Icar Free Sci Fi RPG

My apologies for blatting your feedreaders with two updates today but I've had a stupidly productive time and I thought I'd share it with you all. This is the new character sheet three (or body/armour sheet in old language). In beautiful high resolution (in Version 4, where this shot was taken from). When folded down the middle, armour appears on the backside. For each section, the Armour Rating (AR) is in the smaller disc and Hit Points (HP) in the larger disc with original value above the line and current value below it. When printed on A4, I've found that the HP discs are fine for writing up to 99,999 and as AR is only two digits so there is plenty of room. Psychotheatrics have disappeared off the sheet because there was never really enough room. I will state in the rules that they can be put at the bottom of the Character sheet two on the equipment side. Some (noteably one of my players, Fish) likes to put images from the web in his character. For that, I will provide a massive PSD (which is a layered graphics format made famous by Photoshop but usable with GIMP) template without the outlines or lines-with-spots. That way anyone can put whoever they like in the background.

No doubt there will be people who prefer a grid, and I appreciate that more than most but this sheet must be in keeping with the game itself, which is important. If you're using it a lot, you'll soon get used to it. If you don't, then it won't bother you. I don't think it's so very new that it will act as a barrier to entry (as the dials were) but instead a worthy improvement.

No doubt, I'll keep fiddling with this and the other character sheet but I doubt the layouts will change much. The only addition in the rules will be specially prepared pages that can be printed onto the back of the character sheets that have a rule quick reference. This will be like those pictures and lists in the back of the book but compressed into more helpful sheets. Not needed for everyone but might help the newer players.

By Rob Lang on 2009/01/27

From Icar Art

The previous character sheet two (the one with the skills and equipment) was knocked up in Photoshop in an afternoon and I was never really happy with it. I liked the layout, skills on one side and equipment on the other. It fitted its purpose but it was not nearly as pleasant as the front character sheet. It didn't really fit - neither did the body/armour sheet (that's next). I lived with it because there were more pressing issues.

Doing graphics for Version 4 means doing them in high resolution for print. I redid the character sheet one (or front character sheet) in August last year in high resolution and I think it's much easier to read. When printing on a home laser black and white, the increased DPI makes a huge different. The same goes for character sheet two. Of course, you can't download it at the moment because it is embedded into the Version 4 document. If you're desperate for the new image, let me know and I'll upload a low resolution JPG version.

The next step is the body/armour sheet, which will probably return to a outline-body shape with armour rating (AR) and hitpoints (HP) written by the relevant areas. As usual, I'll test against my poor player group and see what they think. Not that they get into any combat, ever. :-)

By Rob Lang on 2009/01/27

Writing The Free RPG Blog has been a very valuable experience for me. Not only have I felt like I am not alone in my internet philanthropy and that every other amateur designer wants cash for their games but I can now see what is good and bad about free games. There are mistakes I don't want to repeat.

The biggest mistake free RPGs make is the lack of accessibility. An RPG can be unsurprising. It can be old school. It can even be D&D cloned for the 8 millionth time. What it cannot be is difficult to understand. Every system has its own statistical oddities and rulings, which is fine, but to depart from ease of understanding without good reason is unforgivable. If you're writing a roleplaying game to play between you and your mates (which I have essentially been doing) then you can do whatever you like, as long as you keep consistency within the group and everyone has agreed to the rulings.

I think I am guilty of the biggest barrier to entry ever: the dials/discs. By putting triangles, circles and squares onto a dial, you are essentially departing not only from roleplaying canon but from numeracy. Spreadsheet character sheets still make me wretch, grids of numbers beckon insomnia plagued nights. I'm reminded of dear old Gainesy, who after playing the game for years, still finds it easier to write the values next to the disc. He's no fool and yet there is a brutal honesty there: the discs are nice but I find numbers easier.

So, I am considering getting shot of them. The discs will remain but the dials will be gone and people will be urged to write the actual number in.

Benefits

It's easier to understand. For everyone, from the word Go.
Simplifies the rules.
Easier to read straight off the character sheet.

Drawbacks

It's not different anymore.
Have to redo a lot of resources.
Version 4 won't be backwardly compatible with version 3.x.

The benefits hardly need discussing. The drawbacks do need some attention. Icar is, and always will be both different and familiar. Its genes are rooted so deeply in Star Wars, Star Trek, Asimov, Iain M Banks and Gibson that I will never be able to truly extract it from popular culture. Icar, like tea, is a blend and it's the blend that supplies its original taste. No one has blended quite in this way before. Do I need dial trickery to provide that individual aroma? Perhaps - but I don't think it's going to change what makes the game different.

As for redoing a lot of resources, yes there is a lot but (not surprisingly) I am having to redo a lot anyway. I have received comments that it's rather odd to have a mix of 3D and flat imagery for character sheets. Wouldn't it be nice to have just 3D? Yes it would. As I am updating to print at approximately 200DPI (from 72DPI), I will have to update everything anyway and as the Equipment Index now uses a PDF with a handy templating system, it's less work than you might imagine.

As for compatibility - if you're already using 3, going to 4 won't make much difference. You're used to dials, numbers are hardly going to be a shock to the system. If you come to 4 and want to use version 3 resources then you might wander what the hell is going on. This means that the Equipment Index and Core book will need to be released concurrently. Well, I say concurrently but that might be a fib. Chances are, there will be a Chom Isis shaped gap between those two releases.

Will you weep when you see a character sheet without them or will you not be bothered? Is it something you've been expecting for some time?

Let me know on the forum...

By Rob Lang on 2009/01/12

I have been reading and downloading other Free RPGs for quite a long time now and it occurred to me that there was no blog for reviewing and commenting on these free RPGs. So I have created The Free RPG Blog. A place to collect and highlight all the philanthropic goodness out there. Please do check it out and give comments where need be.

