We were delighted here at Geek Native to hear from Cornelius Jeffrey Burns, who’s soon-to-be launching a Kickstarter for a TTRPG called WANDERVERSE that essentially encompasses the vibe of ‘Tabletop’s Greatest Hits’.
It sounds like a really fun prospect, and we’re so excited to take a closer look at the game (don’t worry, a review and some art previews will be coming!). But in the meantime, I had a chat with Cornelius to find out more of what we can expect from WANDERVERSE, OSR and the evolution of TTRPGs.
So, without further ado, here’s one hell of a meaty interview for you.
B: Hi Cornelius! Firstly, tell me about WANDERVERSE – a game that’s been four years in the making. What can we expect?!
Cornelius: Thanks for the interview! You can expect a game that emulates some of tabletop gaming’s greatest hits using an original action economy system. WANDERVERSE makes it so that the rules work with you, even when you have to make them up.
B: I hear you set out to make a TTRPG that is essentially, “Tabletop’s greatest hits!” – would you say you succeeded? What challenges did you run into along the way?
Cornelius: Let me start with the challenges because I have a very patient wife and two kids… I’ve spent a lot of time working on this book when I’m not at my day job (special education teacher) or night job (college professor of writing). There have been many sleepless and late nights where I have been up writing to get the ideas onto paper. I think that’s where most of my success has come from with this project – the combination of my ideas and experience. I’ve played tabletops with hundreds of people over the last 25 years and I can pick out what works and doesn’t work at the table rather easily. I want other people to be able to do that AND experience it when they play a ttrpg.
B: I know you wanted to give a lot of player agency with a unique action point economy – as well as fixing all of the d20 system’s clunky/crunchy mechanics. Can you tell us more about that?
Cornelius: Absolutely, I could discuss it all day! All of the basic things you could do in games like D&D or Pathfinder are there for you still. The action point cost is listed out in the book for you if you want to stick to the “old familiar.” Whether that be movement (1∆) making a melee or ranged attack (2∆), casting a spell (it’s listed), or using a class ability (also listed). Sometimes…however…*and this is particularly true with people who have never played a ttrpg before*… There is a desire to do something completely original. WANDERVERSE allows you to do that original thing. Here’s how in 3 simple steps:
- Tell your Game Master what you would like to do.
- Let the Game Master make up how much ∆ that would cost. It’s their call to make up.
- You expend the ∆ action points to do the thing you want to do. It may happen over multiple rounds depending on how many ∆ points you have to spend.
**But what if you go OVER the amount? You take EXTENSION DAMAGE that cannot be healed until you take a long rest.
One of the things playtesters have loved about the WANDERVERSE system is that the ∆ makes spellcasting easier and more fun than it has ever been before. There are NO MORE leveled spells since everything you cast has a ∆ cost. You can concentrate on casting the spell you want over multiple rounds until you have the ∆ needed.
B: How are Delta points different from other point-based magic/systems?
Cornelius: Delta are UNIVERSAL! They apply to everything you want to do in the game – not just spellcasting. They are a dynamic action point resource that lets players pick what they want to do, even when there aren’t rules available. When you have moments where you want to do something that isn’t codified in the rules (as a player), just ask your GM what the delta cost would be. The GM gets to decide and it ultimately creates an ability to do whatever you want that happens over a series of rounds as your delta replenishes.
B: What’s your favourite RPG system of yesteryear, and why?
Cornelius: Star Wars Saga Edition. It was the first time I really saw a d20 system try so many things differently (even the shape of the book was neat – it was a perfect square). Saga got so many things right and there’s a reason it got the Gold ENnie Award when it came out. Saga Edition has also been the inspiration for so many things in modern D&D and Pathfinder that many people don’t even realize. For example, it removed Ranks from skills, completely changed the way alignment works, created a new way to look at how to do spells through Force Powers, and so many more. I could be wrong but I’d argue it either originated or popularized boiling down all sensory skills into the simple “Perception” as we know it. That is if you don’t count GURPS (which I love and used a lot in the creation of WANDERVERSE) way back in 1986. Even the character sheet layout heavily influenced my writing and design choices for my book. You don’t even need to be a Star Wars fan to see why it was touted as the “4th edition” we should have had for D&D by so many people.
