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There is a lot of truth to the notion that a great GM can turn the worst game system into a ton of fun. I mean take the worst gaming system you can think of be it Palladium, or TSR’s Marvel RPG, or even or even d20 if you are the sort who hates it, and imagine it being run by a master storyteller, A Stephen King, or George R.R. Martin, If he knew how to run the game and keep the focus on the world and not the rules it can be an excellent night, despite your gripes with system X. Of course the reverse is true. A game that could be one of the coolest things you have ever played, could be ruined by a GM who fails in every way to do it justice, in short it goes both ways. This was the case I found with the old West End Game TORG. Despite a plethora of amazing concepts such as the cards in the game and a completely unique world it was ruined for me by a lousy G.M. The kind of GM who adds his own player characters into the game as NPCs and gives them top billing. Not to mention adding silly additional realities that were often failed campaigns no one wanted to play. In short I wanted nothing to do with TORG or it’s world thanks to one GM, (you know who you are…) and I was content with the myriad of other RPGs out there knowing that well, TORG was lame, right? With a good 10+ years gone by and a new edition, I decided to take a chance, to look at this game with as unbiased a look as I could try to give, knowing that said GM, would have no influence on this game whether I GM or play. And with that and the release of a new revised TORG, I decided what the heck, let’s try this again. The result? A lot of regret. Don’t get me wrong the regret is not for TORG, but rather for me, for not doing this sooner!

The Revised TORG came to me as a PDF file from RPG Now. The cost for all 272 pages of data was about $18.99 and the Drama deck set me back another Fiver. The art is mostly black and white (which made printing easy enough) and I would doubt the hardback (available only through the WEG website www.westendgames.com) has any color plates or other fancy printing not found in the PDF. For those who don’t know the premise of the game it is a pretty cool concept, Other realities invade our earth with the aid of relics called “darkness devices” with intent of draining earth of it’s possibility energy which will destroy our world as we know it. Each invading reality has it’s own core reality that includes different sets of fundamental physical laws, and each has imposed their home reality on a bit of our planet. Led by a malevolent being known only as the Gaunt Man, their goal is to become godlike at the expense of our world. The players play “storm knights” beings who for one reason or another are a focal point of our reality, their actions can and will change the course of our reality. These freedom fighters pitch a war against the invading realities (although some of them may have been transformed or originally from these realities. That in mind it is up to you to put a stop to the High lords (the beings using the Darkness devices to drain our realities like a frat boy at a kegger!) and bring peace to this reality. This being said the Pcs are pretty over the top, this is not a game with high fatality rates for characters, or where players are shafted on every task, quite the opposite PC’s are pretty powerful, this isn’t to say that they aren’t up against some stiff competition, but the average TORG pc, is a pretty big step up from joe average.

Speaking of character creation, characters are created through 2 methods, first the template format, (like so many W.E.G. games) where you pick a character outline, add 16 points of skills, and write up a background, or the more complex build the pc from the ground up using 66 points to arrange stats, add the 16 points in skills, apply gear weapons, spells and powers where appropriate, and of course come up with a suitable background. Both methods work well, although since there are no templates in the revised rulebook, you are rather limited to buying extra books or going with plan B. Tasks in this game are rather unique, most tasks are preformed with a roll of 1d20 compared to a chart which translates the die roll into a penalty or bonus, then that bonus is applied to the stat/skill, vs a difficulty. (I.E. Jack wants to jump a chasm (Dex of 10) the gm rules a difficulty of 12, Bill rolls a 15 (which is a +2 bonus to the score) giving him just enough to make it across. Of course there are some other rules which will affect the chance. Firstly rolling 10 or 20 naturally means a he gets to roll again and add the result. Or you can spend a possibility for the same effect (each character starts with 10 and can gain more as experience). Also of course TORG uses a special deck of cards called the drama deck, which allow the players to add their own spice to the game. (such as giving bonuses, or plot complications to the game) all of this means you have to have a GM who can improvise, it’s pretty easy to underestimate players, and what they can do especially first time out. The Drama deck also works for game initiative and even in a rather clever way to set up multi tiered actions during a combat. (Such as trying to access a hidden path while the party fights off a big bad, or diffuse a bomb in the middle of a melee. Similar games have since been inspired by some of the things in this game (among them Deadlands and Savage Worlds, heck even d20 has a drama deck called dork 20 by atlas games!)

My biggest gripe about this game is one thing, it is not a complete product. After WEG went under and was brought back by an outfit called purgatory publishing, Torg version 2.0 was apparently a pretty high priority but with the state of the RPG industry as is the 1.5 pdf and limited print run of books is all they got, and it mostly relies on the old material, which is a crying shame because between the 14 year gap between it’s original release and now, there is a whole new audience that could really get into this game, and as with most games the advantage of the new edition is that it puts all players back on the ground floor, so to speak, rather than assuming you have a closet full of supplements from last edition to use. And as a web published game (PDF) it could sell pretty well with any luck and maybe even put out revised versions of the reality sourcebooks, or other supplements, and while the rulebook is a great first step, a companion that gives more into the world and history along with some templates would turn this from an update into a fully fledged new edition ready to take on new players who may have been too young or too disinterested the first time around. As a game and a world I am giving it pretty high marks for the sheer amount of material in the books, (the chapter on reality was wel worth it as an interesting read alone,) as well as a game system that is unique and dynamic even after 14 years, (again this revision is not a huge change to the rules, like say 2nd ed D&D to D&D3e, but rather more like 5th edition Hero system, where we clean up a lot of rules but it’s essentially the same game.) So if you like rpgs with larger than life heroes, a good chunk or sci fi and theoretical thinking and a ton of action, download a copy or get the hardback from the website, but be prepared, your gonna probably have to buy a supplement or 2 to get the most out of it, unless you still have a ton of TORG stuff in a closet somewhere…