Seed is a roleplaying game designed for playing adventures inspired by console RPGs - stories about heroes voyaging into the unknown, defeating terrible monsters, growing in strength and becoming more and more deeply entangled in the mysteries at the core of the world around them. It is also designed to provide a fun, compelling, strategic and quick combat ruleset, duplicating the core gameplay of its inspiration.
Just as no two video-games work according to the same rules, Seed offers options for customizing its gameplay to fit the desires and style of the game you'll be playing in, contained in discrete "Systems."
Considerations for Play
Seed was designed in a community that primarily plays over Internet Relay Chat, and as such, assumes the aid of a computer at many points - damage and health can rise into four digits and often involve multiplication, and combat initiative requires the subtracting of the current lowest delay from the delay possessed by every combatant after each action. Files will be provided in the ruleset to assist automation whenever possible, and tabletop play may best be accomplished by bringing these aids to the table with a laptop.
For low-tech play, multiple calculators are probably a bare minimum. The usage of many one-hundred sided dice, typically modeled using two d10s, may prove cumbersome - since all final CoSes are even multiples of 5, d20s may be substituted in their place by division.
The Terminology of the Text
Players: When Seed refers to "players", it refers to the players that are not the gamemaster, who will be controlling the player characters.
Player Characters: The directly-player controlled, more mechanically interesting, story-centric cast of the game.
Gamemaster: The player who takes on the brunt of operating the campaign and its engine and designing the world, and controlling the non-player characters.
Non-Player Characters: Characters who are not directly designed and controlled by the players.
Actor: Someone who is taking an action or someone who acts in combat (a player character or monster).
Combatant: Someone who is in combat. Frequently interchangeable with "actor".
Target: The character who is being acted upon by an action, status or effect. (When describing status and effects, it is implied: "this is what will happen to the target, if your action inflicts this.)
Enemy: In effect text and combat text, generally refers to whoever is on the opposing side of the actor. Sometimes more generally, a monster.
Monster: A mechanical construct used to model anything the PCs may find themselves locked in combat against. Occasionally actual monsters, occasionally people. If the PCs are fighting it, it should be created as a monster.
Party: The group of player characters that travel and fight together.
Ally: A combatant in your party that isn't you.