B: Would you consider WANDERVERSE to be part of the OSR (old-school revival)?
Cornelius: WANDERVERSE is the natural evolution of the d20 system. It does share some philosophical and thematic elements that align with OSR by recognizing that you need both “rulings” and “rules.” Traditional tabletop games have two phases – Roleplaying and Combat – that makeup gameplay. The roleplaying phase operates more with “rulings” while the combat phase deals with “rules.” I like to joke and say that ttrpgs are a “theater and chess Venn diagram.” These two things don’t always have a huge overlap. Similarly, some folks are “words” people and some folks are “numbers” and I find few are both. I wanted to design a game that made that overlap happen as best as I could.
WANDERVERSE allows you to play the way YOU want to play. Here’s how it does it:
There are rules for crunchy combat mechanics you can pick when you design your character if you like that sort of thing. There are rules for thematic play that let you do more narrative-driven actions. What makes these overlap is that they are designed to be useful within the mechanics of the game.
I’ll give you a small example. WANDERVERSE has a Failure Feature mechanic for rolling a 1. Each class has two that they get at Level 1. There’s a Roleplaying Failure Feature and a Combat Failure Feature. One of my favorites is for the Rogue. There are many abilities, spells, and other things a player can do that have “roleplaying with a little crunchy” and, “crunchy with a little roleplaying” as you see in the example below.
B: As someone who’s been gaming for 25+ years, I’d love to get your perspective on the OSR vs more modern RPGs. Which aspects do you consider to be positive and fresh about the newer game scene, and which might have been forgotten from older systems that you’d love to see make a return?
Cornelius: Oh boy… Hope it’s not a clear blue sky out by you because I might have to yell at these clouds! I don’t want to come off as a grumpy, old, “in my day” player…but… Let me just say that my favourite thing to see right now is how the game (specifically D&D) has evolved and become more inclusive. With that said, I’ll draw the line in the sand and say that I think modern tabletop gaming is moving toward more narrative-driven gameplay and I have a gumball machine filled with dice because I don’t want to roll more dice.
The “Just roll high” approach I see a lot lately, that I discuss on my YouTube channel is making the game significantly less fun (at least for me). ESPECIALLY when you look at how some of the dice mechanics work in 5th edition, I felt the desire to do something about it in WANDERVERSE’s dice manipulation options. I made a video where I broke down exactly how the Advantage system is terribly skewed, especially after Level 5 – Your D&D Crits are Broken. Tension builds stories and rolling to see if I succeed with an 80%+ chance of success goes against the very nature of what so many modern gamers yearn for.
B: Do any of those system mechanics make a return in WANDERVERSE – or could that be a possibility for the future?
Cornelius: Several do! Most of them have been tweaked a little… Here’s a list of some of the smaller game mechanics and design features I adapted for WANDERVERSE that may pique a gamer’s interest:
- Easy / Normal / Hard mode for gameplay. D&D/Pathfinder has all these unique ability score bonuses for each individual race/species or Lineage (as it’s called in WANDERVERSE, and PF2e for that matter). For example, instead of being cornered into being a Stout Halfling because you want the +1 Con over the Lightfoot Halfling’s +1 Cha, just play what you want to play and build it the way you want to build it. The GM picks the difficulty of the game and then you put those stats where you want. Here’s what it looks like in the book:
- Commoner Array → +1, -1, -1
- Standard Array → +1, +1, -1
- Heroic Array → +2, +1, +1
- Designing your own Lineage. This was heavily inspired by GURPS. I don’t want to remember the weird animal humanoid names for every type of animal (Tabaxi, Kenku, Luxodon, etc.). I love the idea of having points to buy the makeup of your character. You have Roleplaying and Combat Traits. There are Disadvantage Traits you can select to gain more Roleplaying or Combat Traits at your GM’s discretion. Build your own unique Lineage or just play a normal elf. It’s your choice.
