Uncounted Worlds

Read the Uncounted Worlds Magazine

Issue 1

What makes a great role playing game? That is of course in a sense unanswerable, as it is too broad a question. We can only answer for ourselves, and usually with further qualifications of genre, setting and player group... But having said that, this hobby has been around long enough that for many of us there are systems that always seem to be a good fit — whoever is playing, whatever the setting and genre. For me the game that always seems to be a great fit is Chaosium’s Basic Roleplaying.

My broad inspiration for Uncounted Worlds is the early days of my own gaming — the heady days from the launch of AD&D through to RQIII when fan and professional magazines were bursting with creative ideas from gamers themselves, inspired by the great games being published and their own imaginations. I’d like Uncounted Worlds to recapture some of that sense of personal creativity, and share it with BRP gamers around the world.

—Nick Middleton

Uncounted Worlds #1

Table of Contents Musings of Myriad Scribes Rules Were Made to be Broken: Simple life paths for BRP character generation One Realm Amongst Many A Device Most Wondrous and Strange: A Puzzle, a Lute and a Stone tablet Foul Spawn: Huldrefolk and Drowned Men from Ulfland "Be easy and free when you&#39re drinking with me..." Imlis Bragon and Jolish Hurlis A Tale of the Uncounted Worlds: a chance meeting in Tarinport By Nick Middleton. A 52 page downloadable booklet. Download it here.

Issue 2

Chaosium's Basic Role Playing is by far my favourite RPG -- from the heady days of first playing and running RuneQuest with a battered copy of the RQ1 rulebook I bought from a friend onwards I've always loved the game engine. But equally, the settings Chaosium used the rules in appealed enormously. As a young teenager, heavily influenced by the book collection of my brother (my elder by five years), I was a voracious reader of Michael Moorcock's Eternal Champion stories. Whilst I was never a fan of horror fiction per se, a friend persuaded me to play this new Chaosium game called Call of Cthulhu and within a week of first wandering in to “The Haunted House” I was hooked and scouring 2nd hand book shops for collections of Lovecraft stories.

But RPG's are not prose fiction: the structural details and features that make a good short story or novel are different to those that make a compelling scenario or campaign. Some RPG writers never fully grasp this, and others prefer to use RPG writing as a spring board to develop their fiction writing skills (RPG writing is after all far less financially rewarding). But some writers not only grasp the distinction, but understand how to exploit it, and move easily between the two forms.

—Nick Middleton

Uncounted Worlds #2

Table of Contents An Editorial BRP Stress Rules Enhancing Your Game QI Expert Skills in BRP End of Days Tombs & Tentacles Foul Spawn By Nick Middleton. A 52 page downloadable booklet. Download it here.