Stargazer's World

[German RPGs] 1w6 – Ein Würfel System

Posted by Stargazer | Posted on 14-01-2010

Category : FUDGE, Freebies, GURPS, News, Reviews & Culture, Other Systems, RPG, Reviews & First Looks

Recently Rob Lang of the Free RPG Blog asked me if I knew “1w6 – Ein Würfel System” (1d6 – One Die System). I had to admit that I’ve heard of it before, but I haven’t actually read it. So today I have a look at this free RPG which isn’t available in English language yet.

Free as free software
1w6 has been released under two licenses. Everything available at the website (including the rules you can download in PDF format) are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share-Alike-Non-Commercial license. But the creators of the game also offer a printed version which can be ordered directly from them or bought at some FLGS. This version has been released under the GNU General Public License.

Rules basics
A character in the EWS (Ein Würfel System) is described by traits and skills chosen freely by the player. Alternatively the GM may decide to use the attributes and skills from other games like GURPS or Fudge instead. Both traits and skills in normal humans are rated from 6 to 18. Action checks are made by rolling 1d6 and adding an appropriate trait or skill. If an even result is rolled it’s considered positive, odd results are negative. This method is called ±D6.
Usually the target number necessary to succeed is 9 or more.

Compatibility
The EWS was created with compatibility to two other games in mind: GURPS and Fudge. You get much more out of EWS if you have access to either one of these games. There’s even a sidebar containing detailed information on how you can convert advantages and disadvantages from these games to the EWS.

Presentation
I had a look at the German PDF version of the EWS, which is 52 pages long and contains character artwork from the computer game “Battle of Wesnoth” (which is also available under the GPL). The layout is one-columned with sidebars which contain additional information like designer’s notes and the like. There are a few editing errors, but nothing major. The production values are very decent for a free product.

Worlds and Modules
The 1w6 website offers a SF setting for use with the system called RaumZeit (SpaceTime) and links to a few other websites which detail campaign worlds that are played using the EWS. Basically a GM should be able to play in every genre. There are also optional rules in form of modules available at the site which add magic, an initiative system, critical successes and failures and more to the game. “Modules” refers to the modular nature of the system which allows GMs to mix and match the rules to suit their preferences.

Conclusion
The EWS is definitely an interesting game, especially when you need a rules-light game with some compatibility to content created for Fudge or GURPS. Alas the rules are not available in English at this moment and the core rules don’t contain any rules for supernatural abilities like magic or super powers. But a resoruceful GM with a good grasp of the German language might put the EWS to good use.

2 people like this post.

Unlike

The Fantasy Trip

Posted by Stargazer | Posted on 06-10-2009

Category : Freebies, GURPS, News, Reviews & Culture, Other Systems, RPG

Into The Labyrinth D&D is not the only roleplaying game that evolved from miniature combat games. Steve Jackson’s GURPS actually is based on “The Fantasy Trip”, a roleplaying game that itself evolved from Metagaming’s Melee and Wizard combat games. All these games had been designed by Steve Jackson, too.

Back in 1977 Metagaming released Melee a fast-playing man-to-man boardgame. Melee actually laid some of the basics for some of the GURPS rules. Each character had a Strength (ST) and Dexterity (DX) attribute back then. Strength was a measure of what weapons a character could use and how much damage he could inflict and take during combat. Dexterity determined the chance of hitting your opponents. Armor reduced the amount of damage taken.

When in 1978 Wizard was released, it added magic rules to Melee and another attribute was introduced: Intelligence (IQ). A high IQ attribute allowed characters to cast magic spells. Spellcasting caused temporary ST damage, limiting the amount of spells that could be cast. All this sounds already very much like what we know from GURPS.

In 1980 the third book in the series, In the Labyrinth, was released which finally turned Melee/Wizard into a fully-fledged roleplaying game. Melee and Wizard were rereleased as Advanced Melee and Advanced Wizard which together with In the Labyrinth formed the basis of “The Fantasy Trip”.

In TFT each character had three attributes: Strength, (ST), Dexterity (DX) and Intelligence (IQ). IQ was however not only important for spellcasters, but for other characters, too, because of the introduction of a point-based skill system.

1980 Steve Jackson left the company and the owner of Metagaming decided to close down the company just three years later. Today, TFT, the spiritual predecessor of GURPS is long out of print, but recently Dark City Games have released some rules inspired by TFT:

All those PDFs are available for free and from what I’ve seen are pretty close to the original TFT. I also stumbled upon another tribute site to TFT that also features some nice paper models and a TFT Wiki.

