Spirit of the Century

by Fred Hicks, Fred Hicks, Leonard Balsera

The deadly Doctor Methuselah seeks to unravel time itself with his solution to the Eternity Equation! Gorilla Khan stalks darkest Africa from conquerer Atlantis! Mad scientists, strange sorcerors, and power-hungry dictators all seek to undo the fate of humanity!

Genres: Role Playing Games, Gaming, Pulp, Games, Reference, Fantasy

416 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2006

Reviews

[David · Rating 5 out of 5]

Anybody who's a fan of pulp adventure looking for a role-playing game leaning towards rules-light (based on FUDGE) should go down to their friendly local gaming store and buy this straight-away. It's got mechanics with just enough crunch to make what matters to the characters matter in the game, and smooth enough to be up and running after a single-read through. This isn't a system for someone who demands GURPS or HERO level of mechanical detail, but for all those people who just want to have bigger-than-life adventures in the style of Indiana Jones, Tales of the Gold Monkey, or any pulp hero you can think of.

[Morgan · Rating 3 out of 5]

There's some great ideas in this book. Overall though, I just don't think I'm a FATE player.

[John · Rating 4 out of 5]

There are a few elements that make for a great RPG and Spirit of the Century has the most important one: it knows what it wants to be. Spirit of the Century has a very clear vision and conveys this vision effectively. It also focuses it's design on accomplishing the vision quite effectively. Spirit of the Century wants to be Indiana Jones and Buck Rogers and Tarzan. It wants you to tell stories about daring heroes solving problems with wits and their two fists. You don't use this system to tell horror stories or gritty noir stories. You use it to tell stories about human accomplishment in the face of adversity and the unknown. This sounds easy, but honestly I couldn't have done it without all the non-mechanical guidance in this book. Turns out, it's a terrible way to understand the world we live in, but an excellent way to enjoy an escapist fantasy. I think we can all use that from time to time.

Plus the mechanics aren't half bad! I don't consider myself an expert after a single session, but the Aspect rules seemed to really work. They made each character feel distinctive and heroic. The Skills subsystem provides a nice baseline for expectations and the dice mechanics provide enough variability to keep things tense without skewing into nonsensical outcomes.

Personally, I really liked the emphasis on single shot stories. It was hard to pull the pacing off, but it was totally worth it. We did a whole adventure in 3 hours even though we were exhausted, and that's not bad at all. Plus, I can actually imagine creating adventures in this system, where I get intimidated in other games. (I don't have the free time to write proper Call of Cthulhu adventures from scratch, for example.)

My players though loved the character creation. The Aspects portion with novels and guest stars was a smash. I think RPGs need to lean on this interconnected character creation harder.

So yeah, an all around hit. Spirit of the Century doesn't line up with my sensibilities perfectly, but it's a game everyone was looking forward to playing again. (Not enough to come back to immediately though, they wanted to try Blades in the Dark which I've been teasing more than they wanted more Spirit of the Century.)

[Dan Lewis · Rating 5 out of 5]

Roleplaying games attract different crowds, roughly divisible into roleplayers and gamers. Roleplayers lean into narrative and theatrical aspects of RPGs, while gamers lean into the game system, to master it, break it, and become forces to be reckoned with.

This book describes a roleplaying game system that tends to narrative, set in the gee whiz world of classic pulp fiction, of Tarzan, Indiana Jones, the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, Doc Savage and Gernsback's science fiction.

At the center of the game system is fate points, which are used by the players to take advantage of their characters' extraordinary powers, or by the game master to take advantage of the passions and weaknesses of the same characters. A small economy is created, as players start the session with a few chips to spend on their powers. In a group the game master, acting as the central bank, can regulate this economy to reward good role-playing or get different players involved.

The exposition of the setting is, of necessity, a little bare bones, but the amount of source material available is as staggering as the game master chooses, ripped from classic novels or the history books. There is not much canned material in the book, so game masters would need to supply their own.

This is one of the book's strengths though. It describes how to run a game with a minimum amount of up front prep work, and goes beyond the particular game system to give advice that is applicable to running any RPG. The system is very interesting, but this broader material is where the book really shines. It gives me confidence that I could prepare the right way for a variety of games.

I don't know if I'll be running a Spirit of the Century game any time soon, but as a budding game master, this book was full of food for thought about how to make my games a success. I could definitely see revisiting it for suggestions about how to apply its skill system to other settings and game systems, and I will be reading its advice on narrative improvisation for a long time.

[Benjamin]

Another Bundle of Holding purchase:

* Spirit of the Century -- a pulp game based on the Fate engine
* Storm of the Century -- a (fine but not great) adventure
* Strange Tales of the Century -- a gazetteer, rules expansion, and update for Fate Core
* Pulp Hall of Fame -- Jess Nevins gives capsule reviews of many important (or just plain odd) pulp heroes
* Three novels: Dinocalypse Now, Beyond Dinocalypse, Khan of Mars (which I skipped)

Fate seems like a good choice of engine for a pulp game and Spirit of the Century is a good example of a pulp game, but... At this point, I have been exposed to enough pulp games that the genre may not be for me. Or rather: I am aware of air pirates, lost cities, criminal gorilla masterminds, and the other characters I would expect to meet in a pulp.

