1. Introduction
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Gushémal is the name of a
fantasy world that we have created as the venue of a series of stories, at
its core the classic pseudo-medieval setting. There are a number of
original features and departures from the classic world, so that Gushémal
has turned into an intriguing place to explore.
We do so regularly in our
stories, which you can read here. There you
will also find a lot of background information on the world, on the
various places there are, the creatures one might encounter, the way magic
works, and so on.
Gushémal is a big world, one
that certainly holds far more than only a few stories.
And so we decided to open it
up for role-players by devising our own system. Thus, the Gushémal
Role-Playing Game came into being, so that players everywhere can take
part in the exploration of this new world. (Trust us, we feel more like
explorers ourselves, not like creators.)
It’s a pretty big task
constructing an entire RPG with a fully rounded and logical rule system.
Although the world exists in a relatively complete form, the demands of a
RPG are a lot larger.
Besides, we didn’t wish to
trample down the old paths. As pleasant as they were (and are), we’d
like to find new ways and uncover new attractive ideas. That certainly
makes the task a good deal more difficult.
Some elements of GRPG are the
same as in almost any other RPG. The reason for that is that these
elements generally have already reached perfection – and not using them
would be akin to trying to invent a new kind of wheel. (If we should be
overlooking some other methods, we’d be happy to learn of those better
ways of doing things. After all, you never stop learning and improving.)
The biggest difference to most
RPGs is that there are no character levels. A character still gathers
experience points and will improve during the course of the game, but the
changes are more subtle than in the level system. Characters only change
their skills and abilities. The hit points (i.e. the amount
of damage a character can take) are generally not increased; which also
means that it is as easy or difficult for a beginner’s character to be
killed as it is for a long-time player’s PC. The advantage here is that
the start-up character doesn’t die quite as easily; it also means that
the long-time PC still needs to be wary and can’t just dismiss an attack
by someone weaker than a fully grown dragon.
If you’ve ever taken a
glance at a RPG – and certainly if you’ve played one -, you’ll know
that these games are exceedingly complex. There are hundreds and hundreds
of points that have to be taken into account, worked into a thorough
system that covers most of what needs to be possible (or impossible). The
rules have to reflect an entire world, which ranges from the generation of
characters to combat, but also include such instances as the currencies,
types of gemstones, their values, or types of poison, or types of
medicine, and so on, and so on.
One other, very important
point, is that we haven’t been working on the RPG very long. The idea of
adding a game to the world and stories of Gushémal came relatively late,
so the work you are reading now is the product of only two months. In the
coming months we’ll slowly be upgrading the system, adding corrections
and working our way towards a full version.
To find any errors or mistakes
– or to stumble across better ways of handling some situations – we
need to playtest it. And yes, you guessed it, we haven’t quite been able
to do that yet, but we’re going to change that very soon.
Instead we have concentrated
on finishing a very basic system that offers a good range of gameplay, but
is still simple enough to catch mistakes. As a result, a number of tables
and pre-determinations (available in some other systems) are missing.
Attention, all battle-hardened warriors of the
dice!
Would you like to be involved
in the creation of a new RPG, namely the Gushémal Role-Playing Game? We
would love it if you took our game out for a spin, put the rules through
their paces and discover how it could be improved. (This also applies to
people who have never played a RPG before. We hope you’ll learn how much
fun a gaming session can be!)
Of course, any contributions
of yours would be mentioned by name!
In the last week of March, we
will release our first adventure module, The Courier’s Oath.
It’s designed for beginners, and should provide a rollicking good time,
with a few twists and turns along the way. It also provides any
information you might need for a small campaign set in Gushémal.
(You could also employ the
information given on our website in the form of the stories and the
background texts to create a campaign of your own.)
Give it a try, and please
write to us about your experiences! chris@gushemal.com
will be happy to read about your thoughts and ideas, and he’ll use your
input to bring us closer to Version 1.0.
Thank you for your help!
To play GRPG, you need a
pencil, an eraser, a pocket calculator (optional), and at least two
ten-sided dice (d10). More than two are helpful.
You can get ten-siders at any
gaming shop in your area. (Some comic shops also have them, but not too
many.) If you don’t know a shop like that, you might try a little
program we have available at our side. E-Dice is a random number
generator that works pretty much like your ordinary dice; you press the
button for the ten-sided die, and the number of eyes are displayed.
(A quick note: E-Dice
is also in its earliest stages of development. Later versions are expected
to incorporate the actual rules of GRPG, so that the program will take
care of the calculations of combat, for instance.)
You need two ten-siders
because there are a lot of percentage rolls in the game, which means the
result needs to be in the range of 1 – 100. To do that, you’ll have to
assign one die as the single-digit die and the other as the double-digit
die. (Ideally both have different colors.) An example: After your roll,
the single-digit die shows a 9, and the double-digit die shows a 2. Put it
together, and the result of your percentage roll is 29. (You need to
assign the dice before you roll. Otherwise the chances are you’ll
get into a heated discussion with your fellow players.)
