Torg

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Torg is also the name of the protagonist of the long-running webcomic Sluggy Freelance.

Torg is a cinematic multi-genre role-playing game released by West End Games in 1990, which used several (at the time of its release) innovative techniques. Players take the role of Storm Knights, deliberately larger-than-life heroes engaged in fighting the invasion of Earth, to prevent it being conquered by several invading dimensions (called cosms), each with its own separate reality; cosms largely correspond with popular roleplaying genres.

The title was originally an acronym for the in-house development name: The Other Roleplaying Game. Unable to find a better name, the name was adopted as the official name and applied to the game. Names that were considered but rejected include Shadow Wars, Shadow Spawn, Twilight Shadows, and Endless Earth.

Contents 1 Notable features 2 The setting 3 Drawbacks 4 Game history 5 External links

[edit] Notable features

• Deriving enjoyment from how characters, equipment, and environments of the various realities interact, such as having Terminator-style futuristic cyborgs adventure alongside Dungeons & Dragons-style mages in an Indiana Jones-style pulp setting.
• Playing a game with an explicitly epic or 'cinematic' overtone (as in Star Wars or Buffy the Vampire Slayer, as opposed to RPGs like Vampire: The Masquerade or Dungeons & Dragons).
• A unified mechanics system suitable for any setting; character attributes and game mechanics use a single sliding scale ('18' can equally mean an hour of time, a truckload of weight, an expert markman's skill, or $4,000) and a unified method of task resolution involving a d20.
• The game's backstory involves 'possibility energy', which can be used by Storm Knights to achieve heroic feats. In the game mechanics a spent possibility gives a player a chance to make an additional die roll, potentially leading to greater success. Similarly, an included deck of cards provides bonus rolls or skill points and contains ideas for additional character interaction. Some of these cards can be used instead of Possibility energy.
• An open-ended die mechanic: one twenty-sided die roll, read through a bonus chart, gives the bonus to a character's skill for that attempt. Barring special circumstances, the die may be rolled again (and the subsequent total added to the first roll) each time a 10 or a 20 is rolled. Along with re-rolls gained through spent possibilities, card play, and other possible influences, this allows truly spectacular feats to be accomplished by player characters.
• Emphasis on groupwork and character interaction by exchange and giving of cards.
• Of note at the time of its release was Torg's 'Infiniverse' campaign, an ambitious attempt at creating an interactive campaign setting. Infiniverse subscribers were sent response forms, through which they could inform WEG of the progress of their campaigns. Player input actually influenced the campaign setting through a 'rumor' system ('rumors' were introduced in Infiniverse updates, and the majority of responses would determine whether that rumor was 'true' or not). While unquestionably innovative, the Infiniverse campaign ultimately floundered after the first year or so.

[edit] The setting

According to the cosmology of Torg, in the beginning each dimension, or cosm, was separate from every other. However, a ravenous entity known as The Nameless One, who fed on the energy of the cosms, created several intelligent machines known as Darkness Devices and scattered them throughout the cosms. Wherever they landed, the Darkness Devices bonded with an inhabitant of the cosm, giving him great power. Those who possessed Darkness Devices were known as High Lords. Through the power of his Darkness Device, a High Lord could rip open a portal to other cosms. By sending an invasion force through the portal, the High Lord could slowly remake the target cosm into a duplicate of his own while concurrently draining the target cosm of its possibility energy. Because the invader's reality remade the physical laws of the beachhead, his armies were much more effective in combat than the target's defense force. For instance, if a low-tech, high-magic cosm invaded a higher-tech cosm, the defenders' guns would stop working while the invaders would have access to spells for which the defenders had no known defense. In this way, invading other cosms provided both new lands to conquer and tremendous power which a High Lord could use to extend his lifespan, give himself new abilities, and even modify the physical laws of his home cosm.

If you play or intend to play TORG, reading the rest of this section may spoil surprises your Game Master intends you to discover through role-playing.

