This year, I have released a free character pack with three pre-generated zillas for you and your friends to take to town. This is the ‘Classic Character Pack’ and it isn’t hard to see the inspiration behind Thoron, the giant lizard with atomic breath, Leoptra, an enormous psychic moth, and Kapparo, a gargantuan magma-infused tortoise.

Download the classic character pack for free. If you don’t yet have the game itself, download ZILLA! for free too.

Happy Free RPG Day, everyone!

The Pool is explained pretty well here with a few ideas for tweaking the game. I prefer Anti-Pool, myself. Both are dead simple and can be used for any genre. I play Anti-Pool with my wife in the car, it’s so simple.

Risus: The Anything RPG is a short comedic RPG with Aspect-like “clichés” and an easy to learn rule set. If you want to make it more serious, try the Serious Risus supplement.

Wheel of Fate is my new go-to game for on-the-go play. It’s got a bit more to it than The Pool, but it it is still only 8 pages long and does everything I want in a setting-less, genre-less rules-light game. Well, almost everything. There’s no advancement rules, but the ones from Wheel of Exalted Fate (last page of the document) fit perfectly. It’s well worth signing up to the Yahoo! Group to download Wheel of Fate and other FATE tweaks.

Otherkind is a cool game by Vincent Baker (Dogs in the Vineyard, Apocalypse World) about the fey. It has a sleek dice mechanic that has been the basis for other games.

GHOST/ECHO is one of those games based on Otherkind dice. It’s by John Harper, one of the best in the industry. It’s an “oracle game” in that it implies the setting, gives you the tools you need and sets you loose to interpret and create the world and adventures how your group sees fit.

The Wildlings is another John Harper game, this time with a setting and premise inspired by Penny Arcade’s Lookouts. It’s great for kids but I think it’s good for adults too. I wrote a game with rules inspired by The Wildlings and we all had great fun with it. Wildlings is simple but elegant and the PDF itself is very beautiful.

The Shadow of Yesterday is a fascinating fantasy setting with a great rules set, including some great mechanics linked to character and story activities such as your dice pools being refreshed by in-fiction actions, not the end of a session or similar; it links roleplaying and interaction to mechanical benefits in a very clever way. I’ve yet to play it, but it reads very well and makes me very keen to run it. Clinton R. Nixon created this game and it has gained a great deal of popularity.

Lady Blackbird is another game with a great implied setting (in fact, Ryan Macklin recently wrote on the subject) and fans of Firefly should be particularly interested. Lady Blackbird is yet another of John Harper’s game. It won the 2010 RPG Golden Geek award for Best Free Game and also won an Ennie that same year for Best Free Product. The game is beautiful, sleek and a great hybrid of the best bits of several rules sets (including The Pool and The Shadow of Yesterday), all in a beautiful pick-up-and-play package.

The Mustang is a short-form game (by, you guessed it, John Harper) that is about a very specific situation and a handful of characters. It’s an interesting idea and a good focus on character interaction.

44: A Game of Automatic Fear was a nominee for the 2010 RPG Golden Geek award and it’s website describes it as a suspense and horror role-playing game designed for single sessions with very little preparation required. It’s a great game for busy players looking for a one-shot session. Again, I haven’t played this one but it’s right up there on my list.

Nine Worlds: A Game of Cosmic Drama is another one I haven’t played, so I’ll let the text do the talking: “Modern-day fantasy meets Greek myth in this unique role-playing game. Nine Worlds is ideal for players looking to create exciting, magical drama. This game provides players the tools to create incredible stories set in a universe full of magic, myth, tragedy, and redemption. Players portray Archons—mortal humans caught in a cosmic cold war between the Greek Gods and Titans. The game master guides them among the Nine Worlds, testing their loyalties or tempting them towards rebellion. Will your Archon support the immortal rulers of the universe? Or, will your Archon break their laws and help shape a new reality? Features: Innovative playing card mechanics, rich history & survey of the Nine Worlds, quick and easy character creation, advice for players on creating great stories.

Hell for Leather is another I haven’t had a chance to run: a darkly gory game of pursuit and savage violence. In the Standard Setting, play as contestants on the world’s bloodiest gameshow and struggle for gruesome survival! Or customise the game during-play! Features: No GM – all the players are in charge of the story; no prep – like a board game, you set it up together; customisable – create a new setting (like Pulp Explorers, Ancient Rome or the French Wars of Religion) during play!

ZILLA! is my first attempt at game design. I released it last year for Free RPG Day. It’s a game about kaiju, or Godzilla-like monsters. I describe it as a game of destruction, mayhem and love. I was inspired by the idea that these giant monsters, like King Kong, are very destructive, but are prone to falling in love with or developing relationships with humans. Heavily influenced by John Harper’s GHOST/ECHO and The Wildlings, I’ve run a few games of ZILLA! and we all had a blast. It’s a lot of fun and very simple to just play. For Free RPG Day this year, I’m releasing a free character pack for the game. It’s easy to make your own, but these will get you started.

It’s Free RPG Day and I’ve got something special for you to sink your teeth into. I present my first roleplaying game: ZILLA!. You’re a giant zilla on a city-smashing rampage. Zillas are powerful and hard to kill, but they are prone to becoming enamoured with humans. Will you fight another zilla, escape the city to a better place, smash the city to the ground, or even… find love?

Zilla is an ‘oracle game’, which means it’s complete, but very short – only two pages long. It’s heavily inspired by John Harper, primarily his work with GHOST/ECHO and The Wildlings. I was also inspired by Vincent Baker’s In a Wicked Age and his awesome Otherkind dice (seriously, go read about them now). Even though I didn’t use Otherkind dice in this game, that system got me thinking about mechanically elegant games that provide options while being incredibly easy to learn.

So, please download ZILLA! and tell your friends about it. It’s free, so share it with anyone you think would be interested. If you read or play it, I’d love to hear your comments about how the game went (either here, or at Story Games).

Have fun, and happy Free RPG Day!