Or at least, an early version of it. Here's a pretty sizable revision of the core vision, retrofitted according to an arduous playtesting/stresstesting phase during the writing of the Fallen Ogre Machine dungeon.

You'll notice that there's been a few changes. Other than the playtesting, it coincided with the writing of Ultraviolent Cultivation as the vision for an occult xianxia diamat world coalesced through wider reading and as new ideas arose from the material:

The very important lore change: the Five-Armed Demiurge Array, which blocks Cultivation from the Masses, a mystic technique enacted by the Five Triumphant Immortals of the Heavenly Bourgeoisie after their victory in the Second World Revolution.

Condensed Attributes and a revised Check system

A new Sidhi system—the quintessential active energy of the Trichiliocosm, which arises from the Akasha, the Implicate Materiality of Data

This includes a new “Samadhi” state that boosts your stats and lets you use your more powerful technicks and magicks. Samadhi is kinda like a Cultivation Flow State.

New Cultvation Dialectic progression system

New currency system built off of magnetite, which is also used as XP, in a very Dark Souls "Souls as Currency/XP" or in a very AD&D "Gold-as-XP"

A new damage system based off of damage tiers (a la Shin Megami Tensei), and non-scaling weapon damages that, to scale with higher Cultivations, requires Upgrading and Reinforcing by collecting Siderite

Old Violence is now part of the Rules section, called "Brisk Violence"...

...and Liquid Steel Ultraviolence is now specifically the term for a different, more structured violence of actions and interrupts, built off of old tactical inspirations and ideas from running the game with the patrons!

and more...

The whole three books (Manual, Compendium, and Shrine) is here! It is early access so expect hella typos and some mechanical discrepancies.

A Revisiting Of The Heart Principles

As I went about stresstesting the new game, I've found that as I ran the game for newer players, they were having a hard time when it came to probably the most frictional part of the game: combat. Not just that, but I don't think I've been able to convey the fierce and strange dialectical resolution of occult xianxia and dialectical materialism. And so, I did that. My two main goals were:

Emphasize The World. Everything should hearken to the world, and everything should be of the world. It should be materialist in philosophy: that is to say, as much as possible, the Player's Ideas shouldn't be the main driving force of the world, but rather, the World itself (the World in this case being the dialectical fusion of fiction, world, and mechanics).

Make It Accessible. A large portion of the people that were interested in this game were mostly people that have never played a TTRPG before. The earliest versions of this game were steeped in RPG Theory—to the point that to even get it meant you had to be at least in the know with at least Forge-era theory and PbtA theory of Play, not to mention OSR. I think that was a barrier. We have to meet the people where they're at. I changed some things to be easier to understand, deliberately made callbacks to popular video game tropes that are more accessible to the Masses, to be able to essentially "un-gatekeep" the game. Unfortunately, due to its setting, its never going to be the ultimately accessible game, but I think that's where the people interested owe it themselves to rise up to where we're at.

To that end, here's some of the major revisions.

Checks

You will notice checks are 2d6 + Attribute vs the World's Demand now. Demand being the Difficulty. This was done mainly for one reason: subtraction was going to feel bad.

In a game like GURPS, the main way to challenge someone was to heap negative modifiers that arise from their current situation. That makes it very immersive, but it has an unnecessarily bad game-feel. I had players that were too well-versed at min-maxing, and to properly challenge them I had to start thinking of mechanics like "Threat" or "Prowess." The problem with all of that was that they all inflicted heaps of negative mechanics.

It felt very bad to know your Violence is 16, roll a 15, but then get told by your Intercessor that: "Oops, sorry, you're fighting someone way above your league, reduce your target number by 8." Not only did it feel bad, but it introduced a hiccup: now there’s slight confusion as to what is to be subtracted, why, and so on. The player is ripped out of the world for a brief moment, and not in the targeted Rupture way.

One of the main benefits of a roll under is that you don't have to ask if you pass or fail. However, with the Materialism-Feel Goal of the game, I think that sort of individualism was antithetical to the feel that you are actively part of a world and the world is not very benevolent. And so, I returned back to the roll over a difficulty.

Also I reduced it to 2d6 because it’s easier to read, lowers barrier of entry, has a good margin that’s not too large, and scales nicely over the 12 Cultivation Levels.

Attributes

The 16 Skills have been reduced to 6. Most were squished together, others were put into Traits, which now includes personalities, backgrounds, and skills! And were completely revised.

Having 6 makes the gear choices (with the + and -) actually impactful. It looks good on a character sheet, is good for a quick glance, and more importantly, very good for easy for making world being stat blocks with. Having the 6 Attributes also means I can add in 4e-style defenses—Parry, Dodge, and Resolve.

Sidhi and Magnetite

This is essentially, mostly, a Lore Change. But the way currency works now is that it’s kinda like a Soulslike, wherein your currency is also what you have to use for your XP. But it’s a little bit more complicated than that: you need to be able to do a Sidhi Absorption Technique, and you can only absorb from refined magnetite or spiritual treasures.

