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 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
It's been a while since the halcyon days of redesigning the front page of the character sheet every ten minutes. Version 8 of the front character sheet has been around for years now. The new sheet is built into the Elements (version 3.5.6, now uploaded) and it's rendered at print quality (300dpi). The printed result is a much more crisp and detailled effort, with sharp text and cleaner lines.
As a bi-product of the design, I've removed the Fighting wheel. Converting RP over to fighting combo points should be automatic and for anyone that has some spare from the initial character build, they can be recorded elsewhere. Also to fall by the wayside was the 'spare' disc. When I first did the render, I didn't know what it might be needed for. It appears that it's not useful for a lot. The deviant wheel has been made easier to read but the entries remain the same. I'm using century gothic font for the lot. From a designer's point of view, it's a lot easier to edit now as it's not all held in pixels but in type (international versions now much easier to construct, Joe. Just let me know the translations of the words and I can cut and paste them in).
On the right hand side, description has been removed, as has quote. I've made more room for birthplace (to allow planet, system, cluster and sector to be added) and added setting too. There is also much more room for close combat fighting combos, something I felt was needed. I removed the circle for drawing the character because (as people have rightly shown), it's better to put it on the body and armour sheet. Finally, an all important credits section has been added, plenty of room for writing the tonnes of cash people acquire and for rubbing it out again. Click the image (right) for a taster but please do download the latest Elements and print from there, the quality is much better. All feedback warmly welcome.
A rather unfortunate side effect of me changing this is that the character sheet generator I was working on will have to change. All the code is there, I just need to tweak the graphics and reposition some boxes. It's a shame, seeing as I was so close but it will need doing. Unfortunately, the online version will not be super-high resolution but that's unavoidable.
Test print over at Lulu.com
I've been contemplating printing Icar for some time. I've always wanted to keep it free as I still do not believe it warrants paying for. However, I wanted to find a cost effective way of printing out a few colour copies for my gaming group to use. The poor lot had been using some old black and white early additions of the Elements 3.5 that one of my players (Dwain, I think) had kindly printed and bound. I set up a LuLu account and uploaded the PDF and some special front covers (at 300dpi). I was blown away when the book arrived. Beautiful full colour and glossy. A marvel! My breath was really broken away. Many thanks to the fellows at the RPG Site for endlessly recommending it, supporting and nudging. The service was a little slow (or was I impatient?) but the delivery time was minimal (it only had to travel 40 miles from the printers).
The quality of the print is excellent although with my super critical hat on, I must say that my graphics need some brushing up. You can't quite see it in the photos but some of the graphics are a little too antialiased for my liking. This is because I was rendering for screen, rather than print. The upshot of this is that I will be producing two books - one to upload for Lulu's print on demand and one for people to download. Once all the images are in a high resolution format, the Elements itself will be many tens of MB. There's no need to make them super high res for home printing. It's going to take some time to update a lot of the graphics, so please be patient. I also noticed that having a lot of the pictures without any kind of explanation is slightly odd, so I'll add in some commentary too.
The goal is to make the Elements a purchaseable book. It will be pretty much at cost, the PDF will still be free for those keen on having a look. I know this goes against the grain of The Free Sci Fi RPG but I am sure there are people out there who would like to play it but just don't have the time or inclination to print it out and bind it ready for play. It's very exciting indeed to have the book sitting on the desk in front of me, spurring me on to finish other bits.
By Rob Lang on 2008/08/17
I'm pleased to announce that I will be running two games on Thursday 28th August 2pm and Friday 29th August 2pm at GenCon UK. Here's the advertising information:
The Lethal Rings of Obyrworld
Join a risky expedition into the debris rings around Obyrworld to find fortune, lost friends or answers. Become part of a well weathered Scavenger team as you try to make enough cash to get off this planet.
Icar is a free Science Fiction tabletop RPG, a mix of familiar Sci Fi elements, space opera and very large guns. No experience expected or required!
It will be a Scavenger-esque scenario where the characters will be a mix of Borg/Cyber and human in powered armour. I can't give too many details of the scenario as I wouldn't want to spoil it but I am taking advice from various online forums about how to write a cracking game. I would love to run the game with new players, so please come along. I appreciate very few have played Icar before so the game will be set up for complete beginners!
Beady eyes?
For the more beady eyed, you may have noticed that Society is now on version 2.4. There is some improvement in the text but most of the changes are adding graphics. My round aim is to finish the Society version 2 book by the end of the summer.
By Rob Lang on 2008/07/04
Thank you all for your patience, the Equipment Index first release is now ready for download. It now officially replaces all the downloadable weapon and equipment sheets (it's now removed from the menu on the left). Although released, there is always more that can go in, so it is by far a closed document. Some new features is a section describing how to use the different sheets (folding and reading them) and a better description at the start. Some of the pages appear to need filling but they will become full in short order, no doubt. I have two more vehicles in mind and a new ammo type suggested by Robert Barrows (of Entalis and Desert Realm fame) and those will no doubt appear in the future.
What's next? Next up is finishing off the Society book, which is currently bereft of graphics. It's a big job because it needs so much description but I do hope to reuse some of the renders that I have already done as they illustrate facets of Mex cities. I need to provide a more quick-start like section in the book (as suggested by All Games Considered) and I am not sure if that will fit in at the start or at the end.
All comments and critique is best pointed at the forum. Also, do you like the new header?
By Rob Lang on 2008/03/01
It's been a while since the halcyon days of redesigning the front page of the character sheet every ten minutes. Version 8 of the front character sheet has been around for years now. The new sheet is built into the Elements (version 3.5.6, now uploaded) and it's rendered at print quality (300dpi). The printed result is a much more crisp and detailled effort, with sharp text and cleaner lines.
I'm pleased to announce that I will be running two games on Thursday 28th August 2pm and Friday 29th August 2pm at GenCon UK. Here's the advertising information:
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