The Secret of Steel

I've been working on a lightweight roleplaying game system, based off of low-fantasy swashbuckling type characters, especially ones from pulp fantasy writers like Robert E Howard, Micheal Moorcock, and Jack Vance. It's about worlds where there are big burly swordsmen, insane sorcerer-priests, and helpful occultists in every corner. It aims to be a sort of beer-and-pretzels game, but for longer-term campaigns.

It is, of course, inspired by Labyrinth Lord in particular, and the retro-clone movement in general.


The basics of the game system are in place. One of the cooler things that I'm working on is the Tome system, where the base game details your basic human-centric low fantasy world, with Tomes coming out to flesh out other areas of the game. The interesting thing, I think, is that you can take and choose Tomes to fit your game's concept. They're all going to be self-contained, except that only the basic rulebook will contain the base rules. So, for example, you can run a perfectly acceptable sword-and-sorcery campaign set in the wilds or in a early medieval city. By default, the only two classes included in the game are the Occultist and the Warrior. But one of your players' characters has died, and they'd like to be reintroduced as a proud dwarven warrior, something not covered by the rules. They'd hop online and download the Tome of Stone, for example, which would cover classes and monsters with a subterranean theme, for example.

Hopefully the Tomes would be a little cooler than that, but you get the idea. The point is that they'd all be little mini splatbooks, and, of course, for free.