Sidhi is what used to be Ardor in the past. I’ve written it to be a bit more in line what what I’ve envisioned it. It’s now a sort of “Akashic Quantum Qi.” It is the “Energy-Flow of the Universe” (as described by Eskrima Masters) that is, in truth, the quintessence field through which Akasha, the informational Implicate World, manifests into the Explicate or Apparent Materiality. It’s what allows information to tell quarks and hadrons and other point particles to have a trajectory, or be matter, or be energy.

With Sidhi also comes two “general” Technicks that every Cultivator can use: Divine Empowerment Bolster (which lets you deal extra damage and push!) and Divine Empowerment Lightness (which lets you leap off of walls, half fall damage, or zip 5hx in any direction as if you’re on wires).

The Five-Armed Demiurge Array

The Five Armed Demiurge Array makes it so that Cultivators need to undergo an Antinomian Rite to be able to become Cultivators.

Cultivation Dialectics

Progression now has a path: you can choose from four. Revolution Dialectic, Internal Elixir Dialectic, Luminous Mind Dialectic, and Communion Dialectic. You can think of them as 4e Power Sources: Martial, Arcane, Psionic, and Divine/Primal. A bit more like Lancer’s Core Bonuses, you gain passive “Attainments” from leveling up your Cultivation Dialectic.

Samadhi

Samadhi is a state of surging, unbreakable “flow state” that comes with a number of benefits: namely, entering Samadhi heals 1 Sidhi, and then you gain an Attribute and Passive Benefit according to your Cultivation Dialectic.

Liquid Steel Ultraviolence

Main Inspirations: Arnis, Pencak Silat, The Raid: Redemption, Ip Man, Dead Fantasy, RWBY, Devil May Cry

This is the bigger one. We still have the Telegraph-based Violence, known as Brisk Violence. But for more involved skirmishes and life-or-death duels, we go into Liquid Steel Ultraviolence. It has two defining features: 3 Liquid Actions and No Action Lists.

3 Liquid Actions

Each combatant has 3 actions, similar to something like Pathfinder 2e or Nimble. However, instead of these 3 Actions being confined to your “turn”, you actually “take” your Action when it’s “your turn.” Once you take your Action, you can take all three of your Actions, or you can choose to just take 1 or 2, and save the rest for later. Both Wanderers and World-Beings work the same in this case.

More importantly, anyone who still has Actions can Interrupt by announcing it at any point during another person’s Action, and then performing their Action then. It counts as taking their Action, however this lets them run out of the way of an attack, or use a parrying technick, or run to interpose between an ally and an attacking enemy.

And, on top of that, anyone can Interrupt anyone that’s already Interrupting, performing a 2nd Interrupt. The 2nd Interrupt happens first, before the first Interrupt, which happens before the original Action. However, no single Action can go above 2 Interrupts!

This means Actions are floating things that exist throughout a tick. For Intercessors, they can choose just to spend all 3 Actions when they let one of their combatants take Actions, instead of playing it smart and saving for Interrupts. Not all builds and playstyles will depend on Interrupting anyway.

But what can you do when you Interrupt? Here’s where the next defining feature comes in:

No Action Lists

Creativity is the heart of OSR and NSR. That goes out the window when you switch into a D&D 4e-like closed system action economy. So for LSUV, we’re doing the opposite. When you take your Action, there are no Action lists to choose from. Just do something. Whatever makes sense in the current situation. It’s easier than you think. Now you can spend your three Actions to leap onto a pillar, run up and leap off of it, and then attack a falling enemy.

Actions now are no longer a point of maximizing Action Economy, but rather, maximizing creativity. And with the new Check system, this is easier to handle and facilitate.

Damage System

Inspired by: Shin Megami Tensei

Along the new combat is a new damage system. Instead of numbers, we have descriptors. From Minor to Light to Medium all the way to Devil damage. Each damage tier cleaves away at a number of Health. Any damage adjustments raises or lowers the damage tier of an attack or damage source.

Weapon System

Inspired by: Dark Souls, Bloodborne, Elden Ring

Weapons don’t scale with you anymore. I mean, their Accuracy does, but not their damage. You have to look for things called Siderite to be able to upgrade them, raising their base Damage Tier to be able to scale with higher level world-beings.

World Beings

Are created the same way as Wanderers are. This accentuates the fact that Wanderers are just World-Beings too. Inseparable from the world. This means World Beings can use the same Technicks and Magicks that Wanderers do. But these same World Beings can teach their Technicks to the Wanderers as well!

Other Changes

A slew of revisions to the Esoteric Arts

Mystic Arts now all have Mudras and Mantras attached to them

Revised the Shrine of the Black Bodhisattva

Deities are explicitly “a subspecies and tribe of humans” that either adapted to living in orbital heavens (Astrals) or subterranean earth (Chthonics). Inspired by the very human depiction of Gods, and the dualistic depictions of many God Tribes (such as the Devas and Asuras, the Aesir and Vanir, the Asura and Devas, the Gods and the Titans, and so on)