Short But Interesting News

So rumour has it Chaosium is about to revive lots of old favourites. The Basic Role-Playing System first, possibly followed by Superworld and Elfquest. I shall try and pry into this and get more information from the Chaosium people at The Kraken!

The Conspiracy Theory

Revolution D100 is an elegant iteration of the Basic Role-Playing System published by Alephtar Games. Of the many available flavours of the D100 System, each has its own benefits and flaws. What I particular like with Revolution D100 is that the skill creep that we may often experience with D100-based RPGs has been cleverly stemmed by having a limited set of skills that are subsequently expanded via traits.

Another great improvement over other D100-based RPGs is the concept of Conflict. Much like in a narrative RPG, instead of solving salient situations via a string of skill checks, important encounters/challenges/whatnot are framed within the scope of a Conflict. The party chooses a leading character who will face the enemy/threat with an appropriate skill. The other characters describe how they support the leading one, and Conflict points are gained or lost.

I have played in a variety of Revolution D100 campaign games, and I feel the system is best suited to complex, background-heavy settings such as historical, contemporary or sci-fi ones. It is hence a good piece of news that Alephtar Games have chosen a contemporary/mystery setting for their free Revolution D100 quick-start.

The free PDF is titled 'The Conspiracy Theory' and contains:

• a four-page summary of the bare-bones rules
• a 17-page adventure cleverly interspersed with extra rules when they are needed
• pre-gens
• a rules summary

You can download The Conspiracy Theory for free from DriveThruRPG.