Dawn of Worlds, A World Building Game

Review #07 – Free RPG

Dawn of Worlds, A World Building Game

This is a pretty popular game, so maybe you already knew about it, but it’s so good that I felt it deserved to be here.

Dawn of Worlds lets a group of players design a world from scratch, so it’s not only a game by itself; it’s also a tool you can use when creating a game world or to write a novel; or anything else, really. As a gaming tool, it’s useful because players can make sure that whatever they want does exist in the game world, and it takes a lot of pressure away from the GM.

But enough about that, I want to talk about it as a game, no a design tool. It’s a very fun game, and completely GM-free, so we stressed out GMs can rejoice.

Now, anyone familiar with roleplaying games knows that it’s a serious problem when everyone at the table doesn’t want the same thing. Add to that the fact that messing with someone else’s creation is almost a must here and you have a recipe for disaster.

Don’t get me wrong, it’s a great game and I highly recommend it. Just… try to play it with serious people, because it can get really ugly, really fast.

On a positive note, the worlds created are by far vaster and more complex that what anyone can create by themselves. The stories, the wars, the heroes, everything gets a life of their own pretty fast. You know what they say about too many cooks? Not true when creating a world, at least as far as realism goes.

And something I read a lot while researching for this article: please, don’t be a jerk and cheat a race during the first era with an avatar. That’s cheap, so don’t do it. Anyone who has actually played it must know what I mean.

- The Storeman

Disclaimer: I didn’t upload any of the content in the following link. I have downloaded and checked it as I always do. I have even executed it in my own computer and did not experience any kind of problems. But I can’t ensure that it is free of virus and/or malware that my anti-virus programs couldn’t find. That’s the author’s responsibility.

External Link: http://www.clanwebsite.org/games/games.html

Risus, The Anything RPG

Review #5 – Free Pen and Paper RPG

Risus, The Anything RPG

Risus is a simple universal system, and also a pretty good one. There are special rules created for it, some online, some only found in the deluxe, paid and paper made version, but using just the core, it’s easy to adapt it to your needs.

The basic (and only) characteristic of the PCs and NPCs are “clichés”. They could be anything from “Hardened Veteran” to “Pediatrician” or “Negative Nelly”. Each one has a score from 1 to 4 and, whenever you want to do something, you just take as many d6 as your highest relevant cliché. Throw and add all the results together to try to equal or surpass the difficulty chosen by the GM.

Your clichés tell your character’s story, define his abilities and are used to measure wounds. Fights are opposed contest between a combat oriented cliché of each character, whoever loses reduces his cliché by a dice. If you somehow use a non-combat cliché in battle and win, your opponent loses three dice. If it’s due to their embarrassment or just your sheer lunacy is never quite explained.

As you can see, there is not much to know about Risus, as I said, it’s simple. Character don’t have more that four clichés so they are easy to keep track of, combat and all opposed contests resolve fairly quickly and the system rewards creativity when using your clichés.

What you might not like about this system is that characters are not very mechanically different, so it demands a little more roleplaying that other systems. And it can take a while for the GM to get used to setting difficulties, as adding dice is (at least for me) a bit more confusing when it comes to possibilities of success.

Nevertheless, a solid universal system to have at the ready for any kind of occasion.

- The Storeman

Disclaimer: I didn’t upload any of the content in the following link. I have downloaded and checked it as I always do. I have even executed it in my own computer and did not experience any kind of problems. But I can’t ensure that it is free of virus and/or malware that my anti-virus programs couldn’t find. That’s the author’s responsibility.

External Link: http://www222.pair.com/sjohn/risus.htm

Pirates!

Review #2 - Free RPG

Pirates!

Ok, so this is the second week, and this is the second review. For this one I wanted to talk about a pen and paper RPG, given that this and video games are going to be the focus of this blog and I already talked about a video game last week.

The chosen one today is "Pirates!", a single d6 system about, you guessed it, pirates. This isn't a game for realistic simulation or lots of tactical combat, so unless you are looking for improvisational and cinematic fun you are losing your time reading this review.

The system is simple, you have six stats with values from 0 to 5, 0 being the minimum and 5 the maximum. When you want to do something, roll a d6 and try to get less than your relevant stat. Rolled less? Then you were successful. I'd say it's great but given that you are a pirate, most probably someone is going to suffer/be robbed/be set on fire, so I won’t. If you roll more than your stat, then you are hurt and out of the scene, unless you use a luck point, which are shared by the party and charged by drinking and partying.

It's a great game for a tired GM that doesn’t want to work too much.  As GM you don't roll a single dice, because players hurt themselves. NPCs are as simple as a name and as little description as possible, given that they a bound to die at the hands of crazed PCs. All you have to do is set them on the ocean and give them treasure every once in a while.

I could keep talking about the Taboo system that encourages chaos and mayhem (one of the taboos is "thinking before acting") or the Dead Man Chest, a gold bonus triggered by rolling a 5 (so players will keep rolling the dice, believe me) but that's what the manual is for. Download this PDF and enjoy a crazy adventure. There also a French version!

- The Storeman

Disclaimer: I didn’t upload any of the content in the following link. I have downloaded and checked it as I always do. I have even executed it in my own computer and did not experience any kind of problems. But I can’t ensure that it is free of viruses and/or malware that my anti-virus programs couldn’t find. That’s the author’s responsibility.

Link: http://zapti.free.fr/pirates/