I picked up this short booklet from Hitpoint Press on Free RPG Day, largely because I liked the cover art.  I think I’d seen something in passing in the days leading up to the event that said something positive, but I really didn’t know anything about it.  Shift is a setting-agnostic system intended for fast play that I believe is supposed to come out later in 2025.  This Free RPG Day version is just the basics.  Unlike a lot of Free RPG Day releases, I think you could actually use this to run a game, without picking up anything else.  I’m sure the full release will have lots more helpful info, but this is enough to run with.

Some folks will say, with a smug grin, that there’s nothing new under the Sun.  I don’t know that I believe that.  However, I’ll admit sometimes games do feel like a remix of some other ideas, combining them in interesting new ways.  That’s definitely the feeling I got when reading through these rules.  I can’t remember where I first encountered the idea of using dice steps, that is, changing your die type as you improve in a skill.  Currently, Dungeon Crawl Classics and its “funky” dice is probably the most famous game to use the “dice chain.”  But I remember playing something back in the 90s that also made use of dice steps.  That said, Shift certainly has a different twist on it.  There are also elements, especially around action resolution, that remind me a bit of Powered by the Apocalypse games, though this feels a bit less obtuse than many of the PbtA games I’ve read.  Finally, the Focus Traits reminded me somewhat of Over the Edge 2nd Ed (aka; WaRP), a game I’m a particular fan of.  It’s all put together in a fairly interesting way that I’m certainly curious about.

On the negative side, I worry that the game ends up dipping into the FATE trap, where it seems “rules light,” but nearly trips over itself to add mechanics where they don’t need to be.  The encounter and turn order sections feel…off.  But I’d have to see it in action to know for sure.  I was reminded a little of when I played Deadlands (proto-Savage Worlds) back in the 90s.  That was a game with what seemed like very clunky mechanics that turned out to work really well once everyone was onboard with them.  Onboarding wasn’t as easy as it could have been.  But the game was worth the effort.  

I’m not really looking for a new game system, so I’m not sure that Shift is really for me.  However, I generally like what I see.  I could see it working for a lot of different types of games.  The Focus Traits especially, are a cool idea.  It was the similar element of Over the Edge 2nd Ed that led me to use that system for running a Star Trek game, and it worked great.  

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