The Homebrew Review
It's anything but a well-kept secret that most GMs have a mean streak a mile wide (though they may pretend otherwise to lull their players into a false sense of security). There's a certain sick thrill that comes from outsmarting your players, and an even sicker one from killing off a PC with a well-placed trap or a monster that's a little smarter than they originally thought.
SOAP is an unusual, action-packed game in which "your character is likely to be shot by ex-lovers, have a life-threatening operation, save a family member and have a car crash, all in the space of 30 minutes." That's right - SOAP is meant to be an RPG-style approximation of TV soap operas.
Anyone who runs an ongoing campaign is likely, at one time or another, to grapple with the phenomenon of burnout. Developer S. John Ross makes the purpose of Risus abundantly clear from the start: it is "designed to provide an 'RPG Lite' for those nights when the brain is too tired for exacting detail... While it is essentially a Universal Comedy System, it works just as well for serious play (if you insist!)."
Have your gaming sessions fallen into a rut? Tired of your tried-and-true, well-known RPG systems? Then it's time you put aside your Monstrous Manuals and your Vampire Players' Guides and picked up a homebrew RPG, one of those little-known RPGs made by gamers, for gamers. There are hundreds of these floating around on the Internet. The only problem is separating the good stuff from the crap, and we here at Gamegrene.com will now be doing that for you with the Homebrew Review.
