Via Prudensiae

Via Prudensiae (commonly abbreviated VP and nicknamed Volds-Palle or Voldelige Palle) is a Danish generic role-playing game system designed by Ask Agger and Gimle Larsen and published as a single book (ISBN 978-87-7394-329-8) in 1994 by the Danish publishing company Modtryk. "Via prudensiae" is Latin for "the way/road of wisdom".

Only about a thousand copies were printed of the book, because the Danish market for role-playing games is relatively small. Due to the low number of copies, the book is quite rare and hard to obtain. It's normally only available at major libraries in Denmark.

Users of the game system has been given it the Danish nicknames Volds-Palle and Voldelige Palle (meaning Violence-Palle or Violent Palle, where Palle is a Danish boy's name) because of the system's vivid description and very detailed support of grave injuries, such as various disabilities, blood loss, necrosis, etc, and the fact that an unlucky player can die instantly from a single hit. The game system doesn't focus on violence itself though; it's merely a consequence of the focus on realism.

Setting
The game system was designed to be as versatile as possible. Different epochs and themes are easily supported, for example medieval-fantasy theme with swords and magic, present time with guns and tanks or future-high-tech theme with robots and cyborgs.

System
Via Prudensiae is built on the idea, that role-playing should be realistic, but in the same time dramatic and cinematic. As a consequence, the characters and are described quantatively in great detail, and their actions involves some calculations as well.

Like most other role-playing game systems, Via Prudensiae utilizes polyhedral dice to handle outcomes of random actions in a way similar to the d20 system. When an action is performed, the level of the relevant stat is taken and modifiers are added according to special cirumstances. The action succeeds if the player manages to roll a number less than or equal to the modified stat level with a d20 die. If a degree of success is needed, the rolled number is subtracted from the modified stat level to indicate how well the action was performed.

Characters

Characters has advantages and disadvantages, which are similar to Dungeons & Dragons feats. They give some characters certain (positive or negative) properties, for example strong teeth, color blindness or code of honor.

Each character has 11 stats called properties, which describes basic physical and mental properties of the character, for example strength, size and psyche, as well as a myriad of skills, which describes the learned abilities of a character, for example climbing, gun repair or interrogation.

Combat
The combat system is a progressive linear battle system, where characters can do an action when a certain time has elapsed, quite like in the Final Fantasy series. The time is divided into parts called segments, which are each 1/2 second long, and the battle progresses one segment at the time.

Due to the realism of the game system, combat encounters are often avoided by the players, if possible, because a fight is very dangerous and easily becomes fatal. A successful hit or two by a gun or a blade is enough to kill a character, or in best case severely cripple the character due to serious wounds. Due to the difficulty of surviving combat in the game system, a statistic called Luck was invented to enable the characters to act more cinematic and make the battles more exciting.

The overwhelming amount of complicated combat rules demands a lot of the game master and takes a lot of time, especially in larger battles. An alternative turn-based battle system was invented, which could be utilized in such situations, which was much quicker and easier to handle at the cost of realism.

History
After several years as game masters using various game systems, Ask Agger and Gimle Larsen decided to pursue a childhood dream and create their own game system. They were aware of the fact that there already existed numerous excellent game systems, but they all seemed to have unsatisfactory flaws, so they wanted to make a (in their own sense) "perfect" game system.

They wrote a rule book and published it in 1994. The first printing of 500 copies was quickly gone, so another printing was made and was also sold quite quickly. The rule book hasn't been reprinted since.

Criticism
The rules of Via Prudensiae has been criticized for being way to verbose and complex, thus demanding a lot of the game master. This criticism is partially countered by many of the rules being optional and Ask Agger encouraging the users to customize the system to their own preferences as much as they like.

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See Also

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