So a new pulp game would have to wow me a bit by being something more -- or other -- than just a pulp game, which seems a bit unfair of a judgment: "This pulp game isn't great because it's just a pulp game" is self-evidently a ridiculous criticism to make.

This is a fine game and a fine few books, and if I was invited to play, I probably would.

[Emily Kamm · Rating 3 out of 5]

The system seems fun and I appreciate the different methods they give for running a low-prep game on the fly. The suggested GM approaches (standard structure, building a game around aspects or decisions) are useful in other contexts too. I appreciate the focus on building a game where the PCs will have a chance for their characters skills to shine.

I thought that the layout of the book was not very clean or intuitive. Better design would have helped.

[Isaac Timm · Rating 4 out of 5]

I don't know if you really get anything for reading a RPG book from cover to cover, you understand a game by playing it. I haven't played Spirit of the Century but I have played Fate that uses basically the same system. I really like the Aspect, its backgrounds and alignment rolled into one. The Aspect gives the player elements of story and tells the GM how that character sees the world. Unlike the D&D alignment, the Aspect is what you can do, not what you can't do. When the play asks the GM, "Can I do this?" The GM can say "Yes you can. Spend a fate point and get a +2. It's a elegant idea: make a character to do cool things, do cool things and get rewarded for it, then use the rewards to do more awesome things. No math, random generation, or tables just story building between GM and player. A shared storytelling experience where the rules give the players options without pages of paperwork. This is what a game that favors player should do, allow the player to make the character he or she wants without unnecessary rolling or rules. No planning for power the character gets at a future date, just the character doing what they want out of the box.

[Colby · Rating 4 out of 5]

Sounds like a good, fun system.

The layout of the book needed a little work, though. The skill and stunt chapters seemed cramped and hard to know what you were looking at.

Also, the stunt list is very long, very complex, and often stunts have skill or stunt pre-reqs. It's going to to take a while for players to pick their 5 stunts on the fly during pick-up games.

Still, those are minor complaints. I'm looking forward to running a game using SotC.

[Kat · Rating 4 out of 5]

Basic Premise: A rules-light, roleplay heavy, RPG system set in the early half of the 20th century.

This has a very Indiana Jones, adventure feel to it, and the system really helps streamline the story aspects of the game. It is very low on mechanics, with just enough to guide players and GMs. The focus here is very much on telling a fun story with friends, so creative people are going to have a lot of fun with this. The rules are easy to pick up and run with.

[Mark]

Although its a role playing game, the book was just fun to read. Based in pulp fiction and action adventure from the 20-30's the book outlines how to build your own story line for the game. As a gaming system, its easy and straight forward. The game system is designed to be a pick up game- meaning it can be played at a moment's notice. Some original pul authors have contributed (by consent) some fun excerpts.

[Ryan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Didn't read the whole thing - there's a lot here that's reference material for someone actually playing the RPG, and I wasn't interested in that. I just wanted to get an idea for the world of the Centurions before diving into the novels inspired by the game.

Seems like it would be a fun game to play sometime, though, for people with pulpy interests.

[Patrick · Rating 5 out of 5]

Every recommendation feature I use has been throwing this game at me so I finally got around to reading it. Not bad. I'm not that into the pulp thing, so I'm not the best demographic for this, but I could certainly see ...

.. oh my, what if you ran this as a Fallout game?! Herbert "Daring" Dashwood and his intrepid companion Argyle! YES.

Okay, so I'm down.

[Josh Culbertson · Rating 5 out of 5]

It's been a while since I was so eager to read, and then play, a new game system, but Spirit of the Century has me absolutely hooked. Lightweight, versatile, and hell-bent for drama and action. Would that every indie RPG had this kind of grasp of it's own genre and accessibility for a new reader.

[John · Rating 4 out of 5]

Another game that I haven't yet had the chance to play, but that looks really good.

I'm not a huge fan of the default setting with the Century Club idea, but it's easy enough to ditch that as it's not really tied into the rules.

The game itself looks awesome.

[Nathaniel Lee · Rating 5 out of 5]

Best. Roleplaying Game. Ever.

[Veiltender · Rating 4 out of 5]

A great new pulp role-playing game. Will you look at it--it has a gorilla in a bi-plane! That's slaptacular.

[Tasha S · Rating 4 out of 5]

It a guide to make the book, and I read it to be able to make game characters to play SotC and write Pulp Fiction stories

[Tom Kollman · Rating 5 out of 5]

Best pulp rpg EVER! Now if I could only get the chance to play it...

[Abraham Ray · Rating 5 out of 5]

nice rpg book of the pulp era.