- The traditional way alignment (Chaotic, Lawful, Neutral, Good, Evil) doesn’t work well. It has always been too subjective and is too often contentious when a change is needed. Saga Edition got it right by using Dark Side Points. You do evil things, you move up a point. In WANDERVERSE, using Necrotic spells and doing evil deeds moves you up that alignment tracker. When your score equals your Charisma ability score, you are officially EVIL. You can always do good deeds through roleplaying to get back down.
- Easy-to-design encounters. No more obnoxious Challenge Ratings that require you to do a bunch of math. This mechanic was inspired by World of Warcraft. Encounters have a color system of grey, green, yellow, orange, and red that marks easy to difficult, respectively. I adapted this element by organizing encounters into Tiers of Gameplay. The tiers are:
- TIER 1 → Level 1-5
- TIER 2 → Level 6-10
- TIER 3 → Level 11-15
- TIER 4 → Level 16-20
When the GM makes an encounter, any leveled creature within the same tier of gameplay would be considered “Yellow.” Going two Tiers above/below is either Red or Green, respectively.
- There is a condition tracker with 5 slots (Stable, -d4, -d6, -d10, and Incapacitated). Each time you move down, it coincides with the Favorability/Unfavorability system. When you reach Incapacitated, your character can be coup de graced. I love the coup de grace option in older editions of D&D and Pathfinder because it adds a sort of Dark Souls element to the game. When there is lethality, decisions are more tense to make, and tension drives story.
- Favorability/Unfavorability – Older d20 systems would give you a “Heroic Die” that you could use to help your roll. It didn’t skew the probability much but it was sometimes JUST the edge you needed. In WANDERVERSE, you can roll more die and you have the option to make it easier or harder with nuance. Blades in the Dark takes this sort of middle-of-the-road and “see what happens” based on the GM’s choice. With the Favorability system, it puts the outcomes a little more in the players’ hands while also letting the GM dictate the probability. It lets players roll more dice, too, which our playtesters said they wanted more of.
- REALLY EASY carrying capacity, inspired by The Black Hack. Instead of tracking exact pounds or kilograms, items are assigned a weight rating from 0 to 5. You cannot carry more than your Strength ability score. This makes Strength useful instead of a dump stat and replaces the cumbersome 5th-grade math most systems use with some crisp 1st-grade level math, instead!
- 0 – Negligible (coins, small trinkets, a piece of paper).
- 1 – Light (dagger, small tools, rations)
- 2 – Moderate (sword, shortbow, filled backpack)
- 3 – Heavy (greatsword, heavy armor)
- 4 – Very heavy (full suit of armor, multiple weapons)
- 5 – Extremely cumbersome (anvil, body, siege weapon parts)
Some design features:
- Pathfinder 2e layout features. You don’t need to tab your books. The chapters are tabbed out on the side.
- The character sheets let you write the page number where the spell is located to make the game move faster.
- The character sheet has a section for you to write down the names of the people at the table and their character names.
- An easy-to-use companion sheet if you have a pet or a minion. It also works well for Game Master’s creating quick statblocks for encounters.
- The book is purple because it is a representation of the two sides of the game I discussed earlier – Roleplaying and Combat. I am currently working on a blue-themed book that has all of the Common Lands lore for anyone looking to tell stories in this setting. Following that, I intend to create a red-themed book that expands class options, spells, and a wider Encounter Compendium.
Also, here’s a list of some of the TTRPGs that I took inspiration from when I wrote WANDERVERSE if you’re interested in where the “greatest hits” originate:
- Dungeons & Dragons (AD&D, 3.0, 3.5, 4.0, 5.0, & 5.5e)
- Pathfinder 1 & 2
- D20 Modern
- GURPS
- Star Wars Saga Edition
- Star Wars RPG original d20 system
- Star Wars the old d6 pip system
- Shadowrun
- Hackmaster
- Pirate Borg and other borgs
- 7th Sea
- Vampires of the Masquerade
- Blades in the Dark
- Fate
- Tales of the Valiant
- Humblewood
B: What’s your all-time favourite character or character anecdote? I bet you’ve got some funny stories to tell!
Cornelius: I love Doctor Strange. I even cosplayed as him once when I was much skinnier and had all my hair pre-kids! Those were the days… I realized Strange is just a magical Sherlock Holmes and it made a lot of sense because I love Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s works. You could argue it’s the same with Kirk and Spock (who I also love).
