The Riddle of Steel
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| The Riddle of Steel | |
|---|---|
| Designer(s) | Jacob Norwood |
| Publisher(s) | Driftwood Publishing |
| Publication date | 2002 |
| Genre(s) | Fantasy |
| System | Custom |
The Riddle of Steel is a tabletop role-playing game (RPG) created by Jacob Norwood and published by Driftwood Publishing. It is designed for roleplaying in a typical swords-&-sorcery or high fantasy gameworld environment. The base mechanic of the game is a die-pool system; to accomplish tasks, players roll a pool of ten-sided dice against the Target Number, or TN, of the task, with the number of dice equalling or beating the TN determining degree of success.
The title of The Riddle of Steel is inspired by several references in the movie Conan the Barbarian, including a line of dialogue in which the villain, Thulsa Doom, asks the captured Conan, "What is the riddle of steel?" Doom answers this question by explaining to Conan that the true strength of steel is in the hand that wields it – in other words, it is the resolve and commitment we bring to a task, not the quality or quantity of tools we use in performing it, that is the most important factor in determining success. This theme strongly influenced the design of Riddle, most particularly in the implementation of Spiritual Attributes (below).
The combat system of Riddle of Steel is based heavily on Jacob Norwood's real-world historical martial arts studies. He is a Senior Free Scholar in the Association for Renaissance Martial Arts, and Jon Clements, the director of that organization, recommends the game for its martial realism.
Several factors differentiate Riddle from other fantasy RPGs:
- It has a very fast combat system based on real-world martial experience;
- It has an experience / hero points system based on characters pursuing their own stated goals;
- Its "official" magic system explicitly prohibits many typical RPG magic effects ("No Fireballs!" was something of an unofficial slogan during early promotion) and places no "game balance" limits on magician characters' power.
In terms of GNS Theory, The Riddle of Steel may be classified as a Narrativist game with Simulationist system features.
One major element of The Riddle of Steel (also known as TRoS for short) involves each owning player giving every character five Spiritual Attributes (SAs). These SAs allow players to define in which areas they want to highlight the heroic aspect of the character. Possibilities include:
- faith (defending a religion or philosophical worldview)
- passions (love, hate or other strong emotions for someone or something)
- conscience (personal ethics)
- drive (a particularly strong intent or purpose)
- destiny (a future foretold)
- luck (general good fortune and coincidence).
This system allows players more control over the in-game performance of their characters, by granting the player extra dice whenever the character faces an obstacle in a situation where the player wants his character to shine. It brings a slight movie atmosphere to the game in that the hero can suffer defeat, but has uncanny luck and persistence in the crucial elements of the story.
Increases to the Spiritual Attributes are awarded by the game master when characters act according to these attributes, and character improvement is only achieved by spending points from these Attributes.
The game, especially the combat system, was heavily influenced by the Polish historical role-playing game Dzikie Pola[1]. The official fantasy world of the game, Weyrth, also shows strong influences of Polish and Eastern European history among its imaginary cultures and peoples, particularly in the nations of Zaporozhya (from the Polish historical term for the Ukraine) and the Rzeczpospolita, the Polish word for "Commonwealth". For historical inspiration, see Zaporizhzhia, Rzeczpospolita and Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth.
