From the Beginning

L.O.T.U.S. is a project that originated in 1993 as an ideation to create a system that was portable in comparison to other tabletop game systems of that era. During its early conception, the game system was referred to as Mind Games and developed into a quick-paced RPG allowing scenes that could be run during short break intervals while carrying minimal gamer paraphernalia.

In its original incarnation, the system was a loose-knit D20 Versus System. Unfortunately, despite the relatively simplistic game mechanics, it was found to be problematic because a d20 cannot readily be rolled on any surface. While there are now technological alternatives to this, many players still love the feel of casting the dice, and we built our system to uphold that tradition.

Regardless, this phase of game development was put on hold due to life events, including military service, college, and family building. For a long time, the system remained untouched but never forgotten, as one is always a gamer, and our passion for role-playing always comes full circle. After engaging in a series of LARP conventions, an interest was rekindled by a desire to refine the game mechanics to provide a solid and consistent system that overcame the fundamental shortcomings of LARP with a set of rules that was intrinsically reverse compatible with tabletop gameplay.

This led to a series of successes and failures where the game development was forced to bypass a 2d6 Versus System because the Die Roll Increment Range was not varied enough for suitable gameplay. Eventually, this transitioned L.O.T.U.S. to its current format of a DD10 Versus System, providing a wider range of roll increments that could reasonably be rolled on any surface.

The acronym L.O.T.U.S. was chosen for the RPG and stands for Live-action Or Tabletop Universal System. The mechanics herein are designed to provide a consistent, stable medium that does not require variance or change when crossing different styles of role-playing.