One-trick Pony-ism

This weekend I had some spare time before I had to go pick up my daughter from school, so my 5-year old son and I headed over to the local used book store. I love book stores, and can spend hours just looking, browsing, reading snippets, and whatnot. Sometimes I even buy stuff!

This weekend I bought another Pathfinder Tales novel (by Dave Gross, whom I “know” from his Editor days at Dragon Magazine…he bought my one and only professional article back in the late 90’s), a copy of Seal Team 666 for $2, and a copy of the Orkworld RPG.

Published in 2000, I have long known about Orkworld, but had never gotten a copy. I was excited to see it in really good condition for $12. And I was also pleased to see that it was written by the guy who wrote a lot of the material for Legend of the Five Rings and 7th Sea over at Alderac (two very cool RPGs). So, I had to snatch it up.

However, in reading it, I became just a little disconcerted. Basically, this game does almost exactly what I am trying to do with my own orc RPG. But it’s got a more developed, more professional presentation. The rules are apparently very streamlined (based on what others say, I haven’t gotten that far yet). Honestly, I think that the only thing mine has over his is that I am basing it on B/X D&D, which is riding a huge wave of popularity right now. But, even there he explicitly states that he designed the game to be easily adaptable to any rules system you like.

Ah, well. Regardless of all of that, I will still finish my game as I can. It’s a labor of love, so it’s all cool.

As to the title of this blog post, when I posted about Orkworld on the OSRGaming forums, one of the regulars there mentioned that he read the title of the thread and immediately knew who was posting it, without even looking at my name. Funny! Apparently I have a reputation as the “Orc Guy” over there.

And I’m totally cool with that.