From the introduction: Giving up on overly complicated tabletop RPGs? Good. Ode is what you need for your next story-rich campaign. ... Deceptively powerful for its light weight, Ode is an excellent choice for those who are tired of endless tables and charts, but still want a cracking campaign—the kind in which stories become sagas and characters, legends. ... Like Risus: The Anything RPG before it, what sets Ode apart is the elegant simplicity and power of the mechanic at its core—a mechanic some know as the character cliché, but in these parts is christened the ode.