The thing that Vileborn designer Claudio Pustorino admires the most about ‘90s video games is their limitations. Genre-defining 32-bit classics like Final Fantasy 7, Castlevania: Symphony of the Night, and Metal Gear Solid made the most of the PlayStation’s capabilities by cramming as much content as they could into CD jewel cases. Pustorino wondered if he could channel the spirit of those games into a tabletop RPG by giving himself similar restrictions.
“They don’t have much power or memory, but they managed to create something meaningful, incredible, and memorable,” Pustorino told Polygon in a video interview. “It’s a lot easier to have 2,300 pages of books to expand your ideas as much as you want. A jewel case is quite an odd limit, but an interesting design challenge for me.”
Pustorino worked with Wilderfeast and The Queen’s Dilemma publisher Horrible Guild to develop MemoryCore, which heads to BackerKit on June 9. A box resembling a PlayStation is packed with a User Manual that provides the system’s core rules along with six tiny TTRPG modules, each based on a different ‘90s classic:
- Bloodsong: Hunters of the Night / Castlevania: Symphony of the Night
- Solid State Machine / Metal Gear Solid
- Final Tournament / Tekken
- Corebound Chronicles / Final Fantasy 7
- Overdrive Crew / Need for Speed
- Extinction Protocol / Resident Evil
“The biggest challenge was deciding what belongs in the core system, because you don’t want the same experience from a survival or action stealth or fighting game,” Pustorino said. “But we are well aware that for some players, starting from zero every time and having to learn how a game works from scratch would be quite a heavy [lift]. Each game will feature specific mechanics to foster a specific kind of narrative.”
Pre-generated character sheets take the form of small cards showing a character’s backstory, goals, starting equipment, feats, and stats. Players roll different dice ranging from d4 to d12 based on their stats, and dry-erase markers are used to mark buffs and debuffs that can change the die type. The markers are also used to track health and expendable resources, which might be focus, stamina, or mana depending on the game you’re playing. Those resources can be used to activate abilities or reroll dice.
Each character has a set of specializations like trapfinding, acrobatics, and hacking that give them advantage on die rolls when they come up. Some special moves also allow players to roll all the dice down the line from their highest one in a stat — for example, a d8, a d6, and a d4 — and keep the best roll, or even let an ally use their second-best roll if they’re leading the way.
Like any good video game, MemoryCore has breaks in the action for “cutscenes” where the game master foreshadows threats or narrates a cinematic moment. Players can get some say in how these interludes turn out through a Button Mashing mechanic where everyone rolls all their dice together and tries to assemble the best possible result by combining pairs or runs. The mechanic is also a way to speed up matches in the Tekken-inspired Final Tournament.
“You will have a lot of special moves that trigger with specific combinations,” Pustorino said. “The other players can be part of the crowd cheering. You will end up fighting an entire fight in maybe 10 to 15 minutes in a very narrative way.”
PlayStation memory cards inspired the shape of the cards used to represent gear, weapons, and quest items. These are designed with specific games in mind — like cardboard boxes and frag grenades for the Solid State Machine, which is inspired by Metal Gear Solid — but GMs can mix and match them if they want to create genre mashups. Each game will have a one-shot that serves as a tutorial, teaching the rules as you play.
Turning video games designed to play solo or with two players into cooperative games for two to five was easier for some titles than others. Pustorino took cues from the Dungeons & Dragons adventure Curse of Strahd for the Castlevania-like Bloodsong: Hunters of the Night. For Overdrive Crew, Pustorino fused Need for Speed with The Fast and the Furious to create high-stakes, high-adrenaline heists focused on chase scenes. The biggest challenge was Solid State Machine.
“In the action stealth genre, you are rewarded while you are making action not happen,” Pustorino said. “This is not difficult to convey, but it’s difficult to make enjoyable at the table.”
Pustorino’s solution was an alert level reminiscent of Blades in the Dark‘s progress clocks, which makes the players’ situation more precarious over time. The game also emphasizes the importance of level design, giving players plenty of equipment and terrain they can interact with to hide their presence or turn a fight to their advantage. Pustorino also added the concept of coded communication so that players can communicate even while hiding. That line of communication can be hacked at key moments to add narrative tension. Horrible Guild will be releasing Solid State’s tutorial for free on May 26 to provide potential backers with a taste of the project.
Just choosing what games to include in MemoryCore was a challenge, and Pustorino emphasized he’s got big ambitions for future expansions.
“I want to develop Crash Bandicoot, PaRappa the Rapper, Broken Sword, and Diablo,” he said. “There is so much to do.”