# Theatrix Presents: The Core Rules tags: #game/rpg/theatrix ![[Theatrix - The Core Rules (cover).jpg|600]] **Theatrix** is the 1993 Backstage Press rulebook that decided roleplaying was improv theatre and refused to roll a die about it — the players are Actors, the referee is the Director, and the whole pitch is that the hobby had never seen a movie. It's a universal system with no fixed world, a stack of theatrical habits dressed up as rules, and one of the most earnest arguments the hobby has ever made for just handing the GM the keys and calling it design. Whether you'd run it straight is almost beside the point: it matters because so much of the DNA later "storygame" play would claim as its own — Scene-framing, collaborative subplots, plot points, the three-act mandate — is already sitting in this 1993 book, calmly insisting it was merely writing down the rules of good drama. ## Setting Roleplaying, the book announces on its first page, is "interactive, improvisational theatre": its purpose is expression, its medium is acting, and the whole thing is played "with your imagination." Because it's a **Universal** engine, there's no single world to summarize — the Setting is expected to arrive from a Genre Setting Book or from the group's own imagination. What you actually inhabit is the fiction of a stage and a camera. Play is framed relentlessly in film terms: the Director "is the camera" and the Troupe sees only what she chooses to show; Scenes cut, flash back, and hop between "Meanwhile, back at the…" locations; a Soliloquy is just thinking out loud where the other Actors can hear it. The player characters are the **Main Cast**, the NPCs are a **Supporting Cast** the Director plays, and the campaign is a **Chronicle** — "like a series of movie sequels" — broken into Episodes, Acts, and Scenes. The book is almost disarmingly earnest about this: it wants Actors to get to be "daringly competent at the most dramatic moments," it openly rejects character-creation balance (the "Power Play" section says unequal power levels make better stories), and it hands a startling share of authority to the players through **Distributed Directing** — its term for letting everyone take a turn at the Director's chair and improvise subplots. There's a real philosophy underneath the metaphor: drama is conflict, and the Actors are to be "their own screenwriters." ## Mechanics ### Characters & Traits Characters are built from four classes of **Traits**: six **Attributes** (Strength, Stamina, Coordination — Physical; Intellect, Intuition, Presence — Mental), **Skills & Abilities**, **Personality Traits**, and **Descriptors**, plus optional **Flaws**. The Attributes are deliberately *Descriptive* Traits — the book wants a paragraph evoking a sumo wrestler "anchored" strength rather than a number, and suggests the Director jot the hidden numbers down and keep them from the Actors. **Skills** (trained expertise) and **Abilities** (paranormal feats) are quantified; **Personality Traits** are quantified psychological motivations, Activated with a Plot Point to buy success in an associated action; **Descriptors** — background, social position, physical oddities, paranormal features — are unquantified and come in two modes, a free *Passive* use and an *Active* use that costs a Plot Point. Each character takes one **Primary Descriptor** that reserves a niche in the Chronicle (no two characters may share one; take a Specialty like "Fast Draw" over "Gunslinger" if needed), and a **Flaw** earns a bonus Plot Point whenever it dramatically complicates an Episode. All quantified Traits run on a **0.0–10.0** scale with **'3.0'** as the universal average, Scaled either *by Range* (to stress differences between individuals) or *by Norm* (to stress differences between races), with decimals for fine shading. ### Resolution: The Basic Rule The signature mechanic is that **no dice are required, ever**. Resolution is the **Basic Rule**, in two moves: the Director first rules whether an action is a Success or a Failure "based solely upon the roleplay of the Actors and the requirements of the plot," then separately sets the *extent* of that result using Difficulty, Skill Rank, Traits, and risk. The chapter's central claim is **Skill vs. Plotline**: Success and Failure hinge on roleplay and plot need, not on how trained your character is — Skill only decides whether you fail with grace or succeed with class. Ambiguity is a feature: the Director is told never to flat-out announce a win or loss, and results can be withheld or revealed long after the action that caused them, so tension can build (the book's fencing-duel example draws this out deliciously). **Opposed actions** split into *Statically* Opposed (a locked door, an operation) and *Actively* Opposed (a resisting, aware foe). For active opposition the Director picks one **Active Participant** — "the character the camera would be focusing on," usually an Actor — sets the Difficulty off their action, and adjusts it by the opponent's Skill Rank (**Rule of Thumb**: shift Difficulty one step per two full points of Skill Rank difference). In combat you may instead use **Dueling Successes**, adjudicating each participant separately so both, neither, or one side wins. For those who need the feel of structure, the book ships **Resolution Flowcharts** — a Basic flowchart plus Advanced "Athletic / Combat / Intellectual / Interpersonal" variants — that coach a suggested outcome. And for those who really can't Direct without math, there's the optional **Formula for Success**: cross-index Skill Rank vs. Difficulty on a "Mean Result Chart," roll a d100 against one of a set of *actual normal curves* (means 0.0 to 6.0, standard deviation 1.82), and let the roll pick a path. Theatrix's one flirtation with statistics, and it's an optional die roll buried under a disclaimer. ### Difficulty and Magnitude Success or Failure is binary-ish and comes from roleplay; how *big* it is comes from **Difficulty**. The five categories — Easy, Normal, Difficult, Extraordinary, Impossible — are all keyed to a competent Skill Rank of **3.0**, and are supposed to be raised whenever time, preparation, or equipment is missing. **Collateral Skills** let a related skill fill in: *Subtractive* (average it with the primary), *Additive* (primary plus half the lower rank), or *Substitutive* (half the collateral when you lack the primary). **Magnitude** then falls out of Skill Rank vs. Difficulty and risk: the less competent the character, the more coincidental their success or brutal their failure; the riskier the act, the worse the failure. Your mileage on all of this is explicitly the Director's to own. ### Plot Points and Subplots **Plot Points** are the game's currency and its most famous lever. Actors earn them for completing **Subplots**, which are rated across four Rating Factors — Intricacy, Danger, Depth, Technique — each at a Complexity level from Simple to Twisted (worth 1–5 points), with bonuses for Personal, Long Term, and Main Plot subplots and Activated Flaws. Points are spent to **Activate** a Personality Trait or Descriptor for success in an associated action, or to cement a **Statement** (a character's in-voice claim) as unalterably true. Buying a success only buys as much as the Director allows — a point spent against a gang of extras might let you mow the lot of them down, while the same point against a named villain "will probably only buy you a single solid strike." There's even **Blackmail**, a "dirty trick for Directors, that we consider perfectly legal": charge the Troupe extra points for the privilege of permanently killing off a useful long-standing villain, or "coincidence" saves him at the last moment. A running **Plot Point Total** also caps how far a character may grow, pacing them against the Chronicle. ### Distributed Directing The Improvisation chapter is where Theatrix stops being a referee's handbook and becomes a declaration of trust. Anyone may improvise a nondramatic prop into the **Stage**; players can make **Statements** that inject Information; Subplots are described as "the currency" of the Chronicle, improvised at the *Macroscopic* (structure) or *Microscopic* (process) level. The Director keeps a final veto, but the book's whole "Troupe style" — more than one Director, actors as their own screenwriters — is the ideal it keeps nudging you toward. ### The Plotline The screenwriting-as-gospel chapter: every Episode is to run in **three acts** — Act I Introduction, Act II Confrontation, Act III Resolution — and you're told to write the ending first. Act II takes over half the story and is supposed to hit five named scenes: **Plot Turn I**, **Pinch I**, **Midpoint**, **Pinch II**, and **Plot Turn II**. The prose is dead earnest that this structure "is the drama," a formula that will "guarantee" you good drama every time — a claim cozy enough for any amateur screenwriter to nod along with. ### Combat It's mostly narrative too. The Combat chapter adds **Roughness**, scaling Traits for violence, Wound Levels and damage types, **Fighting Styles** (Plain Fighting, All Out Attack, Full Defense, Trickery), armor and force fields, and a Combat Action Resolution checklist — plus the "Big Combat Mega-Example." The flavor never leaves the movie frame: it's the chapter for the high point "of many stories," described in terms of the drama and tension involved. ## Editions **Theatrix** is a single core rulebook: **Theatrix Presents: The Core Rules** (Backstage Press, 1993; ISBN 0-9643630-0-3), written by David Berkman, Travis Eneix, Andrew Finch, and Anthony Gallela, with design contributions from Brett Hackett. *The copy in the library.* The 1993 release follows the "pre-press" playtest copies the credits thank, but that's a production detail, not a separate edition — there was never a second core-rules edition. Its launch supplement was **Theatrix Ironwood** (Backstage Press, 1994), the first Setting Book, an adult-themed fantasy setting infamous for getting Backstage Press banned from selling it at Gen Con that year. *Not in the library.* The physical game is long out of print (Backstage Press is long gone), but the PDF lives on at DriveThruRPG. ## References - [Theatrix Presents: The Core Rules (buy) — DriveThruRPG, Backstage Press](https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/80626/theatrix-presents-the-core-rules) - [Theatrix (role-playing game) — Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theatrix_(role-playing_game)) - [Review of Theatrix, by J. Hanju Kim — darkshire.net](https://www.darkshire.net/jhkim/rpg/reviews/theatrix.html)