Over_the_Edge_-_2Ed_Core_rules.pdf

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The Role-Playing Game of Surreal Danger by Jonathan Tweet with Robin D. Laws.

SECOND EDI TI ON

The Roleplaying Game of Surreal Danger

by Jonathan Tweet with Robin D. Laws

Electronic Edition

Saint Paul, Minnesota

WWW . ATLAS - GAMES . COM

Second Edition

This game is a coded message. You will decode the

message in your dreams and execute its instructions in

the spaces between moments of will. Neither you nor

I will ever know the contents of the message.

— Jonathan Tweet, June 1997

Credits

Conception: Jonathan Tweet

Design: Jonathan Tweet, Robin D. Laws

Design Contributions: Lisa V. Padol, Chris Pesl, John Nephew

Editing and Coordination: John Nephew

Editorial Assistance, 2nd Edition: Donna Millheim, Jeff Tidball

Index: Bruce Baugh

Cover Art & Graphic Design: C. Brent Ferguson

Interior Art: David Brown, C. Brent Ferguson, Ovi Hondru, Eric Hotz, Cheryl Mandus, H.J.

McKinney, Lee Moyer, Kevin O’Neill, Grey Thornberry

Cartography: Eric Hotz, Jay Ferm

Interior Graphic Design and Layout: John Nephew

Playtesting: Steve Cook, Robert “Doc” Cross, Marty Dennis, Jay Ferm, Nicole Lindroos Frein,

J.M. Gibbs V, Gail Hermodson, Mike Halse, Barbara A. Hare, Alex Hogg, Mike Lach,

Donna Millheim, John Nephew, Mary Oettinger, Kevin O’Neill, Rembert N. Parker, Lee E.

Paulison, Jr., Victor Raymond, Chuck Sohlberg, Greg Stolze, Eric Tumbleson, Gretchen

Tw eet, James Wallis

Special Thanks to Lee Gold, whose tireless efforts to run Alarums & Excursions made this work

possible

DEDICATION

To Jay Ferm, whose demented performance during the

first-ever OTE game scared us all.

LEGALESE

THE EDGE and OTE are trademarks of John A. Nephew, used with permission. ON THE EDGE is a trademark of Trident, Inc. All

rights reserved. Reproduction of this work in whole or part without the written permission of the publisher, except in the cases of props

copied for personal use or short excerpts for the purpose of reviews, is strictly prohibited by international copyright law.

This is a work of fiction. All incidents, situations, and characters portrayed within are fictional. Any similarity, without satiric intent, to

actual events or persons living or dead is purely coincidental.

Digital edition version 1.0

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Introduction ...................................................4

C HAPTER 1: Players’ Rules .............................7

Basic rules, advice for players

C HAPTER 2: Overview of Al Amarja ..........36

For players of experienced characters only

C HAPTER 3: Deep Overview ........................43

This and all following material is for the GM only

C HAPTER 4: The Edge ..................................55

General guide to the biggest city on the island

C HAPTER 5: At Your Service ........................72

Businesses and other establishments

C HAPTER 6: Forces to Be Reckoned With ...109

Overt and covert groups and people

C HAPTER 7: Game Moderator’s Rules ......176

Special rules, advice for GMs

C HAPTER 8: Plots ........................................204

Three introductory adventures, summaries of major plots

C HAPTER 9: Props .......................................228

To give to the players

Index ..........................................................239

Introduction

What is

Over the

Edge ™ ?

T his is the section of the rules in

and the collective unconscious as

revealed in supermarket tabloids.

Since the first edition of Over the Edge

appeared in 1992, new surreal and

conspiracy-oriented TV shows, such

as The X-Files, have appeared and

found popularity. Obviously, these

modern game so you can easily identi-

fy with the characters you create. The

game does not need a list of skills or

races or backgrounds for the PCs

because this is (apparently) the real

world. You know very well the kind

of people that populate it, and you

can easily imagine other kinds of peo-

ple that you hope don’t populate it.

The present-day setting allows the

GM and players to draw from their

vast personal experiences to make the

setting highly detailed and under-

standable.

And why the simple mechanics?

Tw o reasons: First, complex mechan-

ics invariably channel and limit the

imagination; second, my neurons have

better things to do than calculate

numbers and refer to charts all

evening. Complex mechanics, in their

effort to tell you what you can do,

generally do a fair job of implying

what you cannot do. When I look

back at the player characters my

friends have invented in my games,

and I review the adventures they have

had, they stand out as people and

events that I had never before seen in

role-playing games: wild, strange,

unique, mysterious, unpredictable,

bizarre, personal. The more you rely

on rules that someone else has written

to define your character or the adven-

tures that this character can under-

take, the less of a creator you become.

What’s more, the rules in any game

are a boat that takes you to the shore

you want to reach. This book

describes the shore in detail, but your

boat is a purely functional construc-

tion without the elaborate detail and

complications. It is my hope that the

boat’s simplicity will encourage you to

concentrate on your goal (enjoyable

role-playing) without getting caught

up in the vehicle (the rules).

which I get to explain why my

game is so incredibly interesting

that your life is incomplete unless you

play it regularly, and that all the other

games you may have pale in compari-

son, their game designers obviously

suffering from degenerative neural ail-

ments. This I accomplish under the

pretext of summarizing the game for

you. So what is Over the Edge?

First, let’s look at the surface.

This game pits the player charac-

ters against all manner of decadent,

evil, twisted, mind-boggling, blood-

curdling, soul-rending, ego-shattering,

world-turning experience. The Game

Moderator (GM) is called upon to

evoke an atmosphere of surreal dan-

ger. The players are called on to deal

with this danger to body and soul, to

thrive and accomplish their own goals

in spite of it. Enjoy.

Over the Edge falls in the same

amorphous genre as do the various

movies, television series, and novels

that take you over the edge of reality

and into the dark and surreal world of

human fears and delusions, insanity

and danger, or sometimes just the

inexplicably bizarre. As must be

obvious to those who have read the

book, Naked Lunch by William S.

Burroughs was a major inspiration,

but other works that make their mark

here include The Outer Limits and

Twin Peaks from television, movies

such as Repo Man and Liquid Sky, the

fiction of Borges and Phillip K. Dick,

Nothing is True

Anything is

Possible

Everything is

Permitted

— William S.

Burroughs

sources are very different from each

other, and different parts of the

island, different game moderator char-

acters, and different plots will draw

more or less from these various

sources.

In terms of rules, Over the Edge

emphasizes role-playing and story-

telling over number-crunching. The

mechanics are exceedingly easy and

open to interpretation, so your imagi-

nation and common sense will come

in handier than will your calculator.

But beneath the surface, what’s

going on here? What is the game

really about? I developed the island

of Al Amarja as a playground of the

imagination. Why this setting? It is a

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