Worlds of Wonder RPG
From: Bad Baby Productions
Reviewed by: Ron McClung
Worlds of Wonder RPG is a new Role Playing Game from Bad Baby Productions.
Worlds of Wonder is an indie fantasy game created Robert Hemminger. There was a Chaosium RPG by the same name, but this is not it. I am not sure if this is a violation of trademarks, but it could be.
In his introduction, he states that after a long time of playing and designing games, he has concluded that it is not the rules that make the game but the people that play it. I happen to agree to that in some degree. My only caveat to that is if the rules simply suck and are not fun to play, it will not matter who you are playing with.
Regardless of that slight flaw in his philosophy (in my view), he attempts to present a set of rules that emphasize that philosophy by first putting a strong focus on the character creation system.
From the website: “Worlds of Wonder is a fast, simple to play RPG system designed for use by advance players who wish to create detailed characters without having to roll on endless charts and deal with endless rules.”
Character Generation: To create a character within Worlds of Wonder, you spend points – Development Points (DPs). How many? I do not know. There is nowhere in the pages referring to DPs that tells you how many a standard character gets. I would have expected a table with different DP totals for different flavors of games (epic, realistic, super heroic, etc.). Unfortunately, there was nothing like that.
Character levels, ability scores, skills, background options, bloodlines, and anything related to a character are bought by these points. Buying character levels is not linked to a class, and there is no limit to how high you can go or how many you can buy at once.
There are six ability scores (Stats) – Strength, Agility, Body, Speed, Intelligence, and Aura. They all start out at average level (8) and you can buy them up or down (like the d20 point-buy system). Again, there is no limit to the stat value. There is also something called a Stat Pick which you can get at certain values of a stat. They act like d20-feats for that particular stat. These are not very well explained up-front, however, and I was confused at first.
There are also derived values including Offensive Combat Level (OCL) and Defensive Combat Level (DCL), Hits and Initiative.
With the basics done, the character then heads into the Background, Skills and a Training Package system. A character can buy background options and these act like d20-feats as well – bonuses for special abilities or advantages to apply to the character. These are based on the general character concept and the perceived background. On top of this, a character can invest into Fame (which I would think was just another background option but not for Worlds of Wonder).
Now that your character is almost a third of the way done, you need to decide on race. I really would have thought this was going to be one of the first decisions you would make and included at the beginning before points were spent, but Worlds of Wonder put it farther down the process. Following this, the character buys into a social status.
The system is basically a class-less system, but it does have Training packages for those that which to choose that route. These training packages include all the stats of a typical character of that “class”. These include Acolyte, Apprentice, Bandit, Barbarian, Huntsmen, Men-at-Arms, Rouge, Scout, and Squire. The GM can create others, of course. Each is accompanied with DP cost.
Again… why 30 pages into the book and why not mention this upfront?
One interesting gem in character generation is something called Bloodlines. The game defines several optional bloodlines that give the character various benefits. These can be also bought with DPs.
Skills are divided out into skill sets which contain four skills. The character buys into the skill set to get access to the skills and then buys the ranks to use the skills. Skill Sets include Adventurer (skills are Seeker, Explorer, Delver, Myth Seeker), Magic (skills being Apprentice, Mage, Magic User, Arch Mage) and Warrior (Fighter, Weapon Skill, Combat Style, Endurance). These act more like class abilities or special feats rather than what people would think of as normal skills. Interestingly, there is also an Improvement skill set that allows you to improve other skills. This somewhat fills in the gap left in a class-less system but does not entirely fill it. There are some aspects I simply did not understand the logic of.
From the website: “After 30 some years of playing, running and designing games, be they RPG’s or board games, we at Bad Baby have come to one conclusion.”
System: The system seems to be somewhat inspired by d20. For skills, you basically roll a d20 and add your ranks and any modifiers and compare it to a target number. The difficulties are not all that different from d20 DCs.
Combat is …curious. It is not like skills in that there is not a variable difficulty. There is a fixed difficulty… the magic number 15. A d20 is rolled and you add in your OCL and subtract the targets DCL to get the total. If it is over the magic number 15 (~sound the mystical music~) then you hit. A nice gem is that it does add in points that exceed that target number as damage so that the better you do, the more damage you can cause.
The Magic System is skills-based in that you have to have the skill to cast the spell. Skills are based on schools of magic. Schools are Arcanum, Battle Magic, Conjuration, Elementalism, and Wizardry. You gain all this by buying into the magic skill set. Each school then has its own skill set.
However, not only do you need the skill, you also need the matrix. A matrix holds one spell so you can only cast as many spells as you have matrices. You can know a lot of spells, but if you do not have that coveted matrix, you can not cast them. Also, another limiting factor is magic points. Spells cost magic points as well.
There are several spells presented in the magic section, all fairly familiar spells that you would normally see in a fantasy game.
Remaining Content: The remainder of the game includes sections on creatures, equipment, and magic items. What’s missing? A game universe. I guess we just make it up ourselves or just use one we are used to? If that is the case, why bother moving to this system and just play in the system you are used to for your favorite game.
Layout: The art does not help the book in any way. I was not overly impressed with it. The PDF layout is average – it does not add much to the book or take away. I had gotten so past the point of worrying about the art and layout after reading the rules that I simply ignored them.
In conclusion, this game did not impress me all that much. I tried not to compare it to d20, but as I read through it, it was inevitable. D&D is the measure all fantasy games (especially those that are obviously inspired by the system) are compared to, in my opinion.
Aside from the possible trademark violations, the writer organized things poorly and is missing things in key areas. The layout is very non-intuitive. The system is not all that exciting. This is a poorly conceived idea thrown together without much thought to logical layout or content flow. Also, for a game that claims to save the character from endless tables, this one seems to have a lot of tables. This was also somewhat of a turnoff.
There are several other PDF products that the author has produced in support advertised on the web site, including a book of races, several skill set books, other magic books and a book of creatures. It is nice that it is well supported, but there is still nothing driving me to want to play this game. The fact that the author does not have a web domain for his game is also very telling.
For more details on Bad Baby Productions and their new Role Playing Game “Worlds of Wonder RPG,” check them out at their website http://host09.ipowerweb.com/~arcanump/ArcanumPBM/Page3001.html.
Worlds of Wonder RPG
From: Bad Baby Productions
Type of Game: Role Playing Game
Written by: Robert Hemminger
Contributing Authors: Robert Hemminger
Game Design by: Robert Hemminger
Developed by: Robert Hemminger
Cover Art by: Robert Hemminger
Number of Pages: 322
Game Components Included: PDF file (printer friendly and full color)
Retail Price: $ 12.99
Website: host09.ipowerweb.com/~arcanump/ArcanumPBM/Page3001.html
Reviewed by: Ron McClung