(17/41: 2002) BRETT BERNSTEIN
The Archivist Who Kept the Lights On
Most game designers build forward. Brett Bernstein builds in both directions.
He designs new games — diceless systems, modular genre frameworks, introductory dungeon crawlers — and he rescues old ones. When West End Games collapsed and its catalog scattered, Bernstein acquired MasterBook, Shatterzone, and Bloodshadows. When Wee Warriors’ classic dungeon kits from 1977 threatened to disappear entirely, he reprinted them. When small-press RPGs from the early internet era went out of print, Precis Intermedia — his publishing company — became the shelf they lived on.
The result is a career that functions less like a designer’s portfolio and more like a library. Everything stays in print. Everything stays available. The lights stay on in rooms other designers abandoned years ago.
The Diceless Gambit
Bernstein’s most genuinely inventive work is Active Exploits Diceless Roleplaying (2003), a system that does something counterintuitive: it plays like a dice-based RPG without any dice. Players spend effort points to influence outcomes, creating a resource-management layer that replaces randomness with decision-making. The system won two Indie RPG Awards — Free Game of the Year and Best Support — and Bernstein released it as a free download, explicitly inviting the community to modify and expand it.
The design is clever. A diceless system that doesn’t feel like Amber Diceless or other narrative-heavy precedents — it preserves the tactical granularity of traditional RPGs while removing the randomizer. But the innovation didn’t propagate. No other designer picked up the Active Exploits framework and built on it. The game won awards, earned respect, and stayed inside its own ecosystem.
That pattern — genuine design intelligence that doesn’t travel — defines Bernstein’s catalog.
The Modular Architect
The genreDiversion system is Bernstein’s longest-running project and his most architecturally ambitious. It’s a modular RPG framework designed so that games built on it are cross-compatible — Coyote Trail (Wild West), HardNova (space opera), Ghostories (supernatural mystery), EarthAD.2 (post-apocalyptic), and half a dozen others all share mechanical DNA. Characters and subsystems can theoretically move between settings.
The updated genreDiversion i (Impresa) version extended this compatibility to include Active Exploits and Iron Gauntlets, Bernstein’s heroic fantasy line. The ambition is clear: build an ecosystem where every game talks to every other game, where the architecture is the product and the settings are interchangeable modules.
In practice, the ecosystem functions more as a catalog than a community. The games are well-designed — clean, efficient, built for maximum utility with minimum rules bloat. But no genreDiversion title generated the kind of sustained play community that would prove the modular architecture worked at scale. The blueprint is sound. The city was never built.
The Spotlight and the Shelf
Ancient Odysseys: Treasure Awaits! (2010) is probably Bernstein’s most recognized single title — an introductory dungeon-crawling game that won the ENnie Judge’s Spotlight Award. It does what Bernstein does best: takes an established format (dungeon crawl), strips it to essentials, packages it for accessibility, and delivers it cleanly. The pocket edition and expanded supplement show a designer who understands that the entry point matters as much as the endgame.
The Swords & Six-Siders line extends this philosophy into OSR territory, adapting classic Wee Warriors modules for modern rules-lite play. It’s preservation work disguised as game design — or maybe game design disguised as preservation work. With Bernstein, the distinction blurs.
The Disposable Heroes paper miniatures line adds another dimension — customizable paper minis spanning multiple genres, sold alongside the RPGs they support. It’s a small product, but it reveals Bernstein’s instinct for complete ecosystems. He doesn’t just design games. He designs the accessories the games need to run.
The Scoring Case
Invention (4): “Competent within existing frameworks”
Active Exploits Diceless is genuinely interesting — a diceless RPG that preserves tactical granularity, winning two Indie RPG Awards. The genreDiversion modular system shows cross-compatible design thinking. But most of the catalog builds on established frameworks or revises other designers’ work. No mechanic has been adopted outside Bernstein’s own ecosystem. Not 5 because the innovations stayed entirely in-house. Not 3 because the diceless system and modular architecture show real design intelligence beyond simple reskinning.
