Codex Martialis: STARA SZKOŁA

Stara Szkoła

Have you ever had the experience of enjoying an RPG session, finding yourself immersed in the drama, the living elements of the setting, the personalities of the characters, and then… a fight begins. You start combat and suddenly everything starts to feel clunky. You no longer really have control over what your character does, but instead have to follow a restrictive set of rules, waiting your turn to perform one of a few predictable actions from a limited set of options. Did you ever wonder where the story went when the fighting started?

Like the original Codex Martialis, Stara Szkoła is meant to bring that same sense of agency and immersion you feel when your character is walking down a shadowy corridor into every fight you engage in. Feel the danger, sense the thrill of calculated risks, the dynamic tension of cunning tactics taken and thwarted, daring gambits that succeed wildly or fail dismally. Stara Szkoła allows you to enjoy combat that has a flow and a natural rhythm, in which you can make real tactical decisions which do affect what happens. It allows the outcome of the fight to be determined not just by the number of ‘Hit Points’ or magic used, but by combat tactics you think up yourself.

Stara Szkoła is based on our original Codex Martialis rules, but designed to be simpler, faster paced, and easier to jump right into. This rulebook is only fifty pages, and it includes character generation, equipment and a micro adventure. And yet, it has everything you need to make characters, jump right into the action and start fighting. The combat rules and Char Gen are five pages each.

Stara Szkoła is designed and tested by Historical European Martial Arts practitioners and historical researchers, who know something about the fencing manuals of the middle ages and the world they came out of. If you want to walk the streets of the fencing masters, and test your mettle against the dangerous denizens of the medieval world, Stara Szkoła is your ticket to a place you never knew before, and may never want to leave.

SSk includes:

• Complete combat rules.
• Melee and Missile weapons with their traits and costs.
• Shields and Armor with their traits and costs.
• Miscellaneous equipment and currency.
• Complete point based Character generation with 6 classes, and 26 Skills.
• Sample adventure with maps, NPCs, and four pre-generated PCs.

SSk is very similar to Codex Martialis, just simpler, and is compatible with the rest of the system with small adjustments. It does not include magic but that will be forthcoming in another supplement (as a simpler 'SSk' version of Codex Superno). SSk does not include Martial Feats but there will also be another small supplement with the SSk equivalent, called Fighting Traits.