''Risus: The Anything RPG'' is a rules-light generic
role-playing game
A role-playing game (sometimes spelled roleplaying game, RPG) is a game in which players assume the roles of player character, characters in a fictional Setting (narrative), setting. Players take responsibility for acting out these roles within ...
(RPG) written, designed and illustrated by
S. John Ross of Cumberland Games and Diversions.
''Risus'' is available free on the web. It was first published online in 1993. Earlier versions of the game were titled ''GUCS: The Generic Universal Comedy System'' (a parody of ''
GURPS'') and were distributed privately beginning in 1989.
History
''Risus'' (
Latin
Latin (, or , ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally a dialect spoken in the lower Tiber area (then known as Latium) around present-day Rome, but through the power of the ...
for “laughter”) is a comedy game
(often described by its creator as a "joke game") and uses a cliché (character class) system
inspired by the broad "career scale" skills in
Greg Gorden
Greg Gorden is an American game designer who has worked primarily on role-playing games.
Career
Greg Gorden has worked for several gaming companies:
* For Victory Games he participated, during the early 1980s, in the design of the ''James Bond ...
's ''
DC Heroes RPG'' (
Mayfair Games
Mayfair Games was an American publisher of board, card, and roleplaying games that also licensed Euro-style board games to publish them in English. The company licensed worldwide English-language publishing rights to ''The Settlers of Catan'' ser ...
), and later influenced by
Atlas Games' ''
Over the Edge''. The core systems of ''Risus'' owe their largest debt to the ''
Ghostbusters RPG'' published by
West End Games, and to ''
Tunnels and Trolls
A tunnel is an underground passageway, dug through surrounding soil, earth or rock, and enclosed except for the entrance and exit, commonly at each end. A pipeline is not a tunnel, though some recent tunnels have used immersed tube constr ...
'' by
Ken St. Andre
Kenneth Eugene St. Andre (born April 28, 1947) is an American fantasy author and game designer, best known for his work with ''Tunnels & Trolls'' and ''Wasteland (video game), Wasteland''. He was born in Ogden, Utah, and has been an active member ...
. The game itself also cites ''
GURPS'' as an influence, along with ''
FUDGE'', another free RPG released to the web a year earlier. Several more recent games have been, in turn, influenced by ''Risus.''
Despite the game's small size and admittedly joking nature, there are more than 30 fan-authored websites devoted to ''Risus,'' some including several rules variants, simple worldbooks, and wholly rewritten adaptations of the game. ''Risus'' itself has been translated into Chinese, Croatian, Czech, Danish, Dutch, Esperanto, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, and Spanish.
In December, 2003, Cumberland Games began to support the free game with commercial supplements, beginning with the ''Risus Companion'' and the founding of the International Order of Risus. An example of another commercial product is ''A Kringle in Time'', "an adventure about saving Christmas from ancient evil."
''New Risus'' won the 2001 inaugural
RPGnet award for ''Best Free RPG''.
''Risus Companion''
''The Risus Companion'' is the first commercial supplement of ''Risus''. S. John Ross wrote and published
the ''Risus Companion'' on the 10th anniversary of ''Risus'' on the
World Wide Web
The World Wide Web (WWW), commonly known as the Web, is an information system enabling documents and other web resources to be accessed over the Internet.
Documents and downloadable media are made available to the network through web se ...
, in order to provide a foundation for ''Risus'' as a commercial venture. ''Risus'' itself remains free of charge, allowing ''Risus'' fans the option to support ''Risus'' if they choose and be materially rewarded for doing so. The ''Risus Companion'' is an electronic document in
PDF
Portable Document Format (PDF), standardized as ISO 32000, is a file format developed by Adobe in 1992 to present documents, including text formatting and images, in a manner independent of application software, hardware, and operating systems. ...
form, made available to all members of the International Order of Risus.
Reception
In a review of ''Risus'' in ''
Black Gate'', Ryan Harvey said "I can enthusiastically recommend ''Risus'' to anybody with an imagination, regardless of his or her experience with those funny-sided dice. Not only are the rules so slim that they fit onto six pages (with two dedicated to optional rules), but the system runs entirely on clichés that any one who has seen a movie, read a book, or gotten around more than St. Symeon the Stylite, will recognize and know how to act out."
Notes
External links
Cumberland Games & Diversions''Risusiverse'': a ''Risus'' fanzine in wiki format
{{RPG systems
Comedy role-playing games
Role-playing game systems
Role-playing games introduced in 1993
Universal role-playing games