Over the Edge (game)
Over the Edge is a pen -and- paper role-playing game by Jonathan Tweet and Robin D. Laws, published in 1992 in the American publisher Atlas Games. The game with an innovative control system takes place in an era marked by surreal horror game world.
Control system
The system of Over the Edge embodies a new in his time and purist twofold approach: rule- low game and the description of a player character with traits (English for properties or characteristics ) instead of the previously usual by attributes and skills.
The concise rules that are more likely to have the value of guidelines that give the match officials - and demand that they - more control over what happens, as in role-playing games in the tradition of Dungeons and Dragons was the case. The authors of Over the Edge assume that would have to be sooner or later every rule designed, adapted or broken in a role play. They hang on the philosophy that the better done sooner. This makes it possible to restrict the rules to a few basic rules, so the game is not slowed down by looking up specific rules for each situation.
Over the Edge brought a new respect to the representation of a character in the game system: traditional role-playing games share the values of the game characters in attributes and skills a. Attributes are the values such as strength or intelligence, which are each character to varying degrees their own, must be purchased while skills such as climbing or hidden discover and serve to make the characters more individual. Represents a task no matching skill available, so the attributes are generally used as a basis for - usually drastically reduced - a chance to do the job anyway. There are usually between five and ten attributes, and the number of skills can be quickly three digits. A variety of rules ensures that benefits are offset by disadvantages, so that no character gets a commanding position in the round.
In contrast, a character in Over the Edge only four traits ( three traits and a negative flaw ) that the player can come up with yourself. They are usually very vaguely defined and must be constantly reinterpreted to determine which can find the traits in a job application. This is not a character of the group is overpowering, this freedom must be restricted sense of the GM or the GM, a problem in which the rules of Over the Edge afford little assistance. The traits can be as broad super- skills to understand, so that Over the Edge as an endpoint of a development of on attributes over on attributes plus skills to a system based purely on skills role-play can be seen.
About the actual rules addition, Over the Edge is distinguished by the fact that the authors have placed great emphasis on the rules fully justified, rather than merely represent, as is the case in most other RPG books. He promotes more thorough understanding of rules and points to problems that may arise on the game leaders and game manager.
How suggest the barren rules, Over the Edge places little value on a mechanical game play, which is about how the numerical values of the game characters interact. That's it noted that repetitions of actions are punished by deductions at dice. The aim of the game is an interesting and varied history to tell with complex and individual characters. To this end, the male and female players have to think in the creation of their characters phrases that illustrate the numerical values on the data sheet, and answer a few questions about their background, have the GM or the GM approach points to draw the characters in the story and to make them interesting tasks.
Because the rules are so short and easy to apply, they are from and used to as a system for role-playing in front of a different background than the official.
Game world
Over the Edge is a role- play of the " surreal horror "; the authors refer explicitly to Franz Kafka and William S. Burroughs. The player characters act in a world where nothing is quite as it seems. You have to live with it, just to be balls in a large and them incomprehensible game nebulous groupings to which they can act very limited. They are often forced to choose one of several evils. In this respect, Over the Edge can be understood as a role playing game that will test the strength of the moral principles that the players imagine for their characters.
Over the Edge plays the mid-1990s on Al Amariah a fictional Mediterranean island south-west of Malta. After the " liberation" from the clutches of Mussolini was on the island a "democracy", modeled after the United States. How democratic is Al Amariah, is already considering realize that the liberator since that time holds the office of President. The background of Over the Edge is marked by the contradictions between external appearance and truth. Government and business are deeply corrupt, while citizens take advantage of the trimmed as liberal laissez- faire in the state on all sorts of dubious, immoral and inhumane manner. There are, for example, slavery on Al Amariah - and the slaves are better off than other parts of society. Everyone is his own neighbor and violence is part of the lifestyle.
In addition, Al Amariah playground for mobsters, secret conspiracies and who pursue their own goals. The largest city on Al Amariah, The Edge, is ruled by different gangs. Decadent millionaires play with magic around, psychic powers exist, and as Oppenheimer called mad scientists invent devices that overcome the limits of physics. There are even several independent groups of aliens.