Amongst the cosms known in Torg, the most successful and powerful High Lord was The Gaunt Man, High Lord of Orrorsh. He had been invading and destroying other cosms for thousands of years before the game opened. According to the backstory of Torg, the Gaunt Man stumbled across the cosm of Earth in his travels and was astounded by the amount of possibility energy available for the taking. Unfortunately for him, that same amount of energy made it impossible for the Gaunt Man to simply invade Earth as he had so many others; the energy backlash would have overwhelmed his portal. The Gaunt Man therefore began forming alliances with the High Lords of several other worlds. They would all invade Earth near-simultaneously, spreading the energy backlash across all their fronts. This invasion is the setting for the game -- each invader brings his own, strikingly different realm to Earth so that different physical locations across the globe also have different laws of reality. The realms extant in Torg's original edition are as follows:

• Core Earth -- "our" Earth, the base reality. Given the dramatic nature of the game, however, Core Earth had slightly better technology than the real world as well as some basic access to magic and miracles. At the time of the campaign it had no High Lord, but the United States government had been taken over by a shadowy cabal known as the Delphi Council.
• Living Land -- a primitive, Lost World-style jungle covering large swaths of the United States' East and West coasts plus a small piece of Canada. The dominant species were humanoid dinosaurs called edeinos. Technology and magic were almost nonexistent, but the inhabitants had access to powerful miracles. Initially ruled by the monstrous edeinos Baruk Kaah, whose darkness device Rek Pakken took the form of a grove of trees.
• Aysle -- a magical, low-technology realm that covered most of the United Kingdom and parts of Scandinavia. The realm was similar to traditional Dungeons & Dragons settings, but with slightly less powerful magic and somewhat better technology. Originally ruled by Uthorion in the body of Pella Ardinary. His darkness device was the ornate crown Drakacanus. Shortly before the invasion, Pella Ardinay forced Uthorion from her mind and regained control of the realm; this was later revealed to be part of a very long range plan to exploit her as a host for the The Nameless One.
• The Cyberpapacy -- covering France, this was an interesting realm combining a repressive, medieval theocracy (that wielded real miracles) with cyberpunk technology and attitudes. Ruled by the Cyberpope Jean Malreaux I. His darkness device Ebenuscrux took the shape of a prototypical circuit cross, the symbol of the realm's strange version of Catholicism.
• Nippon Tech -- an ultracapitalist nightmare society covering most of Japan where lies and betrayal were as common as breathing, and where martial artists, computer hackers, and yakuza fought to bring down the corporate-controlled government. Ruled by 3327, who was assisted by a darkness device named Daikoku that took the form of a laptop computer.
• The New Nile Empire -- based in North Africa, this realm combined a restored Ancient Egypt with pulp sensibilities. 1930's technology worked side-by-side with Egyptian magical astronomy and "weird science" powers and gizmos, while costumed Mystery Men patrolled the alleyways of Cairo. Ruled by Dr. Moebius, also known as Pharaoh Moebius, one of the most devious High Lords. His darkness device was a crocodile headed idol called Kefertiti.
• Orrorsh -- a Lovecraftian horror realm set in Indonesia where the realm's Victorians considered it their White Man's Burden to protect the natives from the unspeakable monsters roaming the countryside. The greatest enemy in Orrorsh, however, was the enemy within: the realm would attempt to seduce Storm Knights to the side of Wickedness. Ruled by the greatest of the High Lords, Lord Byron Salisbury (aka The Gaunt Man) from his sinister holdfast, Illmound Keep. His darkness device, Heketon, took the shape of an enormous human heart. He also possessed a powerful artifact, a mirror named Wicked, that permitted him to gain insight into the Nameless One.

As the game progressed, more realms were added:

• Space Gods/Star Sphere/Akasha -- a high-technology, spacefaring society out of Chariots of the Gods that had visited South America centuries before. The Akashans had their own colonial empire of alien races which could be added to the game at the game master's discretion. This realm introduced advanced biotech and psionics to the Possibility Wars. This realm was not controlled by a High Lord.
• Tharkold -- home of a race of magic and technology-using demons that had enslaved their world's native human population. Tharkold has been compared to something of a cross between the Terminator and Hellraiser movies. In the game, the Tharkoldu originally planned to invade the Soviet Union but an Earth psychic defeated them. They later established a small realm in Los Angeles. Ruled by Jezrael. The darkness device took the form of a carved rod and was named Malgest.
• Terra -- not an invading realm but rather the home cosm of the invaders from the Nile Empire, this was a more straightforward pulp realm without the ancient Egyptian trappings and magic.

