Omnifray Lite was inspired by efforts to design a simpler sci-fi version of full fat Omnifray over the course of 2008-9 (playtested as Sundered Space). In early September 2009 Omnifray creator Matt West was just messing around with different ways of handling dice-rolls when the inspiration hit him for a much simpler, much faster system which could achieve the core aims of the thinking that led to full fat Omnifray, but without tables. Work progressed very quickly. The first private playtest took place on 18 September 2008. The playtest edition of the Core Guide was finalised and on order from Lulu on 12 October 2008 and copies arrived on 15 October 2008. Public playtest launch is scheduled for 12 or 13 November 2009, at the start of Indiecon 2009 in New Milton, England.
Work on original, full fat Omnifray began around April 2005 and early drafts were in private circulation from the beginning of 2006. Omnifray grew out of Matt West's RPG Miravlor which had been available on the Internet as a freebie from around 2002. Omnifray has taken the novel ideas tested in Miravlor and turned them into a much more user-friendly RPG with a massive menu of options not just for magically gifted characters but for any kind of fantasy hero - warriors, spies, thieves, assassins, seers, herbalists or almost anything else imaginable. The development of Miravlor's versatile magic system into a system of powers ("feats") for magical and non-magical characters alike began in 2005, inspired by feedback on the Miravlor system. Matt West wishes to credit Giles O. in particular for inspiration given.
Miravlor itself grew out of an RPG that Matt designed for private use with his friends in around 1994 and which he called Axes & Arrows.
Many features of Omnifray owe their origins to Miravlor and Axes & Arrows - the complete absence of a rigid system of character professions, archetypes or classes and the percentage system of recording injury, for instance.
Matt's first attempt to write a roleplaying game was in the late 1980s at the age of about ten. He called it Warlocks & Warlords - an interesting title perhaps, given current developments in the industry.
