The Core Book was published in June 2009. It is available either as a paperback or a free download from Lulu.
The Core Book outlines No Dice's Vanilla Rules. These rules are the very raw basic rules from which all other No Dice games are derived. Aside from these rules, which basically govern the way that draws from a pack of cards are interpreted in a very basic way the system comes with no other rules as standard.
Instead the book focuses on two separate ideas. The player experience and the Host experience. The entire system was born from Sue's dislike for dice-heavy number-crunching RP systems. Sue finds board games confusing and isn't at home with "fun" and "maths" living in adjacent clauses of the same sentence. Actually, Leo and Justin aren't particularly down with that either. Whereas Leo and Justin had always endured or ignored maths for the sake of the hobby they loved Sue wanted it all to be different.
One thing that's become apparent, now that the loose wool in the cardigan of role playing has been thoroughly picked, is that there is more potential to the hobby of role playing than just different numbers of sides to dice, more stats and rubber swords for extremists. The Core Book started to tease out these ideas.
As is common in most RP systems the section aimed squarely at players is much shorter than the section aimed at Hosts. Actually, over time it has started to become apparent that the Player's Section may still be a little overlong. Ironically, it also doesn't cover everything. That's part of the job of this wiki, to provide a place where new ideas can be recorded in a semi-organised way.
The Host's section talks in all sorts of ways about how to construct your own campaign setting; and further how to pepper your campaign setting with stats to give flavour and a little something about how to create NPCs. It basically is everything and nothing all at once.
Three one-offs were included in the Core Book: Traveller's Rest, which was the original No Dice session before No Dice even existed; Revelation Point, a down and dirty 70s slasher adventure, and; Treasure of the Caesar's a pirate-y ninja-y slugfest showcasing a dynamic combat system which forms the basis of the central mechanics of future campaign setting Marauders.
