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