Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light. - Dylan Thomas

Welcome to #BurnBryte, a space-fantasy RPG by @JamesIntrocaso, @GMJimMcClure, @DarcyLRoss, and @kat_kuhl_

The galaxy is burning.

But annihilation wouldn’t stop you.

#AjeyReads

Bryte, in short, is very well-made.

Its core resolution is sharp, its skill system is sleek, its initiative system is utterly inspired, and its spaceship design and combat system feels natural.

Burn Bryte has all the mechanics it needs, and no more.

That’s an impressive feat.

I’ll be honest, I don’t know Bryte through Burn Bryte or Roll20–I know it through the @autonomicpod iteration of the system.

So I’ll touch *briefly* on the setting, but I’m going to focus *mostly* on the core rules system.

I’d say that’s pretty On Brand for me, though.

Quick note on its presentation.

I like that everything in the rules is linked to everything else.

I don’t like wrestling with Roll20 to read it.

I like the concept of web-based rulebooks, but Roll20 has a lot of jank. I’d appreciate a PDF, too.

Onto the rules!

The core resolution of Bryte is rolling a Skill with a pool of identical dice.

The better you are at the Skill, the BIGGER the dice you roll.

The more complex the check, the MORE dice you roll.

If all your dice are different numbers, you succeed!

If, however, you beef it and roll doubles, there’s a d100 table for the GM to roll for failure prompts.

You don’t *have* to use this table, but I’m glad it’s there.

I know Autonomic used a deck of “Nightmare” cards for a similar effect...

Now, my first thought reading all this was:

“This resolution system is gonna take a hell of a Python script to model.”

And then Burn Bryte gave me a table of success probabilities FOR me!

Sold. I’m sold.

I did Python up a graph, though...

@get_altText

The Skills themselves are well-written.

They’re split out into Mental, Physical, and Social Skills, with no broader stats—Bryte doesn’t need them!

Each Skill is described well, complete with a combat application.

I personally like the Skullduggery, Decorum, and Suavity Skills!

The game calls out that you can justify any Skill for almost any situation.

But there’s a hook for not just spamming your best Skills.

If you make a Skill check with every die type available, from d4 to d12, you get to bank a Nova point to spend on game-breaking abilities.

I like how Conditions—Bryte’s take on health—affects Skills.

Minor Conditions affect a single Skill, Moderate Conditions affect a set of Skills (say, all Mental Skills), and Major conditions affect EVERY Skill.

Conditions can be both positive and negative!

A nice little detail is that NPCs just have scores for Mental, Physical, and Social, and that score sets both:

- The die size the NPC rolls to do something
- The number of dice a PC rolls to target that NPC

It’s so sleek, you can intuit it without the table the rules give you!

Combat is absolutely BRILLIANT in Bryte.

There are three phases to a round:

1. Enemies declare actions
2. Players take actions in response
3. Enemies resolve their actions, unless the players utterly confounded whatever those enemies were trying to do.

This is amazing. This is SO empowering to players, because at EVERY round, the GM hands them an NPC-built house of cards for them to ruin.

It’s SO good.

And then there’s the action system on players’ turns.

On your turn, your first action is Complexity 2.
Your next is Complexity 3, then 4, then 5...

You can keep going until you decide you’re done OR until you fail.

On combat failures, the GM gets the extra power to invoke COLLAPSE POINTS to up the ante in the fight.

Also? All of this uses regular Skill checks!

You can use this system for tense standoffs!

For heists involving blending into posh dinner parties!

For spaceship combat!

In fact, that’s LITERALLY what Burn Bryte does!

Spaceship scenes have some other interesting aspects, too.

Every ship is marked off into different sectors with airlocks.

Crew can move (or fight) inside the ship, and use customizable modules in scenes.

Ship damage can sometimes mean fires or hull breaches—hence the airlocks.

Vehicle combat is often a bane of TTRPGs, but Burn Bryte takes the smart route of making spaceship encounters work almost *exactly* like standard encounters.

The Airlock RPG took a similar approach to similarly strong results.

Last mechanical thing I’ll get into is Story Paths.

In Bryte, you gain XP by advancing what amount to side plots in your story, like a romance arc.

I first saw these in Autonomic, and it’s part of the inspiration behind Incentives in Bolt.

Steal this for your own games.

One thing I can’t really demonstrate in this review is the game’s attention to detail.

Guidance for running NPC allies, multi-track health systems that don’t feel multi-track, Advantage rules for non-combat characters to be useful in combat.

It all interlocks super smoothly!

Let’s talk briefly about the setting, the Olaxis galaxy.

It’s classic quasi-70s space fantasy, but with an interesting slow-apocalypse that becomes (to me) a neat allegory for climate change and climate refugees.

A lot LOOMS in Olaxis, which makes the setting feel fresh.

Another thing that makes it fresh? No humans in the galaxy—just WILD interstellar species.

Slug-folk? Crystal people? Sentient swarms? Got ‘em!

And every species gets a list of abilities so broad, that it’s quite hard to build out a monoculture.

It’s a gutsy move that WORKS.

The only worry I have about Burn Bryte is a future hacking license.

The fact that Autonomic exists suggests a generic Bryte engine is coming.

And I hope Roll20 doesn’t use their engine as an excuse to rent-seek, like FFG did.

I hope they provide openness, or at least clarity.

Burn Bryte is available on @roll20app, under the Compendium tab.

It’s 30 USD, it plugs right into Roll20, and it’s absolutely worth the money for the rules alone.

And to the Bryte team: once Bolt’s off the ground, I’d be honored to help develop for Bryte.

I’m sold on this.