While on the subject, another blog I rather like to read called the RPG Blog II by Zachary Houghton, a rather well respected sort of fellow. The post "Quick 6: Games I Never To Get Play" listed Icar as one of its posts, to which he said:

Icar deserves better than this. Rob Lang has put several metric tons of work into creating one of the most impressive Sci-Fi RPG compilations I've seen--and its amazingly free. But with a backlog of roughly 17 other space/sci-fi RPGs pushing for playing time simultaneously, I feel like Rob's baby doesn't get the attention it richly deserves. We've got to work out some sort of rotation system for space and sci-fi campaign ideas/system proposals in our group. Custody every other weekend, perhaps?

I do hope he manages to run a game and let me know how it might be improved! Many thanks, Zach.

By Rob Lang on 2008/10/04

I had a wonderful time at GenCon UK 2008, played loads of games and made some great new friends. This is a brief report of what went on, what I learnt and what I'm going to do about it.

The Lethal Rings of Obyrworld

The RPGA (Roleplaying Games Association) people did a really good job booking in players for all of the games and it looked like I had two fully booked games. Unfortunately for the first game I only had three pre-booked players turn up. Many thanks to Erno, Mark and Magnus for showing up! I drafted in Fish and Byrn, who were old hands at Icar and who hadn't played the scenario. Being the raving idiot I am, I left the character sheets at home, so I ran and drove to get them. God only know what Fish and Byrn told them while I was away.

Once settled, the players got on very well. I was concerned that the combat would slow due to explaining the rules and although it did, I don't think anyone really noticed. Rather than constricting, I gave the players the usual level of freedom and they used it well. Deviant wheels were used sparingly and there were some skill rolls too. Lots of laughs and smiles all round too. I left the table with that joyous adrenaline high.

Unfortunately, I had to cancel the second session because only 2 of the 5 booked people turned up. A big disappointment as I had some great feedback from the guys after the first slot. I nearly ran a random game on Sunday but was just too knackered.

I am glad that I collated some advice on running a Con game over at theRPGsite. A lot of the points people raised were very helpful to make sure I was completely ready and that I could run the best game that I could. Some of the tips were particularly useful about getting the players to customise their characters a bit (without the chore bits) and getting them to introduce themselves. I think it was notably missing in some of the games I played.

How other people play

It became immediately obvious that I needed to see what other people do when they GM. I got in a game of Spycraft and D&D (3e) to see how other GMs ran their games as well as watching a few games purely as a third person. I can't draw too many parallels as the Con game is only ever a snapshot of the game as a whole but it certainly felt that there was a disconnect between combat and description. Roleplaying was something generally (with exceptions, naturally) kept outside of the combat, which leant more towards a wargame (especially in AD&D). I was satisfied that you could play Icar like that, so it was a good affirmation.

A fellow called Will who played in the Spycraft game said he had downloaded Icar but couldn't be arsed to print it out. Had it been in a book form, he'd have paid for it. However, playing from laptop is not ideal and printing is a pain. This is something I've felt for a while now and it was nice to have someone repeat it back to me. I shall be persuing a print option for those without snacky Laser printers. This leads me nicely on to...

Inspirational seminar from Mongoose Publishing

A founder of Mongoose Publishing who's name I can't for the life of me remember (Matthew Sprange?) gave a fascinating talk on ways to start an RPG company. He outlined all the pitfalls, the costs, the woes and how things work in the industry. It was great. He had numbers, facts and figures (although no marketing information due to the lack of industry wide data) and gave real examples of things that do and do not work. He definitely came from within the hobby and I got the feeling that he wanted to help people who wanted to do what he did. At the same time, he was trying to sell the Flaming Cobra brand, a way for independent publishers to get their books out there. The money side was particularly interesting and I will certainly not be giving up my day job!

A few interesting points came out of the talk. Firstly, as I suspected, Lulu is very expensive and other POD services might be worth a look. Secondly a full colour book is rare because the cost. I had my suspicions about that, seeing the lovely Elements sitting in my hand was heart warming but I did worry about how much each book would cost. The POD book will have to be black and white on the inside, making it much more affordable - even through a simple POD service.

The last thing that became obvious was one of amalgamation and reshaping the books. I do wonder how many people download just the Elements and wonder where the damn setting is. I only kept the PDFs separate because bandwidth was a pain. Most people are now on a reasonable bandwidth, so I think I will be pulling a load of the books into a single one, rationalising some of the graphics, reducing the font size and then uploading that to whichever POD service I want to use. For the forseeable at least, Icar will remain a free PDF download. I game the Mongoose fellow an Icar moocard and asked for feedback. I doubt he'll have the time but I had to try!

Meeting up with old friends

Si Crocker played Icar back when it was still learning to fly. Being a couple of years older than us, Si was part of the inspiration of the close combat system. His descriptions of fights (the one where he cut his thumb in particular) often involved flying headbutts, kicks, punches, glass, bosh, claret flooding etc. Subliminally, perhaps, I tried to make the close combat system feel like one of Si's descrtions. Si, in progress of taking over the world is currently doing some great work over at the Games club network.

I also caught up with Angus Abranson from Cubicle 7. A fellow I knew way back in the days of running Icar at the Finchley Games Club and at Leisure Games. Angus and the peeps over at Cubicle 7 are doing a great job bringing the Dr Who RPG out (when it's good and ready) and keeping my second favourite RPG in print: SLA Industries.

Many thanks to all the people who played and said nice things. If you want to discuss this or anything else, please do go over to the forums!

By Rob Lang on 2008/08/31

New character sheet three

New character sheet two

Version 4 - Time to lose the dials?