An alternative is available in
some shops which offer paired dice for such percentage rolls. One has the
single digits (1 – 0) on its sides, the other has the double digits (10,
20, 30,…). That makes the solution easier, and it also assures that any
discussion of whether the result was 29 or 92 is warded off right away.
Where do the adventures take
place? Of course on Gushémal, but it’s a pretty big world. You can find
lots of information on our website, under www.gushemal.com/world.htm.
There’s much to go around – too much to start out. And so we have
selected one area of Gushémal for our RPG: the Wild Coast of the Arrufat
Peninsula. It’s a free place, with few rules, small villages here and
there, and plenty of space for adventure.
This is also where the story Ruins
and Hopes takes place, which you can download from our website. It
showcases the area as well as some of the dangers. More detailed
background information you can glean from the adventure module B1 The
Courier’s Oath that introduces not only a full-fledged adventure but
also a setting that you might wish to use.
Again, the website also offers
additional information, such as a historical overview of the Arrufat
peninsula (the so-called Unholy Assault).
All of that taken together
gives the Wild Coast and your campaigns a solid footing from which you can
launch your own imagination.
The Player’s Handbook
is the primary rulebook for GRPG. It contains all the information a player
needs to run a character in Gushémal. In the following sections we’ll
take you through the various aspects of the characters, such as the race
or the class (or profession if you will). We’ll go into some detail so
you can understand the meaning of all the various terms we’re throwing
at you – and expecting you to use in the game.
Your character must belong to
one of the sapient races of Gushémal (Chapter 2), e.g. humans or
dwarves. As you can imagine, this has a lot of meaning to the character
– a dwarf is smaller than a human, has a different build, different kind
of strength, and so on. There’s also the racial history, which offers a
different playing field for each race.
The class (Chapter
4)
determines what your character has chosen as his life’s path. He could
be a fighter who lives by the sword, or he is a cleric devoted to a single
god and spreading the divine message. By that token, this also modifies
your character – a cleric won’t look as much after building up muscles
as a fighter will.
Within the class, a character
has access to a certain range of class abilities, that is special
abilities which are only available to this class. A thief, for instance,
can learn how to pick locks while the fighter is more likely to open a
locked door by bashing it in.
Attributes (Chapter
3)
are the basic qualities of your character. They represent the
character’s strength, agility, intelligence, and so on. (Attributes
aren’t chosen by the player, they are rolled out with a pair of dice.)
With them in hand, you have a pretty good idea what that character is like
at the bare-bones level.
Add to that the skills
(Chapter 5) that the character has learned. These are things like speaking
a second language, or smithwork, and the like. They are crafts (or,
perhaps, professions as well) that the character has taken a liking to –
enough to spend the time to learn them.
Now you know your character
pretty well already. But there are some quirks that spice up the character
nicely. The characteristics (Chapter 6) are advantages and
disadvantages that come naturally to the character, such as light sleep
(advantage) or a phobia against snakes (disadvantage). They play into the
game directly, most of the time.
Then you’ll have to give
your character some equipment. Without clothes, without weapons,
armor, and the like, it’d be a poor thing to run around the land, now
would it? In Chapter 7 you’ll find the requisite information, as well as
the prices.
More likely than not, your
character will run into combat during the RPG session. Chapter 8
offers you the necessary information on how to handle battle – hopefully
victoriously.
Chapter 9 finally deals with magic,
the spells and blessings that are conjured up on Gushémal. (Please take
note that this is the one chapter where we haven’t made much headway at
all. Chris is still busy working it out, but he’s run into a few
problems and would appreciate any assistance.)
After reading the Player’s
Handbook, you can head onto the Character Sheet and start
creating your own character. (There is more detailed information on how to
use the character sheet in the Instructions, included in that
file.)
Some elements are still
missing. You’ll certainly come to this conclusion after reading the Player’s
Handbook, and there’s a good reason for this.
You as the player need not
know every little detail of what’s going on around you. In fact, that
would probably detract from your enjoyment of the game. After all, in real
life, you don’t know every single rule that affects your life. And
playing a RPG is about living a fantasy life – not knowing everything
enhances the experience and adds suspense to it.
Oh, yes, there have to be
rules, but those should be known to the game master (GM) alone. For that
we have the Game Master Guide, which includes lots of additional
rules that should not be read by a player. (Of course you can get yourself
the Game Master Guide and read up on those rules, but we honestly
recommend you stay away from that. It’s more fun this way.)
If you are still not
satisfied, please send a mail to chris@gushemal.com
and let him know your questions and suggestions.
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