Below are examples and short descriptions of other role-playing systems I've used, including one of my own design. None of these are published, but if you are interested in trying them, e-mail me and I'll send you basic description files in the MS Word 6.0 format.
Last Great
Empire
My game is called
Last Great Empire, or LGE for short. This game was initially created over
12 years ago as a friend and I were driving down to someone's house for
a gaming weekend. I began to invent system rules as I drove, and he played
along from the passenger's seat. The system actually made some kind of
sense, so we wrote down the generalities we came up with in the van, and
I developed it into a system when I got home.
The game incorporates
a lot of violence and action with a very basic set of statistics and virtually
no tables for stat generation. It becomes an uncomplicated game that anyone
with any experience in role-playing can easily pick up. The best part is,
it doesn't take itself too seriously. What it demands is a gamemaster who
isn't afraid of making some noise and applying lots of chaos to the game
to move it along quickly.
The game is
set in the far future, a future you hope never comes to pass. In this time,
technology runs high, but quality control is at an all time low. Things
break. Things come apart. Things malfunction. People don't rely too heavily
on things... Firepower rules the day, but something that shoots is also
a thing.
Here are a few
examples of the action we've had in gameplay since it's inception.
1) Several players get in line at the weapons shop on space station Zebra. The line is long and not moving very fast. The players get impatient. Shooting starts. Police are called. Blood is shed. Lots of blood is shed. Most of the group don't leave the hallway. The price of impatience.
2) Two carloads of players are headed across the desert. One is a pickup truck with players in the back. The truck swerves to avoid hitting a wreck. One player falls out of the truck. The driver looks in his mirror and says, "He's dead, leave him". The fallen player gets up and flags down the other car. The second car catches up. The "dead" player tosses a hand grenade into the pickup as they pass. Several players jump for it. Everybody's pals again once they all reach the destination. Go figure.
3) The players have hired a spaceship to get them to earth. All have either purchased high percentage crio berths or cabins. They are loading their gear on board. One remembers his special explosive device he received earlier, a one use drone ship. It's too big to drag through the spaceport. He sets the controls to send it to the cargo bay of the ship he's taking... I did say explosive, and I did say one use... Sorry, no refunds.
4) Several players have just mustered out of their respective armed forces with their weapons and gear. They find a loose ventilator grill. They pry it off and go searching. They find aboard a space station, an experimental pickup truck. Seems it plane travels. Pile in. Found themselves in front of the gates of Hell. Cerebrus, nice puppy...ramming speed. Knocked the gates of Hell off it's hinges. Demons and Devils get treated to lead projectiles. Eighth plane, ice castle. Drop off a nuclear device next to it and burn rubber. Get out of Hell in one piece. (The players still ask about the truck, and when can they go again...)
5) Players sign up for mercenary duty after their term of duty to their respective armed forces. Sent up to planet Dragon to look around. Two of the players take over the ship and kill the crew. Rest of the players are outside the ship. Oh, looky...ship's lasers. Target practice at the other players. Other players get fried and fed up. One pulls out an unknown explosive device with no instructions. It's called a MEDD. (Matter Energy Destruction Device) Ship lasers coming his way. Pushes the button on the MEDD. Planet Dragon goes poof. Players in the ship are pissed...for a nanosecond.
I've run LGE
at the Dundracon gaming convention in Northern California for the last
8 or 9 years. Never much of a turnout, as people prefer systems they already
know. Three years in a row I ran the game with a DOOM variant, based on
the DOOM computer game. I say three years, because the first two years
the party failed to completely achieve it's objective. The first year the
party was completely wiped out. The scenarios those years were called:
1) Beverly Hells, 90666
- Set in Beverly Hills, CA
2) CyberMickey's Revenge
- Set at Disneyland
3) DOOMdracon - Set
at Dundracon itself.
Nothing is sacred or safe in the Empire. And that's the way I like it. In 1999, I think I'll run some AD&D at the convention instead. But LGE will live on. If you think you might like to try the game, e-mail me from the link on my home page, and I'll send you some basic rules.
Savage Land
SL is a more
serious role-playing system. I didn't invent it, those kudos belong to
Tony Thomas and Glenn Mounkas. It's loosely based on Runequest, but with
the advent of specialized religions. These religions, which are identified
by color, make up the 'alignment' and tolerances of the characters. It
also allows many diametrically opposed religions, in much more specific
terms than, say, AD&D.
Character generation
takes a long time in Savage Land. The tables, while they can fit on one
page, will keep one referring back to the character's stats constantly.
Several things about the system make it very different than most others.
For instance, hit points do not increase with experience. Character stats
vary by a much wider range than in AD&D. Their are over 30 different
races to choose from. Winged characters are available. Many AD&D monster
races are character races in Savage Land. Hybrid, 2 race characters can
be played.
We played this
system for several years, abandoning AD&D for it. After awhile, though,
we found ourselves in a rut, and desired a change. We went back to AD&D
and have been there since. I don't have the information on Savage Land
in my Word program, just in my older Wordstar, so I won't be sending out
game files on it.
