Over the edge

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Over the Edge is a pen & paper role-playing game by Jonathan Tweet and Robin D. Laws , published in 1992 by the American publisher Atlas Games . The game with an innovative rule system takes place in a game world characterized by surreal horror .

Control system

The Over the Edge system embodies an approach that was new at its time and in two respects puristic: game with few rules and the description of a player's character using traits instead of the usual attributes and skills .

The concise rules, which have more the status of guidelines, give the game masters - and demand from them - more control over what is happening than was the case with role-playing games in the tradition of Dungeons and Dragons . The authors of Over the Edge assume that sooner or later every rule in a role-playing game will have to be interpreted, adapted or broken. They adhere to the philosophy that it should be done sooner. This makes it possible to restrict the rules of the game to a few basic rules so that the game is not slowed down by looking up special rules for the respective situation.

Over the Edge introduced innovations in relation to the representation of a character in the game system: Traditional role-playing games divide the values ​​of the characters into attributes and skills . Attributes are basic values ​​such as strength or intelligence , which each character has to different degrees, while skills such as climbing or discovering the hidden must be acquired and serve to make the characters more individual. If there is no suitable skill available for a task, the attributes usually serve as the basis for a - usually drastically reduced - chance of mastering the task anyway. There are usually between five and ten attributes, and the number of skills can quickly run into three digits. A large number of rules ensure that advantages are balanced out with disadvantages, so that no character receives a dominant position in the game round.

In contrast to this, a character in Over the Edge only has four traits (three traits and one negative flaw ) that the player can think of himself. They are usually very vaguely defined and have to be constantly reinterpreted in order to determine which of the character traits can be applied to a task. So that one character in the group does not become overpowering, this freedom must be sensibly restricted by the game master, a problem for which the rules of Over the Edge are of little help. The traits can be understood as broad super-skills , so that Over the Edge can be seen as the end point of a development from attributes to attributes plus skills to a role-play based purely on skills.

In addition to the actual rules, Over the Edge is characterized by the fact that the authors put a lot of emphasis on justifying the rules in detail instead of just presenting them, as is the case in most other role-playing books. In this way he promotes a more detailed understanding of the rules and points out problems that the game masters may face.

As the sparse rules suggest, Over the Edge places little value on a mechanical gameplay, which is about how the numerical values ​​of the game pieces interact. This can already be seen from the fact that repetitions of actions are punished by deductions when rolling the dice. The aim of the game is to tell an interesting and varied story with complex and individual characters. For this purpose, when creating their characters, players have to come up with phrases that illustrate the numerical values ​​on the data sheet and answer a few questions about their background, which offer the game master starting points to draw the characters into the story and interesting them To set tasks.

Because the rules are so short and easy to apply, they are occasionally used as a system for role-playing games against a background other than the official one.

Game world

Over the Edge is a role-playing game of "surreal horror"; the authors refer explicitly to Franz Kafka and William S. Burroughs . The player characters act in a world where nothing is what it seems. They have to live with the fact that they are only balls in a large and incomprehensible game of nebulous groupings on which they can only influence to a very limited extent. They are often forced to choose one of several evils. In this respect, Over the Edge can be understood as a role-playing game that tests the strength of the moral principles that the players imagine for their characters.

Over the Edge is set on Al Amarja , a fictional Mediterranean island southwest of Malta , in the mid-1990s . After the “liberation” from Mussolini's clutches , a “ democracy ” based on the model of the United States was established on the island . How democratic Al Amarja is can already be seen from the fact that the Liberator has held the office of President since that time . The background of Over the Edge is shaped by the contradictions between appearances and truth. Government and industry are deeply corrupt , while citizens to a liberal embellished laissez-faire style in the state on all sorts of dubious, immoral and inhumane exploit ways. For example, there is slavery on Al Amarja - and the slaves are better off than other parts of society. Everyone is next to himself and violence is a way of life.

In addition, Al Amarja is a playground for mafiosi , secret services and conspiracies who pursue their own goals. The largest city on Al Amarja, The Edge , is ruled by various gangs . Decadent millionaires play around with magic , psychic powers exist, and mad scientists known as oppenheimer invent devices that overcome the limits of physics . There are even several independent groups of aliens .

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