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The Frontiers Engine — Press Kit

Project Overview

Project Name: The Frontiers Engine
Version: Beta 2026-2
Release Date: April 24th, 2026
License: Open RPG Creative (ORC) License
Official Site: https://hackmd.io/@frontiers-engine
License Link: https://hackmd.io/@frontiers-engine/FTS-ORC
Press Kit: Zip File (Google Drive) Contact: contact@jaykepaver.me

 

Tagline

A modular, open tabletop Engine built for creators who want structure without confinement.

 

Short Description

The Frontiers Engine is a genre-flexible tabletop roleplaying Engine designed to serve as infrastructure rather than a finished game. It provides a cohesive mechanical foundation that designers can expand into fantasy, sci-fi, horror, or entirely new genres.

Released under the ORC License, it is built for commercial publishing, third-party modules, and long-term extensibility.

 

What Is The Frontiers Engine?

The Frontiers Engine is a shared mechanical language that supports both narrative freedom and tactical decision-making. It is structured enough to support strategic play, but modular enough that designers can reshape tone, genre, and pacing without rebuilding the foundation.

Where many tabletop frameworks assume a genre and build outward, The Frontiers Engine starts from neutrality. It separates identity from progression, durability from momentum, and capability from exhaustion. This allows designers to tune the experience toward cinematic heroics, grounded survival, political drama, experimental storytelling, or hybrid formats.

The primary goal of The Frontiers Engine is to build a widely expansive and customizable framework for new and veteran tabletop designers to use for making their own unique games, settings, sourcebooks, and rulesets. All for the price of Free.

With time it will be expanded upon with free modules, expansions, rewrites, versions, bug fixes, and more, and it will be available forever under Paizo's ORC or similar licenses.

 

Core Philosophy

  • The Engine is modular by design.
  • Every major subsystem can be expanded or replaced through modules.
  • Narrative expression and mechanical clarity coexist at a foundational level.
  • The Engine supports both light-touch storytelling and structured encounter play.
  • Open licensing, community engagement, and customizability is paramount.

The Frontiers Engine is built to function as shared infrastructure for tabletop development.

 

What Makes It Distinct

The Frontiers Engine centers around a dual-mode structure. Play flows naturally between open narrative exploration and structured encounters when tension rises. Designers can emphasize one mode over the other without breaking the core.

Its resource structure is intentionally layered. Instead of relying on a single health track, the Engine separates physical trauma, mental strain, and exertion. This allows designers to model consequences beyond simple hit point depletion. A character may still stand while mentally strained. They may collapse from fatigue before they die. The pacing of danger becomes adjustable.

Advancement is milestone-driven through Vector Marks rather than rigid level gates. Designers can emphasize attribute growth, ability acquisition, resource expansion, or custom bonuses without altering the progression spine.

The Engine is genre-agnostic, and everything above is completely removable, expandable, and customizable from a core design perspective for modular play.

 

Intended Audience

  • Independent TTRPG designers
  • Third-party publishers
  • Modular game creators
  • Actual-play groups experimenting with hybrid formats

 

Creator

The Frontiers Engine was created by Jayke Paver (they/them) as a shared mechanical foundation for collaborative tabletop design.

What began as internal infrastructure for his Home Game evolved into a public SRD to support broader creative ecosystems.

Jayke is the owner and head writer of indie tabletop publisher Fragment Press, and plans to release more both within and outside of Frontiers both indepedently and through their company.

The Engine is released under the ORC License to encourage long-term compatibility, expansion, and responsible adaptation, something which Jayke is dedicated to keeping for the entire Engine's existance or, as they put it, "at least until I die".

 

Attribution

If referencing or covering The Frontiers Engine, please link to:
https://hackmd.io/@frontiers-engine

 

Summary

The Frontiers Engine is a living tabletop infrastructure project.

It exists to give designers a stable mechanical spine while leaving creative direction entirely in their hands.

It is open.
It is extensible.
It is built to be built upon.

For interviews, press inquiries, or partnership discussion: contact@jaykepaver.me