of many gaming years was a wizard. I didn’t want it to be futuristic or focused on technology, so that initially ruled out science fiction. I didn’t want it to take place upon earth, but I also didn’t want to create an entirely new world of nations and peoples that the players would have to learn. I didn’t want players to have to consciously separate their knowledge from their characters’ knowledge to avoid metagaming.

Centennia is set in the future. Exactly how far into the future is intentionally undefined. Centennia does not focus on technology, but I tried to introduce technological ideas that are not too far removed from our world today. One key point is that Centennia is not a dark future or dystopian society, and I will not make it so. Hope in the future, hope in humanity, is critically important and I prefer to focus on the positive than to emphasize negativity. So Centennia has no post-apocalyptic zombies or murderous aliens. Well, not yet. Neither is Centennia about a utopian society, far from it. The factions in Centennia are very good at causing more than enough strife for everyone.

Centennia begins with the initial colonization of a new world. The Colonist’s Companion includes the Day One adventure that introduces players to the Centennia universe only days after colonists first set foot upon Gaia, the new world. In the Day One adventure, Centennia offers what I think is a unique opportunity for players to begin shaping their characters’ world at the very beginning of humanity’s new home amongst the stars.

All in all, I’m sure it’s the recliner.

Thanks for reading!
Brian