Pyramid Pick: Ork! The Roleplaying Game

Pyramid Pick

Ork! The Roleplaying Game

Written by Todd Miller and Chris Pramas

Published by Green Ronin Publishing

$12.95, 64 pages

Ork! The Roleplaying Game is all about unleashing your inner ork. That's right, your inner ork. The nasty, brutish, foul- tempered, foul-mouthed belching moron who commits grievous acts of aggression because it feels like it. It is not about the deep metaphysical meaning of being an ork -- it skips right to the part where you fight.

Ork! is targeted at experienced gamers, but only in the sense that it skips the normal explanations of how RPGs work, extensive novice GM advice, etc. They also expect you to have a full range of polyhedral dice (you need d20s, d12s, d10s, d8s, d6s, and d4s), something newer gamers might be lacking. The game itself is simple, and could work very well as an introduction to novice gamers . . . that is, if you want to introduce novice gamers directly to their inner ork.

Ork! character creation is simple. The four stats -- Meat, Bones, Twitch, and Mojo -- are rated in terms of the dice you will roll for that stat. You have 32 points to distribute to the stats, giving a range from d4 to d20. Meat is physical strength, Bones is toughness and stamina, Twitch is agility and quickness, and Mojo is charisma and magical power. Skills -- all 16 of them -- range from 1-5, and are rated in the number of dice you roll. An ork with d12 Meat and 3 levels in Fight would roll 3d12 when he uses that skill; if . . .

This article originally appeared in the second volume of Pyramid. See the current Pyramid website for more information.



Article publication date: September 8, 2000

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