A SHIFT in Projects

So I was introduced to yet another new role playing game recently, and I decided to take a break from my normal creative endeavor to go check it out. I must admit, I’m very impressed. The game is called SHIFT, a rules-light, fiction-first, narrative game. You can check out the promo booklet for free here.

There are several things that I really like about this game, despite not having a clue about how to actually work with Traits (aka Tags aka Aspects aka Descriptors, or any other terminology that refers to a witty phrase or keyword to describe something about a character, location, or object), building a character took less than ten minutes. Granted, I don’t have access to the complete rule book as of yet— that comes out in January 2026. However, there’s enough to work with between the Basic Rulebook and the World Sparks that have been officially released. There are three Core Traits: Mind, Body, and Soul. That’s it. And they’re pretty easy to work with. Mind for all the mental and intellectual stuff. Body for all the physical hard work and crap. Soul to use for social stuff or anything sketchy, like spirituality and junk. There’s also two additional Traits, a Primary and a Secondary that you’ll need to dream up on your own.

Mechanics

Dice. This is where this system really shines. I love me some dice rollin’! And SHIFT doesn’t disappoint! You get to use most of your 55-gallon drum of lonely dice that’s been resting in peace in your basement for decades. All but the d20. Put that sucker to sleep. He’s tired of being in your fist all day. You’ll want two sets of polyhedral dice. Four-sided (d4), six-sided (d6), eight-sided (d8), ten-sided (d10), and twelve-sided (d12). Every Trait gets assigned a specific die upon Character Creation. You assign your Body, Mind, and Soul one of d6, d8, or d10 (no repeats, okay?). Then you assign your Primary Focus Trait a d4, and your Secondary Focus Trait a d6.

Success is a die result of a 1, 2, or 3, with a 1 meaning a Critical Success. More on that in a moment. If your die lands on it’s highest value (a four on a d4, a ten on a d10), then that’s read as a Critical Failure, and you Shift Down to the next size dice size. A d4 becomes a d6, and a d10 becomes a d12. If you land on a 12, that Trait is then considered Exhausted, and you can’t use it until you’ve Recovered (either by resting, or rolling a Critical Success. There’s other ways yet to be disclosed.) This is also how Health and Energy resource tracking works. There’s literally NO MATH in this game! If your Body becomes Exhausted, you either fall unconscious, or you die, or something. It depends on the grittiness of the game setting.

Combat is just as easy. Every Adversary has a Scale rating. A rating of 1 means that you only have to Exhaust one Trait to defeat the Adversary. The Scale ranges from one to five. Which totally makes sense, because every character will always have at least five Traits.

Settings

It’s super easy to play this game, and to assist players, pre-made settings, known as World Sparks have been created, with new ones being made all the time by the community. Currently, there are two World Sparks, Dorado Station, a Science Fiction/Western scene, and Malstorm, a Horror environment.

Creating a Spark is super easy. There’s a workbook that you fill out that provides all the necessary components that you’ll need. But the best part is that you can twist and deviate from the official rules. At least, based on what I’ve read so far, you can. And I’m going to have some fun here.

I’m going to give this system a quick run through with my current favorite setting: Anime-Space Opera-Cyberpunk-Comedy. And to do that, I’m going to create a fourth Core Trait, called Chaos. Basically, this Trait will allow me to Narrative Cheat, have Unshakeable Confidence, and provide a window for Comedic Timing. I’ll be working on the rest of the details probably tomorrow, and hopefully get some official feedback on my Core Trait idea. Maybe even find somebody to run this World Spark through. I’m even thinking of ways I can torture my favorite character, Fate Testarossa, and probably the entire main cast of Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha, through these shenanigans. That’s always a fun little exercise!

Anyway, I’ve gotten a bit off track. A World Spark isn’t a complete adventure or module. It’s designed to be a seed to flesh out with your players, or to complete on the fly. The Spark gives a couple of locations, a few Adversaries, and a couple of plot hooks to get you started. Literally, after you get the hand of this, it may only take a couple of hours of solid concentration to whip one of these bad boys up— and I’m excited to see what other people create!

Conclusion

I really hate saying that word. But I’m tired, and I guess it fits. SPARKS looks to be an intensely well constructed game. And it should be. I accidentally tripped over the creator’s original beta-test post on Reddit, a post of three years old! The really great news is that this project is nearly complete. All the text and core bits are already completed. There’s a really strong Discord community, and with the KickStarter having already surpassed it’s funding goal, expect full digital copies of the game to be released in January of 2026, with physical books being delivered in the first quarter of 2027.

I’m looking forward to trying this game out with a couple of custom Oracles and seeing how well a Solo game could do. And assuming I survive my own brain damage, maybe I’ll find a friend who’s equally as crazy as I am and we can play with each other too— using SHIFT of course! (Get your mind out of the gutter!)