Copyright © 2002 by Andrew Martin. All rights reserved. No parts of this work may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means (including without limitation photocopying, recording, or information storage and retrieval), except under a limited, royalty-free license as follows:
Accord is a roleplaying game system written by Andrew Martin. The basic guidelines of Accord are available free on the Internet at http://valley.150m.com/Accord and other sites. They may be used with any gaming genre. While any individual work derived from Accord may specify certain guidelines, many more are possible with Accord. Every group using Accord is encouraged to add or ignore any such guidelines.
Anyone who wishes to distribute such material for free may do so – merely include this “About Accord” notice and “Disclaimer” (complete with Accord copyright notice).
If you wish to charge a fee for such material, other than as an article in a magazine or other periodical, you must first obtain a royalty-free license from the author of Accord:
Andrew Martin 65 Milton Road, Napier, New Zealand.
You must include at the beginning of each derivative work “About Accord” and the following “Disclaimer”, completed with your name, in its entirety.
The following materials based on Accord, entitled [your title], are created by, made available by, and Copyright © [copyright year] by [your name], and are not necessarily endorsed in any way by Andrew Martin or any publisher of other Accord materials. Neither Andrew Martin nor any other publisher of other Accord materials is in any way responsible for the content of these materials unless specifically credited. Original Accord materials Copyright © 2002 by Andrew Martin, All Rights Reserved.
The most recent version of Accord is available online at: http://valley.150m.com/Accord.
I, Andrew Martin, wrote Accord. Copyright © 2002 by Andrew Martin.
Most recent version: 14/April/2002.
Accord is a roleplaying game system. Unlike most other roleplaying game systems, Accord allows the roleplaying of virtually any character from books, movies, television, legends or your own imagination.
There's no special knowledge that needs to be learned. There's just a number of guidelines that show how to determine the results of an interaction between your character and other characters, and between your character and the environment. These guidelines are easily found, learned and used, and provide a consistent and reliable framework to enable you and your friends to have an enjoyable roleplaying game session.
Accord is suitable for almost any roleplaying setting or genre, so long as the setting or genre can be described by the players involved.
Accord was developed out my frustration with conventional roleplaying game systems that put in extra layers of system, and which seemed designed to cause problems for players instead of solving them. Accord provides guidelines, aids and tools to enhance the roleplaying experience, making conflicts mechanically simple to determine and resolve, but still allowing extreme subtlety of play.
You and:
First assemble a group of players together and decide on a setting, mood, general intent of play and any special guidelines or limits. Make notes of these guidelines, so that new players can be brought into the accord. This step makes sure that everyone is working together and in accord with each other. This is usually a once-off process, and later game sessions can just touch on this step lightly and then proceed onwards.
Then, in turn, each player should generally describe their character or characters to the other players, along with any significant history, locations, tools, vehicles, species, culture and careers. Players should use real world or game setting specific description for their characters. Don't use other roleplaying game system's terms or numbers!
If describing player's description is excesively powerfull, woefully underpowered or doesn't fit the game setting, other players should point this out and suggest corrections, and allow correction or justification by the describing player. Once every player is happy with all the other player's descriptions in general, and so the whole play group is in accord with each other, then carry on with the next step.
Players now fully describe their characters, history, locations, tools, vehicles, species, culture and careers, and write this information down on the 3x5" lined index cards. Use one card for each significant character, history, location, tool, vehicle, species, culture and career. This recording step doesn't have to be fully completed, just put down the most essential information on the cards, so that everyone know what's going on and so that newcomers to the game can get up to speed with the accord. In later game session, the above steps are significantly shorter, and can instead serve as a place to recap the events of the previous session, based on the previous session notes.
Once the recording is done, one player frames a scene by locating the scene in time and placing the scene at a location, then populating the scene with some scenery, characters, tools, vehicles and so on. Now allow other players to place their significant characters, tools, vehicles and so on into the scene, and then let all of them interact as the players decide.
If there's any conflicts between the characters or character and scenery, use the guidelines in Accord to determine an outcome. If the player describing the scene, is going over the limits set earlier, other players should point this out and suggest corrections, and allow correction or justification by the scene's describer.
Once the scene is done, make any necessary changes to the cards and scrap paper, and add or remove cards as necessary, then allow any player to frame another scene as above.
Once the players have decided that's enough for the session or the session has to halt, make quick notes to save the significant details of the session, then file all the cards, scrap paper and notes. Players might wish to keep the cards describing their significant characters, tools and so on in their possession, or a player may volunteer to take the responsibility of taking care of all the game information. Then arrange a suitable time to meet again to play with Accord.
The following are all guidelines for Accord. Players agree to use all, some or none of the following guidelines at the start of an Accord session.