The Chassis Before the Engine

In 2009, Cam Banks stripped the Cortex System down to bare metal and rebuilt it into one of the most acclaimed RPG engines of the decade. Cortex Plus. Cortex Prime. The Doom Pool. Marvel Heroic Roleplaying. Three Origins Awards, an ENnie Gold, and a design philosophy that smuggled indie RPG ideas into mainstream licensed products.

But before Banks could strip the engine down, someone had to build it. Jamie Chambers built it. He adapted an obscure, commercially failed system into a streamlined framework that powered the most successful licensed RPG launch of its era. He won an Origins Award. He sold four print runs in a year. He proved that TV-to-tabletop adaptations could be commercially viable and mechanically respectable in the post-d20 landscape. Then he handed the keys to someone else, and the car became famous.

This is a story about the work before the work that everyone remembers — and the specific kind of design contribution that ranking systems struggle to value. Chambers did not invent a new form. He synthesized existing elements into a package that worked well enough to create the conditions for someone else’s breakthrough.

The Cortex System

The core resolution mechanic—attribute die plus skill die summed against a target number—came from Sovereign Stone. Chambers’ contributions were the refinements that made it production-ready. He compressed eight attributes to six. He narrowed seventy-two skills to twenty-two with optional specializations. He tightened the die range from d4-d20 to d2-d12 with an overflow mechanic for superhuman traits. He designed a clean resolution ladder running from Easy through Impossible. He created dual damage tracks — Life Points and Stun — with armor converting wound damage to stun.

The system’s most distinctive feature was Plot Points — a meta-currency that players spend for bonus dice, narrative changes, and damage reduction, converting to Advancement Points at session’s end. Drama dice and narrative tokens existed in earlier systems. What Chambers added was the dual-purpose economy, tying in-session intervention directly to character growth.

The honest benchmark is fair. Cortex Classic was a competent, streamlined system. It was not an elegant one. It worked reliably across multiple licenses without inspiring admiration that architecturally distinctive systems command.

Four Print Runs and an Origins Award

The Serenity Role Playing Game (2005) was the proof of concept. Credited as “Written and Designed by Jamie Chambers,” it required four print runs in its first year and won the 2005 Origins Award for Gamer’s Choice Best RPG. It also won the 2006 Gold ENnie for Best Production Values. For a debut proprietary system from a small publisher, this was exceptional commercial performance.

The Browncoat fanbase drove the sales more than mechanical innovation — a fact that does not diminish the achievement. Chambers had identified a viable commercial model: take a beloved TV property, adapt it with a system that serves the source material without overwhelming it, and execute at production standards that respect the audience. Every TV-to-tabletop adaptation that followed walked through the door Chambers opened.

The Handoff

Chambers departed Margaret Weis Productions around 2009-2010. What matters for scoring is what happened next. Cam Banks, who had freelanced for the company since 2003 and co-authored the Supernatural RPG with Chambers, assumed the lead designer role. He fundamentally reworked the engine. Where Cortex Classic rolled two dice summed against a target number, Cortex Plus used roll-and-keep pools of three to seven dice from multiple trait categories. Everything else changed. Plot Points survived. The step-die framework survived. The Asset/Complication architecture survived. Everything else changed.

This is the structural reality that defines Chambers’ place in the record. He built a chassis that a more innovative designer transformed into something celebrated. Without the chassis, there is nothing to transform. Chambers made it work. Banks made it sing. Both contributions are real. They are not the same kind of contribution.

Later Career and Legacy

After MWP, Chambers returned to Georgia and founded Signal Fire Studios. The flagship project was a 5th edition of Metamorphosis Alpha (2016), James M. Ward’s classic 1976 science fiction RPG. Funded by Kickstarter with 447 backers, it used System 26, Chambers’ original engine. He served as Vice President of the Game Manufacturers Association from 2007 to 2016, governing the trade infrastructure of the hobby for nearly a decade. Signal Fire continues at indie scale. The output is modest but continuous.

What Remains

Plot Points survive in Cortex Plus. The step-die framework survives. The Asset/Complication architecture survives. Chambers built the chassis that a more innovative designer transformed into something celebrated. The integration and synthesis he did—pulling scattered pieces into something that works—is a particular position in the design record. He’s the integrator. Not the inventor, not the architect of a system others study, but the person who takes scattered pieces and assembles them into something that works.

The systems integrator who built the platform that someone else made legendary — and the proof that the work before the work everyone remembers is still work.

Total: 19 points. Year: 2005.