Like pushing a live moose into a trailer house, designing a roleplaying game system is a lot harder than you’d think. You’ve got the antlers of combat, doing their best to gore you. The mighty hooves of task resolution, zeroing in for lethal crotch-shots. And the terrible jaws of character progression, trying to bite your face off and shut down this painful metaphor far too late in the paragraph.
I’ve written RPG systems from scratch. It’s hard finding the proper mix of mechanics to bring the thing together. And after that’s done, you’ve still got the tedious task of applying these rules to every situation the players might encounter: fighting in the dark; defusing a bomb; shoving a moose. Not to mention the endless lists of equipment (“Moose-pushing shovel, $25, does 1d6 damage or moves a moose 1 space away from the user”), skills, and (if you’re really lucky) magic spells.
Enter the Warp
Which is a long and moose-centric way of explaining why I won’t be rolling my own system for Mindstrike. Rather, I’ll be using the WaRP system. This is the system used in Over the Edge, the classic, rules-light RPG of conspiracies and freaky weirdness. Atlas Games recently released the system under the Open Game License, which means anyone can use it, so long as anything they make with it is likewise free for everyone else to use.
The best feature of WaRP is its versatility. You aren’t restricted to classes, levels, or even skills. Just whip up a handful of “traits” to describe your character (like Private Eye, Keenly Observant, or Tough as a Moose) and you’re good to go.
Each trait gets a number of dice. When you want to use it, roll those dice and add them up; if you rolled high enough, you succeed.
WaRP comes with its own system for “fringe powers” which I’ll be adapting into the psychic power system for Mindstrike. What’s there is good, but too broad for my purposes, so there will be tinkering. Just as well. It’d be a shame to come out the far side of National Game Design Month without doing some actual game mechanics.
No, really. Enter the warp.
Since WaRP is open-source, you can use it for any of your games, whether commercial or just for your home system.
You can find the official SRD (that’s System Resource Document) at the Atlas Games website. Rob Donaghue, designer extraordinaire, has put together a prettier version of the same document on his website.
And I’m in the process of assembling a copy of the SRD in RTF format. It’s all the same information, but it’s easier to work with. I’ll post a note when that’s ready to go.
If you’re looking for a rule-light RPG system, or (like me) need a simple base system to hang your particular world on, check out WaRP. It might be the moose you’re looking for.