Players could design characters for any of these realms, so a party of adventurers might contain a magician, a cop, a vampyre hunter, a super-hero, a cybernetically-enhanced gunrunner, a dwarf miner, a six-foot dinosaur priest, or a beetle-like alien with a bad temper, and any of these characters might eventually learn swordfighting, kung fu, magic, or net-hacking.

[edit] Drawbacks

While the breadth of Torg was one of its most exciting features, it could also cause significant problems. Because the scope of the game was so broad, and it incorporated such a wide variety of skills, the game became unwieldy to some players. Further, in some cases simple rules given in the basic set were thrown out or expanded in sourcebooks, so that players moving between campaigns sometimes found the rules were not what they were used to; even some of the character templates from the boxed set were not completely compatible with the rules in the sourcebook for their home cosm. This breadth of scope also served to ratchet up the game's expense: each of the game's realms was detailed in its own sourcebook, and those sourcebooks included rules that weren't covered in the main rulebook. For instance, if a character wanted to build his own magic spells, the player needed to own (or at least have access to) the Aysle Sourcebook. Likewise, psionics were covered in the Space Gods sourcebook, martial arts in the Nippon Tech book, pulp powers and gizmos in the Nile Empire and Terra sourcebooks, and cyberware/bionics in the Cyberpapacy's. Note, however, that if a Cyberpapacy character wanted to hack the GodNet, they needed yet another supplement for those rules. While this allowed a group to take their game in any direction they wished, it made it difficult to keep up with all the rules. This is especially true because long-term campaigns tend to lead to cross-genre characters, such as mages with cybernetics, or espionage agents who learned the Occult.

Another problem stemmed from the fact that visiting other realms meant travelling to geographic locations and cultures with which many players and gamemasters were not familiar. For example, there is a specific refference to 1930's gangsters "with an Arab slant," though most players simply did not know how how to give such a "slant." Similarly, a lot of refferences were made to the culture clash between the Victorians and Indonesians, without specific information. In practice, this tended to be ignored in the games own adventure modules, despite the vague references to culture in the rules books.

[edit] Game history

Torg initially achieved some success in a saturated market. However, various factors such as poor quality control in new products, a large amount of required game material to purchase, and unwillingness to use the Internet as a medium, meant that by 1994 only a few hardcore fans remained. Various attempted sales of the property and failed attempts at revising and resurrecting the game ensued. As of 2004, Torg is again under ownership of West End Games (although WEG itself is under new ownership) and a new version is under development.

From an announcement by WEG's current owner on the official Torg forums:

"To that end, we are beginning our "countdown to the new Torg" event at GenCon 2005; at this event we will have at least two products designed for established Torg fans, but which will hopefully be approachable enough for new people who would want to get started in the grandeur of the Torg universe early.

Note: 2005 came and went without the arrival of the new Torg game. Due to expending resourses and time to developing and publishing the new D6 games also by WEG (D6 Fantasy, D6 Adventure, & D6 Space), it became necessary to push Torg into 2006. The new release date is in the Fall of 2006.

"Without giving too much away, this will be the beginning of a grassroots effort to get people excited and thinking about Torg again. Those waiting for next year's second edition will get a well-tested system and a universe ready for multi-genre action, and fans who want to come along for the ride through the coming year will learn more about the secrets and mysteries of the Torg universe than they've ever known before."

In addition to the upcoming second edition ("Torg 2.0"), WEG released Torg Revised & Expanded (dubbed Torg 1.5), in order to invigorate interest among longtime fans and to generate interest in backstock of first edition Torg merchandise. This book was released in May of 2005 as a PDF file, and was slated to be released as a limited-edition hardback in June of 2005, though the release date was subsequently pushed back to July and finally released in August. A limited run of leftover softcover editions, printed for distribution at the 2005 Origins RPG convention, were also made available on WEG's website.

[edit] External links

• Official site at West End Games
• Product list at West End Games
• The Storm Has A Name... - Extensive site by Kansas Jim, author of the Torg Revised & Expanded (AKA Torg 1.5) rulebook.
• Storm Knights - Extensive fan site by Jasyn Jones, featuring complete axiom charts, the Action Cant, and the definitive solution to the "Glass-Jaw Ninja" problem.