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Orkworld Rpg
Orkworld
Details on every aspect of ork culture, including religion, medicine, crafts, language, sickness, cooking, strategy, tactics, weapons, clothing, government, storytelling, personal combat and love.
Rules for playing individual orks, households and entire tribes.
Magic systems for both orks and the evil sorcery of the elves.
Countless adventure hooks and locale descriptions.
The complete ork myth cycle.
Details on every aspect of ork culture, including religion, medicine, crafts, language, sickness, cooking, strategy, tactics, weapons, clothing, government, storytelling, personal combat and love.
Rules for playing individual orks, households and entire tribes.
Magic systems for both orks and the evil sorcery of the elves.
Countless adventure hooks and locale descriptions.
The complete ork myth cycle.
- GenresRole Playing Games
304 pages, Paperback
Published January 1, 2000
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
May 5, 2017
I learned of Orkworld through Ron Edward’s essay “Narrativism: Story Now.” A quick search on Amazon led me to a used copy for under $6.00. How could I say no? When I posted on G+ that I had gotten a copy, several people posted to say that they love the game and own multiple copies of it! I had no idea.
When I finally cracked the book to read it, I was initially put off by the 175 pages of fiction that preceded 125 pages of game. As John Wick, the author says, “Orkworld is not just a roleplaying game, it’s a sourcebook on a race and culture that can be incorporated into any game where fantasy races exist.” My first impulse was to jump to the game section (I’m not a big fan of fiction in gamebooks), but it quickly became clear to me that the fiction set up the world by which the rules of the game made sense.
Wick is a fine writer, and there was nothing painful about the text. It did a great job bringing the world to life—and it really is a cool world. His particular mythology of humans, orks, elves, dwarves, and halflings is interesting and takes a new angle on old ideas, which from what I’ve read is kind of Wick’s specialty. This is clearly a project of love and the details are great. I would have preferred a small section to come between the fiction and the game text that was titled something like, “So you want to know what you need to know but don’t want to read 175 pages of fiction.” Summarize it for me, give me page references to where I can dive deeper into the fiction for individual sections and interest me, and let me get on with the game itself. Alas. In the end, I was glad to read it in its entirety.
In fact, while there are aspects to the game that really excite me, the book will probably be more important to me as a sourcebook than as a gamebook, I suspect. As a game, Orkworld is most interesting in the way that it establishes the Orks as social creatures and makes household and even tribe creation part of the character building process. All the character players are given a single pool of points from which they have to create their household and all their characters. If your household is strong, then the individual characters will necessarily be weak. If the individual characters are strong, the household will be weak and the characters will find themselves without a household before long. That is a fantastic idea! However, while I love the idea of currency in character building, I am not a fan of using it. I like that you have to choose your strengths and weaknesses, but I only ever feel like I am full of weaknesses and without strength. My brain doesn’t bend that way, at least not artfully.
Regardless of my own abilities at point distribution, it looks like the stories created by Orkworld would be right up my alley. There is plenty of drama in the world surrounding the Orks and enough pressures placed upon them by the surrounding races, the need to take care of the household, and the need to prepare for the challenges of the separate seasons to always be fruitful.
There are a bazillion and two story seeds in the book, and Wick is good with story seeds. From his description, it looks like Wick imagines a series of one-shots, like a serial TV show involving the same cast of characters, but I can easily imagine an episode-to-episode play with intense social overlap and build.
Wick builds a compelling and inviting world. The mechanics seem rather ho-hum (and the combat version of the mechanics seems particularly mathematical!), but everything else is gripping enough to make we want to play.
When I finally cracked the book to read it, I was initially put off by the 175 pages of fiction that preceded 125 pages of game. As John Wick, the author says, “Orkworld is not just a roleplaying game, it’s a sourcebook on a race and culture that can be incorporated into any game where fantasy races exist.” My first impulse was to jump to the game section (I’m not a big fan of fiction in gamebooks), but it quickly became clear to me that the fiction set up the world by which the rules of the game made sense.
Wick is a fine writer, and there was nothing painful about the text. It did a great job bringing the world to life—and it really is a cool world. His particular mythology of humans, orks, elves, dwarves, and halflings is interesting and takes a new angle on old ideas, which from what I’ve read is kind of Wick’s specialty. This is clearly a project of love and the details are great. I would have preferred a small section to come between the fiction and the game text that was titled something like, “So you want to know what you need to know but don’t want to read 175 pages of fiction.” Summarize it for me, give me page references to where I can dive deeper into the fiction for individual sections and interest me, and let me get on with the game itself. Alas. In the end, I was glad to read it in its entirety.
In fact, while there are aspects to the game that really excite me, the book will probably be more important to me as a sourcebook than as a gamebook, I suspect. As a game, Orkworld is most interesting in the way that it establishes the Orks as social creatures and makes household and even tribe creation part of the character building process. All the character players are given a single pool of points from which they have to create their household and all their characters. If your household is strong, then the individual characters will necessarily be weak. If the individual characters are strong, the household will be weak and the characters will find themselves without a household before long. That is a fantastic idea! However, while I love the idea of currency in character building, I am not a fan of using it. I like that you have to choose your strengths and weaknesses, but I only ever feel like I am full of weaknesses and without strength. My brain doesn’t bend that way, at least not artfully.
Regardless of my own abilities at point distribution, it looks like the stories created by Orkworld would be right up my alley. There is plenty of drama in the world surrounding the Orks and enough pressures placed upon them by the surrounding races, the need to take care of the household, and the need to prepare for the challenges of the separate seasons to always be fruitful.
There are a bazillion and two story seeds in the book, and Wick is good with story seeds. From his description, it looks like Wick imagines a series of one-shots, like a serial TV show involving the same cast of characters, but I can easily imagine an episode-to-episode play with intense social overlap and build.
Wick builds a compelling and inviting world. The mechanics seem rather ho-hum (and the combat version of the mechanics seems particularly mathematical!), but everything else is gripping enough to make we want to play.
October 17, 2020
Can't really give it a total review, haven't played it. But it's given me a ton of ideas. John Wick gives a deep study of the culture of his Orks, which give the setting most of its strength. He also has a disturbing take on elves which peeks my interest.
Mechanically it seems a little rushed but the rules don't seem to contradict each other.
It is also a readable game manual, which rare enough to bear mention.
Mechanically it seems a little rushed but the rules don't seem to contradict each other.
It is also a readable game manual, which rare enough to bear mention.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews