Introduction

ForeSight is a general-purpose role-playing game. It first appeared in 1986 as a science-fiction game system, grew a fantasy and historical sibling (HindSight & the Age of Reason, 1988), and was substantially rewritten in 2004. This edition is a streamlining of all of that: one book, one rule, and a character you can build in five minutes.

Designer's Note: this edition bears a very strong resemblance to a game that was typed on twenty sheets of paper in 1984–85. That's probably the result of one very good design decision: ForeSight has one rule for resolution. Nearly everything else has been simplified, consolidated, or deleted — usually by noticing that two rules were secretly the same rule, and keeping the better one.

What ForeSight Is

ForeSight is about more than just combat. A lot of role-playing games are little more than combat systems with some arm-waving to cover all other forms of human activity. ForeSight's resolution rule applies to everything — picking a lock, charming a border guard, performing surgery, shooting someone — so the rules players can depend on in a tight spot are the same rules they use everywhere else.

ForeSight runs lean and mean. Combat happens quickly — minutes, not hours — partly because the resolution system is easy to use from memory, and partly because weapons are lethal.

ForeSight is plausible. The game was designed to minimize falsehoods implied by the game system, and truths denied by it. Likelihoods of events should be believable. Ordinary people are representable, not just adventurers. Looks matter, knowledge matters, and nobody becomes an expert scuba diver by winning a Nobel prize.

ForeSight is transparent. Game systems should not color the underlying setting. ForeSight is adaptable to settings rather than grafted onto them: the same rules have run hard SF, swords-and-sorcery, espionage, and the Age of Reason without changing anything but the equipment lists and the available talents.

ForeSight is the rules you can remember. When game mechanics are used, it should be easy to apply them, and the rulebook should seldom — if ever — need to be opened at the table.

The design philosophy behind all of this is simple: keep the mechanics simple, push the probabilities in the right general direction with the right general magnitude, and let the results speak for themselves. ForeSight doesn't try to simulate reality precisely; it tries to make believable things likely and absurd things rare, using rules you can run from memory. Time and again that produces lifelike outcomes nobody had to write a special rule for — and that's the whole idea.

What You Need

At least one player willing to be the gamemaster (GM), one or more other players, two ten-sided dice per person (ideally in two colors, to roll D100), copies of the character sheet, pencils, and an adventure or the makings of one.

Darn Good Reason

Every rule in a role-playing game will be broken at some point, and many will be broken frequently. A player or GM who wants to stretch, break, or ignore a rule should give a Darn Good Reason.

That's it.

How To Use This Book

Rather than memorizing the rules, get the gist of them. A player needs the next chapter (the One Rule) and a character — the chapter after that shows how to build one in minutes. A GM should be thoroughly familiar with Resolution and passingly familiar with the balance of the text. ForeSight is not a game for rules-lawyers — although, with them in mind, ambiguities have been minimized — but a role-playing game best played with all the rules you can remember.

Designer's Note: if you have never played a role-playing game before: a role-playing game involves players and a gamemaster. The GM creates an imaginary setting; the players create characters who live in it. The GM describes the situation, the players say what their characters do, the outcomes are determined (usually by common sense, sometimes by the One Rule), and the GM describes the new situation. The role-playing comes in when players have their characters act according to their characters' natures rather than their own. The GM does more work, but GMs have more fun.