The Vorg RPG Player's Guide

Table of Contents

Welcome to the Game

The Game is every person you will meet, the place in which you meet them, and even the individual you are about to become. The Game is essentially about telling stories. Be they chronicles of mysticism, horror, or intrigue involving heroes, villains, or ordinary people desperately trying to cope with a world in which the impossible is commonplace, these tales may be as light-hearted, comical, fearsome, or electrifying as anything seen in a summer blockbuster or read in the latest bestseller. The Game is about bringing to life a world that is not your own, and people you would not, or could not, meet in your everyday life. You may create an epic adventure and take an active role in this fictional world. At the heart of every tale is the character, the protaganist, the hero. In the Game, that person is you: the player.

The Game is exercise for the brain and fertile ground in which the imagination may bloom. One need be neither a classic actor nor a nerdish bookworm of any sort. The one and only prerequisite to play is a willingness to have fun. In fact, it is very likely you have already played. In youth it might have been called "make-believe" or "pretending", but by any name the Game is the same.

Role-Playing Games (RPGs)

What Are They?

Wikipedia says that a role-playing game is "a game in which the participants assume the roles of fictional characters and collaboratively create or follow stories." That sums it up nicely. A role-playing game is just like playing "cops and robbers" as children, but with a rules system in place to eliminate confusion and arguments of the "I got you!" "Nuh-uh!" variety. These rule systems not only define who has, indeed, gotten whom, but also serve as a framework for common reference.

Everybody knows that Mighty-Guy is strong, but if he gets in a shoving match with Krusharr, the World Destroyer, who is stronger? Every player assumes the identity of a fictional character and every player character (or PC) has what is known as a character sheet. This character sheet is simply a piece of paper upon which numbers that represent different aspects of a character's various talents and abilities are recorded. We have one available for download, but you could just as easily use a sheet of notebook paper. These numbers allow for easy comparison of a given character's relative strengths and weaknesses. In the aforementioned example, simply noting that Mighty-Guy's Strength is a respectable 8 (Superhuman, Class 2) compared with Krusharr, the World Destroyer's Strength of 10 (Legendary) would allow one to see that while Mighty-Guy is strong, Krusharr is greatly more-so.

Drama

Drama is the lifeblood of compelling fiction. It comes from risk, be it emotional, spiritual, or physical. If a hero never ran the risk of failing, his or her great deeds would lose much of their impact. Remember that this game is patterned after life, as all great fiction is, in that characters do not have "lives". Dead is dead. In some realities, it may be possible to raise the dead, and some characters may be very resilient, but, most of the time, death is the end. This is where role-playing comes into play. Certainly it will have no effect on real life if one's character is gunned down in a hail of bullets, but the effect upon one's character would be profound, to say the least.

Likewise, think not that simply because the Game is not "real" that a character's actions have no consequence. A murder will be investigated and, if possible, punished. Strange behavior will be noticed and suspicious activities will likely be reported to the authorities. At the same time, just like in the real world, a character's every action, even the most mundane and seemingly trivial, will have an impact upon the world. Sometimes such effects may be beyond the grasp of the character involved, never realizing their own signifigance. All great fiction is rooted in reality, and those roots run deep.

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I'd Rather Narrate

Last Updated:
Tuesday, October 07, 2008

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