# Gateway *Created:* 2026-10-29, *Modified:* 2026-10-29 ![[Gateway (cover).jpg|600]] Every universal system promises it won't flatten your setting, and most of them are lying by chapter two. **Gateway** is the 2008 free release from Nigel McClelland and Ben Redmond that takes the promise literally: no default world, no house genre, no implied campaign. What you get instead is a way of describing characters in plain language and a drama engine to point them at each other, plus a one-sheet showing what a setting built on top of it looks like. The authors call the whole thing an experiment and ask for feedback in the introduction, which is either refreshing honesty or a warning label, depending on how you feel about universal systems. ## Setting There isn't one, and that's the design. **Gateway** is a toolkit: the book is written for three readers at once — the games designer assembling a setting, the GM running it, and the player who just wants a character — and it marks which parts belong to whom. The range it's aiming at is deliberately absurd. Point-buy lets you build "any character power level of character or entity from incompetent children to galactic empires," which is the sentence every generic system writes and almost none of them mean. The held one-sheet takes the far end as its worked example: First Contact on 15 January 2016, when Earth's telescopes find activity on Mars, the Chahun answer, and the setting opens out into a galactic-arm gazetteer — the Sagittarius and Scutum-Crux arms as the new centres of trade and politics. ## Mechanics Everything runs on a challenge, and every challenge is built from two character elements: a **trait** and a **background**. - **Traits** are who the character is — Mighty, Agile, Vengeful, Commanding, Discerning, Iron Willed, Determined, Quick Witted — sorted into four categories: Fate, Mental, Physical and Social. They are explicitly *not* training; that's what backgrounds are for. How well the trait fits the attempt is the GM's call, and it sets how many eight-sided dice you roll. - **Backgrounds** are the training and experience, and they supply the modifier. Each one can be used six ways: Action, Knowledge, Notice, Acquire, Invest and Narrative. You can specialise in a background's use for +2, up to three specialisations per background, and only while that background is actually in play. - **Essence** comes in the same four categories as traits, and a point buys an extra die — which is how a character with the wrong trait for the job still gets to try. Physical essence to heave the boulder when your only physical trait is Deft Fingers. - **Challenges are opposed, always.** You roll your dice plus a background modifier; the GM rolls for the other side of the conflict, with its own dice, Variability and Challenge Level. It is not a target number, it's a contest — and on the challenging side of the table that means the NPC has an actual roll to lose. - **Narrative Interventions** are the interesting edge case. They're challenges that don't involve your character or your target directly, they require a Fate trait, and winning one hands the player the narration for a beat — the in-line event that produced the effect. ## The Drama system The half of the book that isn't dice is the **Universal Drama** system, and it's the part that makes **Gateway** more than a resolution mechanic. Everything dramatic is an **entity**: another character, an inanimate object, a physical structure, or your own fears and conscience. Scenes open, **drama rounds** run, and **tension lines** track who has the advantage of position and intent between entities. Actions carry effects, and **raises** buy more of them. The initiative hierarchy is stated as a set of moves rather than a count — **setup** (a free raise on your next action), **edge** (adjust the edge bonus by one), **surprise** (an entity entering a scene establishes a tension line), **manoeuvre** (establishes tension lines), **disengage** (removes them) and **restrict** (add or remove restrictions on another entity). It's a system for physical and social conflicts at the same scale, in the same currency. ## Character creation Point-buy, and the arithmetic is the whole argument. A trait costs two points per category it's assigned to. A background level costs two points and runs from 1 to 6, with characters normally capped at three levels in any one background. Essence costs one point per level, 0 to 6. At least a quarter of your points must go to traits and essence and at least a quarter to backgrounds and specialisations, which keeps the generalist from being strictly better than the specialist — or the reverse. The book then walks a character through it at 50 points: an orphan from the streets of Kalberg, trained in the Arcane College, sentenced to death, now hiding under a false name in a gang. ## Editions - **Gateway Roleplaying System (Core Rules)** (2008) — 29 pages, free, self-published; core mechanics, character creation and development, and the Universal Drama system, with worked scenes. *In the library.* - **Gateway (One-Sheet)** (2008) — two pages, a setting primer rather than a rules sheet: the 2016 First Contact with the Chahun and the galactic-arm gazetteer. *In the library.* - **Gateway (Character Sheet)** (2008) — traits by category, the six background uses with level, the four essence tracks, equipment traits, and the initiative summary. *In the library.* ## References - [The Black Orifice — downloads (the archive holds the 6.4 MB Gateway archive)](https://www.blackorifice.uk/downloads-1) - [The Black Orifice](https://www.blackorifice.uk/)