Architecture (4): “Functional, not distinctive”
The genreDiversion i ecosystem — Active Exploits, Iron Gauntlets, and multiple genre titles sharing cross-compatible mechanics — is real architectural work. Ancient Odysseys functions cleanly as an introductory system. But none of these games sustain large ongoing play communities. The modularity is more theoretical than practiced at scale. Not 5 because no game demonstrates deep sustained play beyond its initial audience. Not 3 because the cross-compatible ecosystem represents genuine system architecture that functions as designed.
Mastery (4): “Working designer, developing voice”
Twenty-five-plus game credits across twenty-plus years. Prolific but consistently small-press. ENnie Judge’s Spotlight, two Indie RPG Awards. Clear design philosophy: simplification, modularity, preserving legacy games. But no title broke through to significant mainstream recognition. Not 5 because the volume doesn’t translate to impact — the catalog is wide but shallow in influence. Not 3 because two decades of consistent output with identifiable design principles exceeds early-career work.
Adjustments — +5
- ■ Longevity 20+ years (+2): The Colonies / Active Exploits (2002) through present. Twenty-three-plus years of continuous design and publishing.
- ■ Full-time career (+1): Owns and operates Precis Intermedia as primary professional operation. Publishing and game design as livelihood.
- ■ Awards (+1): ENnie Judge’s Spotlight (Ancient Odysseys: Treasure Awaits!, 2010). Indie RPG Award for Free Game of the Year and Best Support (Active Exploits Diceless, 2003).
- ■ Branded name (+0): Not recognized outside the TTRPG community.
- ■ Cross-genre (+0): All RPGs and adjacent products. No distinct second game format.
- ■ Commercial success (+0): No Kickstarter campaigns found. No evidence of significant sales numbers.
- ■ Design propagation (+0): No mechanics widely adopted by other designers.
- ■ Field stewardship (+1): Deliberately rescues and preserves abandoned game IPs — acquired West End Games’ MasterBook, Shatterzone, and Bloodshadows; reprinted Wee Warriors classic dungeon kits from the late 1970s. Genuine preservation stewardship that keeps design history accessible.
The Hidden Pattern
Bernstein designs like a librarian catalogs: everything in its place, everything cross-referenced, nothing thrown away.
The genreDiversion system is a card catalog — modular, organized, every genre filed under the same Dewey Decimal of mechanics. Active Exploits is the special collection — unusual, innovative, carefully preserved. The West End Games acquisitions are the rare books room — titles that would have been lost without someone who cared enough to shelve them properly. Even the Disposable Heroes miniatures function like library supplies — practical tools that make the main collection usable.
The limitation of the librarian model is that libraries serve visitors, and Bernstein’s library doesn’t get much foot traffic. The games are well-organized, well-maintained, and professionally available. But the community around them is small. The preservation work is valuable — someone needs to keep MasterBook and those 1977 Wee Warriors modules alive — but it’s invisible to anyone who isn’t already looking for them.
The hidden pattern is that Bernstein’s most important design decision isn’t mechanical. It’s curatorial. He decided that games deserve to stay in print, that abandoned systems deserve new editions, that the history of tabletop design is worth maintaining as a living catalog rather than a closed archive. That’s not a philosophy that shows up in a scoring rubric. But it’s one the field would miss if it disappeared.
What Remains
Active Exploits Diceless Roleplaying (2003) — diceless RPG with tactical granularity. Two Indie RPG Awards. Released free, inviting community modification.
genreDiversion system (2000s–present) — modular, cross-compatible RPG framework spanning Westerns, space opera, horror, post-apocalypse, and heroic fantasy.
Ancient Odysseys: Treasure Awaits! (2010) — introductory dungeon crawler. ENnie Judge’s Spotlight. Accessibility as design philosophy.
Precis Intermedia — the publishing house as preservation project. MasterBook, Shatterzone, Bloodshadows, Wee Warriors — the games other publishers let go, kept alive on one shelf.
Twenty-three years of keeping the lights on in rooms other designers left dark.
Total: 17 points. Year: 2002.
17 points. 2002. The archivist who kept the lights on.
Twenty-three years of keeping the lights on in rooms other designers left dark.