2012/01/17

Why no one talks about Ysgarth?

For the moment, i will just paste a description taken from the web, together with an old review of this old fantasy RPG:

Ysgarth is a fantasy role-playing game written by David Nalle with contributions from other authors. It was originally released in 1979 by Ragnarok Games. The company also published subsequent editions of the game throughout the 1980s and 1990s, but no new edition has seen print since the 6th edition in 1995, although various revisions and addenda are available on the internet, including partial versions of an unpublished 7th edition of the game. Ragnarok Games also published a number of other board and roleplaying games during the period when Ysgarth was in print, as well as a games magazine called Abyss Quarterly. Many of those involved in the development of Ysgarth were also subsequently involved in the development of the Quest for the Grail Arthurian CCG published by Stone Ring Games.

Ysgarth is generally noted, both positively and negatively for the extreme detail of its game mechanics. It was one of the first roleplaying systems to rely heavily on skills and discard the idea of character classes and also one of the first games to rely solely on the use of 10 sided dice for percentile rolls in resolving actions. Ysgarth also emphasizes realistic combat resolvable in minute detail. Some have praised the mechanics as innovative and others have damned them as cumbersome. This issue of excessive mechanics is made more complex by the fact that each edition of Ysgarth featured fairly radical changes in the implementation of the basic rule concepts varying in their level of complexity. The 5th edition actually included three completely different versions of the mechanics in a single rulebook.

3 comments:

imredave said...

Picked up a copy to help fill out my roleplaying. Unfortunately the challenge of picking up the game by just reading the rules proved too much for me. I think this might be one of those games better learned by playing.

Anonymous said...

Wow a Ysgarth post! I was really into 2nd edition way back when. Sold it all years ago & I've been reacquiring what I can on eBay and the like.

I was 13-14 at the time, so it's guaranteed I was doing stuff wrong. Heck, reading the rules now I'm not sure what's going on sometimes.

Just got a copy of Supplement 4: The Old Powers in the mail today - first time I've owned this one and I'll be reading it closely.

Philosophical slumber said...

thanks for your comment, i would really like to get a 1st boxed set edition of Ysgarth.

In the meantime, it is not difficult nowadays to find a pdf version of 2nd edition rules on the web.

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