I also love Doctor Doom because he just wants to be Number 1 and he’s second best at everything. Being a number 2 just makes him a megalomaniac. He’s the second-best mind (Reed Richards) second-best armor (Iron Man), second-best sorcerer (Strange). He is just ONE MAN who constantly loses to teamwor– …Oh my God…am I Doctor Doom!?
The REAL answer though is that I love any character that goes through a dynamic change. One of my favorite misspoken phrases is when someone says, “That person did a 180 with their life” because it’s only telling half the story.
The phrase, “They did a total 360 with their life” is not only the correct phrase but an homage to the Hero’s Journey or Monomyth where you return to the place where your story started stronger and better than before. In particular, I like Dan Harmon’s approach to this storytelling strategy. He calls his, “The Story Circle.” It’s a more condensed/palatable version of the hero’s journey.
B: You’re a special ed teacher during the day. Has that taught you anything about TTRPGs or helped you design for them?
Cornelius: Do you have any idea how many kids with disabilities want to be a part of D&D? This is particularly true in the autism community. The social skills, executive functioning skills, and ability to just run or play the game are MEGA hurdles for individuals with disabilities. I realized early on how hard it is to use campaign modules, even for someone like me who has been playing the game for a long time. So I wrote my first book in 2020, “Felbar’s Shoppe of Curiosities and Occult (Link is my original Kickstarter and the book is for sale on my website).”
I set out to design a campaign book for 5th ed Levels 1-15 that focussed less on being pretty shelf fodder and more on being functional. I do a lot of my playtesting with my students. In fact, one of them contributed art of all the characters they played with to the Felbar’s. I would make this CALL TO ACTION for anyone in the tabletop community – Run games at your friendly local game store. You have NO idea how many people are looking for someone to game with and just need a friend or inspiration. You might even make some lifelong friends. I know I have.
B: You’re also a professor during the night. Impress! Has that taught you any different lessons about TTRPG or world design?
Cornelius: A ton! Specifically in the department of storytelling – which is kind of like a magic trick when you don’t understand what’s happening. I love seeing the faces my students make when I explain to them that so many of the shows, movies, and stories they love fundamentally follow the same structure. I subscribe to the idea that storytelling is deeply encoded within us as humans and that our compulsion to retell the same story means something deeper and more powerful is working the table of our lives.
The Common Lands is the original setting I use to tell my stories but I didn’t want anyone using WANDERVERSE to feel like they had to use it. I put all the basics of my world lore in the book in case someone is looking to quilt some of their own stories into the Common Lands lore OR if they are just looking for inspiration. I have a lot of respect for anyone who can build their own world.
The Common Lands setting is a sword-and-sorcery world not unlike your Middle Earth, Narnia, Forgotten Realms, or good ol’ Greyhawk. I LOVED playing d20 Modern and I ran a one-shot where the characters went through the wrong layer of the Abyss and ended up in the modern world – completely out of place as blades and spells collided with guns and computers. The Common Lands lore emerged shortly after that, 15 years ago, while I was still playing D&D3.5e. I set out to create a world where the progression of time and innovation impacted how the world would change and adapt. Each campaign I ran was an “Era.”
I modeled Eras after the way comic books had “Events.” For example, Marvel had Secret Wars or DC had another crisis (of course) and all the individual comic stories from those comics would be about how the characters operated during that event. Each time the Era changed, a major event occurred within the world, forever changing the way the world would operate. There are the pre-era times before geopolitical lines and banners as the neverending engines of progress and power lead us up to where our stories are now – Understanding that there are worlds outside of their own.
B: WANDERVERSE is coming to Kickstarter! That’s exciting, can you tell us more? When can we expect it?
Cornelius: The WANDERVERSE campaign launches on Tuesday, March 25th on Kickstarter – and we have a KS Pre-Launch page for you to check out. We have some really great add-ons and stretch goals that make this a product as good as the rest of ‘em, if not better! Thanks for everything, Geek Native!
B: Thank you so much, Cornelius!
What do you think of the idea of WANDERVERSE? Will you be checking it out, or even backing it when it launches? Let us know in the comments.
