Other Systems
Welcome to PORTAL (Player Oriented Roleplaying: Timing, Action & Lucidity), a universal roleplaying system ready to be adapted to whatever your imagination can come up with. It's a system which strives to strike a balance between roleplaying and gaming.
Shadowrun is a game filled with imagination set in the postmodernist dystopia of the bleak near-future. Shadowrun is also one of the biggies, a game created by one of the roleplaying giants that generated video games, action figures (well, all right, they were like giant mage knight figures) and a novel series. Because of this, why is it so underground?
This is a war that lets you strap yourself into a 20 foot tall lumbering mass of metal, gears, steam pipes and pistons built around a high pressure explosive engine core and then go and pound the living crap out of a Gnome who richly deserves it.
An appendix is a sometimes used portion near the back of a book. It is also an organ which has no apparent use or function. This article is about the second kind.
One of the most interesting aspects of the new Chaosium line-up is the monographs, freelance tape-bound splatbooks detailing a very specific setting within a game. But do they help or hinder the actual creative development of the game itself?
Steampunk Musha is an alternate setting for Iron Gauntlets by Precis Intermedia Gaming (formerly Politically Incorrect Games) and uses the Impresa Express gaming system. Steampunk Musha combines asian-flavored fantasy with Victorian technology in a setting where the old and new ways are clashing, where generations are fighting for their beliefs and traditions, and the world of Rosuto-Shima is changing.
Steam implies the age of steam say late 1800s, punk indicates the inclusion of weird science, and Musha meaning Stir-fried (OK, I made that up) gives an indication of oriental flavor. Taking this we get an Oriental game with Western flavor and a willingness to combine with traditional fantasy. This is pretty much what you get with Steampunk Musha, a worldbook for the Iron Gauntlets RPG.
In the late 1970s and early 80's there was a profusion of RPGs unmatched until the dawn of D20 OGL. The difference being that in the earlier renaissance each game came with an entirely new mechanic. Many of these games were amalgams of other systems where authors stuck things together that probably shouldn't have gone. During that bygone era, this game would have rocked.
Empty Room Studios does more than just role-playing. While they are the guys behind PIG's Steampunk Musha (an alternate setting for Iron Gauntlets), they're also a full service art studio, with over 17 members. We talked with Rick Hershey about what they're up to and what's on the horizon.
Chad Underkoffler is the man behind Atomic Sock Monkey Press, creators of the PDQ game engine that's used in games like Dead Inside, Truth & Justice, Ninja Burger 2nd Edition, and the new Zorcerer of Zo. I've seen an early cut of this game and I have to say that it'd make a great stocking stuffer for any gamer or lover of fairy tales, no matter what their age.
