Welcome!
Icar is a free Science Fiction Roleplaying game by Rob Lang
Set in the far future, Icar is a space opera where you can
fly between the stars, fight a race of robots
or subvert the benevolent Imperium
I have moved the Icar forum over to One Thousand Monkeys, One Thousand Typewriters (1KM1KT) to bring Icar into the Free RPG community a little more and to generate more traffic. It also gives me one less place to Administer. The 1KM1KTers are a friendly bunch and the forum ebbs and flows like any other. I have already posted up a WIP example of a page of the new Equipment Index. The old forum link should redirect you. Please update your bookmarks.
I have not lost any of the content from the old forum, I have backed it up locally and have copied it all into a big XML file that I can use for reference. Thank you to everyone who posted there, I hope you find the new Icar Forum home as agreeable as I do.
By Rob Lang on 2009/10/11
Version 4 is cutting along at a pace. It's grown, shrank and grown again. I have dumped the Hacking and Space Combat rules (hated them), replaced hacking with a series of action that can be performed in and out of combat with Skill rolls and a new Space Combat system. The look of the book is slightly changing, I will be using a full border image a little like I did for Cloudship Atlantis The background section (formerly Society book) is expanding at a huge rate too. I am taking a lot of the detail I generated from my last campaign about societies drop outs and including them too. The Scavenger Setting has been fleshed out and I'm including a series of example adventures. The book is going to be massive.
Due to the rule changes and changing of the discs into easier-to-read discs, I will be releasing a new high resolution equipment index at the same time. It's absolutely necessary to do so as the sections of the rules that refer to items in the equipment index need to be in high resolution too. If I didn't, it would ruin the book - most pictures being sharp and then some being fuzzy. This means I will also have to remodel some items because the 3D models were lost in the great deletion balls up! The work never stops.
I am not sure if a preview is a good idea as I am likely to change things again before release. When I get some new renders, I will post those up.
When's it all going to be ready? I have no idea. My son is due today (and is late, typically) and being our first child, he's bound to suck up a lot of time.
By Rob Lang on 2009/10/11
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
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
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