TorchLite • Epic Fantasy Adventures & Lightweight Rules

It started when they raided your village. You and your friends tracked down the raiders to their hideout, dealt with them, and found they were taking orders from somewhere else. You investigated, which took you through a lot of ruins and city sewers and cobwebbed wizard towers to figure things out. Now you’re on horseback beside the king of the realm, contemplating how to crack the fortress of the lich who’s been pulling all the strings, and maybe tonight is the end of it all or maybe it just keeps going after this.

It all depends if Jerry can still make Thursday nights work with his schedule.

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This is TorchLite, a pulp-fantasy tabletop roleplaying game of action, intrigue, and exploration built on the Cortex Lite rules framework. These simple and extensible game mechanics will take you through epic landscapes, thrilling action sequences, and startling-yet-satisfying plot twists. All you need to provide is a little imagination, which we trust you’ve got in spades.

This 236-page rulebook provides character creation, game running guidelines, tons of monstrous challenge templates, adventure prep procedures, extensive customization options, and a sample adventure.  And it's got tons of beautiful art, all of which was made by real humans who got paid to produce it.

Character Creation Options

Creating a character can be as simple as picking one item from each list…

Your People	Your Profession	Your Persona
Cambion	Bard	Cipher
Dwarf	Cleric	Comrade
Elf	Fighter	Devotee
Gnome	Hexknight	Disruptor
Goblin	Mage	Loose Cannon
Halfling	Mystic	Mercenary
Human	Paladin	Schemer
Ogre	Ranger	Valiant
Wyrmkin	Rogue	Wholesome

...and turning each into a distinction with attached 'quick pick' traits.

Or you can carefully construct your character, assigning dice to traits and picking out just the right spread of specialties, signature assets, SFX, and Limits.

Building Adventures Your Way

Prepare adventures for your players with GM tools:

Adventure Blocks are modular pieces of an adventure that can be swapped, borrowed, tweaked, and recast however you need to use them.  Snap them together any which way and let the adventure begin.

Or plan your session with the dynamically responsive Five Scene Adventure structure, which allows you to prep the bones and let the narrative flow on its own.  Quick-to-prep contingencies ensure that players will always have a rollicking good story to tell by the end.

Or cross the streams, using Adventure Blocks to build your Five Scene Adventure, and see what fun you can summon up.

Primed for Adventure

TorchLite evolved from Cortex Lite, a simple roleplaying game compatible with the Cortex Prime roleplaying game. Cortex Lite is available for free at https://xineink.itch.io/lite

Praise for TorchLite

"TorchLite is a beautifully designed game that is full of pulp-fantasy goodness!" --MT Black, bestselling author on Baldur’s Gate: Descent into Avernus and other top-rated D&D adventures