Risus Anyone? (Intrest and Rules discussion)

Hi All,

I am a big fan of the free RPG system called Risus, in fact that was how I made my way to the Nines way back when.

That being said, I would love to try my hand at running a Risus game here in this thread appropriately called RISUS Dungeoneer.

Risus is a very simple system that works best when run a bit tong-in-cheek. It draws from the vast array of fantasy (or anything, really) clichés, and the comedic power therein.

I think that is marvelous. I plan on running an adventure that will be less than serious, free form as possible, posting as you like (although some encounters will need to be play by post with everyone taking a turn) and as I am currently very busy with a new offspring, the pace may be a bit slow for a while.

Please check out the free rules at http://www222.pair.com/sjohn/risus.htm.

Characters will be an 8 dice character, 1 for a hook and 1 for a tale (Advanced Option). I will also allow Pumping and Double Pumps (advanced options II and III).

So what I have in mind is the characters will be at the Village of Grimshaw’s annual spring picnic. Why and how your characters came to be in Grimshaw should be part of your tale and/or hook.

Grimshaw and its surroundings are a very generic place, feel free to give it as much or as little detail as you like. It is geographically near some mountains and the sea, a large forest and a swamp, next to a river, near a lake, and a large city (Goodport) to the south and a small town (Fort Locust) to the north.

Let me know if you are interested here, and any discussions or questions about rules and such and I will also set up a character thread for posting suggested characters. Once we have some characters I will add a game thread and a OOC thread.

WOO HOO!

Oh, and I need to get a forum friendly dice roller, let me know if you guys have any suggestions.

The forum has a dice roller available, but I'm not sure how to configure it. I can putter around in the admin panel to see how it works and let you know.

That would be sweet, we would only need d6's and to be able to see the individual rolls as well as the total.

So this would be a Medieval Fantasy Setting?

Yes, that was the idea... but if you have a reallly cool story of how a time traveling warrior from the future got there I would not say no, or a dino riding cowboy from an alternate timeline, or a well, you get the idea

Humm, perhaps I should be a bit more descriptive of Grimshaw and the surroundings... ok here it goes:

Grimshaw, Medieval Village (4), Vacation Place of the rich and famous (1),

Goodport, Medieval City (10), Good place to get whacked (7), Best pastrami on rye this side of Troyville (4), Beautiful seaside resort (1)

Fort Locust, Medieval Town (7), Pillar of Law and Order (4), Cutting edge of technology (1)

Oh man! I am so insanely busy, but I really want to PLAY!!!

You say it might be slow, so maybe I will.

Great idea Evil, I am totally ignorant of this type of play, so for now I think I will sit back and watch and learn.

Oh please play both of you! I promise it isn't that hard to figure out- the rules are like 5 pages long and very simple (and I can help , and the pace will be slow (I am very time constrained in RL, and can't post much at all from work)...

All right, twist my arm, why don't you. I'll play! But I can promise you, I will be slow.

I'm thinking about making a paladin or a good cleric--depending on what types of characters others wish to have. (This will be spoofy, I gather. I can't play paladins with a straight face...)

yesss, spoofy, very spoofy

Testing this dice roller for that pesky RPM.

The member 'Mother Hen' has done the following action : Dices roll

#1 'd6' : 3

--------------------------------

#2 'd6' : 3

--------------------------------

#3 'd6' : 1

EvilBen (3) vs. the Forum Dice Roller (10)

The member 'EvilBen' has done the following action : Dices roll

#1 'd6' : 2, 5, 4

--------------------------------

#2 'd6' : 3, 6, 3, 1, 3, 2, 1, 5, 4, 3

A sum of the rolls would be great too, but adding numbers 1 through 6 four maybe six at a time shouldn't be tooooo hard...



I think this will work, you can post your intended action and roll, if you win, you can immediately post what happens (in Risus, winner decides what happens to the looser)

ROCK!

DRATS....

There's no way for the system to total the rolls.....

hm...I'll have to keep looking around...

So who else is hopping on this bandwagon? Tiphereth? Dann? Kynnzak? Anyone else going to make a character?

Does anyone need a better description of the rules?

Or how about of the setting to get creative juices flowing?

Let me know!

I'm still not sure I really struggle with the whole concept of the game.

This is a RISUS example:

Martial Artist (Fancy hand-to-hand combat, out-of-synch speech)

I am not into comedic writing, for me it is extremely difficult to get right. I couldn't even imagine, using my characters 'out-of-synch' speech to confuse an attacking dragon who would some how turn out to be a fan of old 'chop socky' flicks. I just can't get into that kind of role playing.

Would this be serious? All the RISUS examples just don't seem that serious.

This will probably not be 100% serious. I would expect several puns and semi goofy situations, but it would be true to a fantasy adventure, in that I don't expect someone to use Hairdersser (4) vs a Dragon (7), but a Old Sea Dog (2) attempting to distract palace guards with sea shantys would be more in line with the level of sillyness...

I have been imagining that, if this adventure had a dust jacket, the back would read something like 'a lighthearted fantasy romp.' The characters would be quirky and the situations often hilarious, but that there wouldn't be pointless anachronisms or things that wouldn't make sense in a 'real' world, like out-of-synch speech, which can only exist in a film world. I suppose (correct me if I'm wrong, Ben) I would be thinking about books like 'Villains by Necessity,' if anyone knows it, or Terry Pratchett's works or even Piers Anthony... But of course the end result will be all our own.

Personally, I am not worrying too much about the Risus system as I think about my character ideas. I figure Ben can do the heavy lifting when it comes to that, and that I'll learn more about it as I go. I would encourage people not to get hung up on those details and simply think about a colorful character with an amusing flaw/weakness (hook) that would be fun to play, and build up from there, rather than starting with the system to build the character.

Well put. The tone of the story will definately resemble Terry Pratchett and Piers Anthony- Fantasy Humor.

And another way to look at the game system, is that it is just has a different way to define your character and it adds a bit or randomness to the storytelling.

Ah... I'd love to jump in, but I really fear that I just wouldn't fit. While I enjoy comedies us much as the next person, and love Monty Python, I really doubt I can write in such a style and not completely fly off the wall into shear goofiness. I have always had difficulty maintaining that fine balance that comedic writers possess and so as much as I enjoy table top I think I'd be a bit of a party pooper as I would no doubt just not get most of the puns. I shun the pun.

Okay, Ben. I am MADLY busy, but I would be thrilled if you ran a risus game! So, I am thinking about making a clericy type characer with healing magic as well as turning undead and warding against evil--you know, your typical goody-two-shoes type cleric. However, I AM a little confused about how 'magic' works in risus with regards to dice assignment. Do I use one of my character creation dice to make a sidekick, and use the sidekick's dice to assign magic abilities, or whaaaaat?

I always felt the optional rules of using a sidekick for magic was a bit, well confusing, myself.

I would say that you can identify your magic by your cliché! A Cleric of the Sun (4), for example, would be able to do all you were looking for (healing and turning undead) without any issues.

Now if you wanted to have “big boom spells”, I would say you would need to purchase double pumped dice, for example- a Cleric of the BURNINATING Sun [3] would have purchased double pumped dice (leaving 4 dice for the rest of his clichés), and on occasions could double pump an attack to be a Cleric of the BURNINATING Sun (7) for an attack (Divine Fire Strike anyone?) and then loose 2 dice (ah-la pumping rules).

This means that a Wizard (3) is on equal footing with a Warrioor (3), they just use different tactics