Metaforce TTRPG:About

Metaforce is a tabletop roleplaying system designed to work across multiple genres through its versatile mechanics and the use of Metaphors, a modular system to construct various powers, skills and abilities to allow players the freedom to create the characters they want while moderating and defining their power to the game itself. Players and their Game-Master can communicate to craft characters suitable for the scenario being played.

History and Origin

Metaforce was created and developed by AlienOvan, in August 2023, though the wiki to store the game documentation would not be available until September 2024 and development on the system was much earlier than that. He would design the system as a way to play characters that couldn't be fully realized under stricter systems that existed then, either by genre or by the mechanics and content available to play them. This led to the creation of the core mechanic Metaphors

In addition, he wanted a system to which Giant and Tiny characters could be freely playable (Game-master permitting), feeling other systems watered down Size mechanics down to irrelevance. AlienOvan not only believes Giants and Giant creatures to be powerful, but also dangerous enough to be worthy of respect. This resulted in the Size Rating mechanic, a mechanic that is not only bipartisan in regards to how it functions between Players and NPCs but also counter-balances itself against creatures of the same size. Because of this, Giant/Kaiju battles are now possible with little adjustments.

AlienOvan had a interest and fascination for the Japanese artistic philosophy of over the top, exciting and unusual interpretations of logic and presentation. Examples being that of Dragonball Z in terms of power and scale, and  Jojo's Bizarre Adventure for creativity and logical execution. So one of the aspects to the creation of Metaforce was to make a system that could recreate the hyper-kinetic scenes seen in Manga and Anime. With the use of Metaphors, AlienOvan would allow players to be able to create characters with powers and abilities that could reach those levels of creativity while ensuring their power could not grow too quickly without having earned it first.

In addition, he felt that the way that random odds in traditional tabletop RPGs felt lacking, often empathising those who suffered long periods of bad RNG and having lost characters due to singular failed checks. It was this that AlienOvan wanted to include a mechanic that allowed players to alter fate and permit characters to not only live encounters they would have perished, but also incentivise Game-Masters to allow players to enter more dangerous scenarios knowing they had a chance to survive if they picked their battles correctly. The Meta Point mechanic was created as a finite resource for characters to alter the outcomes of checks and interactions in game, and Meta Dice, dice that were designed to raise the minimum value so that the chances of getting low numbers would be minimised.

Special Thanks

Special Thanks goes to the original play-testers for Metaforce, who provided valuable feedback to ensuring a strong first release.

Playtest Group 1
♦ Rowan for giving some critical game-design advice as a veteran GM of many systems.
♦ Fulkrim for always being around to talk to me, and to actually talk to me.
♦ Firmdug for playing and enjoying the system, despite having heard about it 'yesterday'.

Playtest Group 2
♦ "Kanian" Kaha for being Metaforce's first die-hard fan and supporting its creator.
♦ Tower for providing support and being a good friend.
♦ Kitteh for being one of the first players to paper-test the character sheet.
♦ Skoops for being a good friend for all these years, and doing your best in your first time TTRPG.
♦ "Anon" for your input as a first-time TTRPG player.

Beta 2.22 Test Group
♦ Terra you asked the important questions and also made the best questionable characters.
♦ Discord, you may have been quiet but I appreciated your input nevertheless.

Others
♦ Arthadian for uplifting me when I was at my lowest.
♦ "Diddily Dee" for creating the Role system, an inspiration.
♦ Mixed while you didn't play in Beta-1, I appreciate you trying at least.
♦ Toastee for very early paper-testing and suggestions.

Questions Answered

Is Metaforce Free?

My plan from the start is to make the core rules of Metaforce free on this wiki. As someone who primarily played with systems only when there was a wiki available to read up the material for free, I decided to make it available from the get-go. I still own all the Metaforce copyrights but players may use the rules and free assets to run their own games.

Metaforce content on any other website other than metaforce.magicwindowstudios.com are not official sources and I should warn you to take care of sites pretending to be Metaforce, if not for stopping you from learning the wrong information about the system, but also in case it is used to compromise your system with malware.

Monetisation
I do plan to produce paid-for content in the future. Stuff like Campaign Modules for official stories and settings with the system. I also plan to eventually make physical media for things like the Metaforce core rules since people enjoy the idea of having a physical reference than just a website or app. Eventually, being able to release a physical book containing a wide range of Metaphors that players can use to build their characters would be nice, a literal Metaphor Manual of sorts.

However, as of writing, those plans are a bit far away. No modules can be written until the foundation of the system is set. But please stay tuned if you are interested in this sort of thing.

Does Metaforce use AI?

The Metaforce system and wiki does not use AI generated images. There's a stigma attached to that sort of thing so all art and images used are either sourced online or created from scratch. Sure it won't look as impressive as something that looks like a high-quality Magic-the-Gathering card, but on the flipside all images associated with something will look close to its intended look, instead of an interpretation. If an image used is revealed to have been AI-generated, I promise that I wasn't the one who generated it, I simply didn't know beforehand.

AI is also not used in the writing or production of the game system, I'm something of a particular-perfectionist and could not and would not use an AI to solve game-design problems like this, it wouldn't produce the results I want. The Wiki software is provided by Mediawiki and the edits to the layout were also hand-typed myself (even if it lead to me breaking a couple of extensions).

My hope is to work with talented and trustworthy individuals in future to produce good content for the system, even if it ends up taking longer and costing money to do so.

Can I use Metaforce for my own stuff?

Generally with any tabletop system like this, you can use the system freely to run games with your own story, setting, characters...etc without even having to inform me about it. You can also create content with the Metaforce system in mind, such as items, equipment, species and you will 'own' those concepts as any copyright-protect IP.

However, and it really goes without saying, you can't simply take the Metaforce system in whole and claim it as your own. You're only really entitled to produce system-compatible content for it, and not 'fork' the whole system in a slightly modified form to claim ownership. If you want your own system you're going to have to build from scratch, and even if it uses some ideas and concepts from Metaforce you can be happy knowing that you made that system yourself instead of copy and pasting the framework.

Official recognition of Metaforce-compatible content
Right now there's no proper way to officially recognise content for Metaforce but if you produce content for Metaforce and you want to let me know about it, please send me an email and I can give your stuff a review. Content with interesting and even game-breaking potential can serve as good inspiration on how I can take the core system further.

How can I provide feedback to Metaforce?

You can send me feedback and opinions about Metaforce or Metaforce-compatible content at the email at the bottom of this page. It is checked occasionally but not daily so please be patient if a response is not given quickly.

You can also email me about rulings that are not described (well, or at all) on the wiki. Or to point out discrepancies between pages that discuss the same rulings and topics. I'd not only be grateful for help pointing out the problem but will give you an honest developer's ruling on the scenario. Though please be descriptive of what is going on in the scenario when you ask for the ruling since context matters in these cases.

Do you support X?

As a developer for a game system, I am not allowed to have opinions of any kind and you should assume I have nothing to say on the issue either. Metaforce likewise is agnostic to everything and the only concern I have is making it the most flexible and entertaining system I can.

If anything should support anything, it's the Metaforce system supporting any kind of story, gameplay or character concept you're trying to realise.

Contact/Inquiries

Lead Developer and Creator: AlienOvan (Magic Window Studios )
Email: email at magicwindowstudios dot com
Websites: Metaforce Wiki
Platforms: Discord, VRChat

You may not contact me about promotions, sponsorships or deals at this time. I am not hiring any staff right now. I'm waiting until the wiki is complete and support staff is in place before I start any collaborations.