I have to admit that I actually never heard of TFT before I started to do some research on GURPS recently and I was actually surprised that a) the game looks that much like GURPS already and b) that there are not more retro-clones of TFT. Or did I miss anything?

So, what are your thoughts on “The Fantasy Trip”? Have you actually played the game back in the day and would you like to play the game even today?

Unlike

GURPS anyone?

Posted by Stargazer | Posted on 05-10-2009

Category : GURPS, Other Systems, RPG, Random musings

When you browse through the RPGBN member blogs you read a lot about D&D 4th Edition, D&D 3rd Edition, old-school D&D (and all those retro-clones), Savage Worlds, White Wolf’s World of Darkness games and sometimes even about some obscure indie game. But curiously GURPS seems to be absent from the network.

From what I gather Steve Jackson Games is still one of the major RPG publishers and since they release new GURPS books regularly, I am pretty sure someone is buying their books, but it obviously plays only a minor role in the RPG blogosphere.

Did I just miss the GURPS-related posts or is GURPS on the decline?

Unlike

Girl Genius!

Posted by Stargazer | Posted on 29-06-2009

Category : Fluff/Inspiration, GURPS, RPG, Savage Worlds

Agatha is heterodyning!

This month’s blog carnival hosted by Mad Brew Labs is about Steampunk & Klokwerks. Steampunk is (as you probably know) one of my favourite genres and so it’s no surprise that I wanted to contribute the blog carnival. But for almost a whole month I couldn’t come up with something to write about. But then something finally ”sparked” in me.

When someone asks me what Steampunk is, I usually don’t give lengthy descriptions of all the aspects that make the Steampunk genre, I just show off one of my Girl Genius books. Girl Genius is the definitive steampunk comic series of our times. It has it all: Adventure, Romance, Mad Science. And it’s written and drawn by Phil and Kaja Foglio, the people responsible for my favorite cartoon back from the days, when the Dragon Magazine was still in print: “What’s New with Phil & Dixie?”.

So, what is Girl Genius about? It’s the story about Agatha Heterodyne, heir to the famous Heterodyne family and a powerful Spark. Sparks are that what you would call a “Mad Scientist”. And when she’s building some strange contraption she actually acts pretty mad, but in most cases she is pretty benevolent. Alas not all Sparks are as nice as she is and a couple of years back, an evil Spark called “The Other” has attacked and only the Heterodyne Boys (Agatha’s dad and uncle) and Baron Wulfenbach could save Europe from being conquered by the “Other”. But today, the Heterodyne Boys are missing and Baron Wullfenbach rules the land with an iron fist. But since the series has been created by the Foglios you can expect a lot of weird humor. So, Girl Genius may not be your cup of tea if you like it dead-serious.

Dingbots to the rescue!

You can actually read all the stories about Agatha for free on the web. At www.girlgeniusonline.com Kaja and Phil Foglio release a new Girl Genius episode every second day or so.

A long time ago, the Foglios and Steve Jackson Games announced a Girl Genius RPG based on the 4th Edition of the GURPS rules, but alas the book isn’t out yet and I fear it could take some more months (or even longer) until we can finally get our hands on an actual copy. But don’t despair. There’s already a very nice GURPS Steampunk book. So, if you are into GURPS, you could pick up a copy of GURPS Steampunk and probably create a homebrew Girl Genius RPG.

Another alternative is Savage Worlds. Savage Worlds is one of the few RPGs that comes with Steampunk support built-in. One of the Arcane Backgrounds is Weird Science, an edge that allows characters to come up with all kinds of nice gizmos.

The power level of a newly created Weird Scientist in Savage Worlds may not be on par with a full-blown Spark in the Girl Genius world, but it’s not something you can’t fix.

RPG Blog Carnival

While doing some research on Girl Genius I stumbled upon a pretty extensive Girl Genius wiki which includes a lot of background information on the setting. I also found a pretty complete Savage Worlds conversion on Emiricol’s Wikispace. I am pretty convinced you could pull off a GG campaign with “vanilla” Savage Worlds alone, but if you are looking for inspiration, it doesn’t hurt to have a look at this conversion. So, that concludes my contribution to this month’s blog carnival. As always I am interested in your thought? Have you ever thought about running a GG-inspired game? Are you waiting for the GURPS version or are you running a homebrew campaign?

Unlike