I was linked to the Risus RPG on a forum I frequent, and I decided to give it a go. Being that it's a staggering 6 pages long, I printed it out so I'd have something tangible to look at as I surfed the web. After a few minutes of my ancient printer chugging and whirring, I had a hard copy of Risus sitting in my hands... A little green, of course, because the ink in my printer is getting low.

I'm very glad I printed Risus out. At first, as I read, Risus seemed like every other Rules-lite system... boring and uninspired. As I dug a little deeper, I found an incredibly good system with laugh-your-ass-off funny writing.

How Cliche!

Right off the get-go, characters are defined by Cliches... which are the game's equivelant of skills... sort of. A Cliche is an all-encompassing skillset which is represented by the name. Take the Viking cliche, for example. A Viking is proficient at rowing, swordfighting, axe throwing, etc... So, the character has however many levels each skill as he has in his Cliche. A Viking(3), for example, has 3 dice at rowing, swordfighting, axe throwing, etc... It makes for a quick to generate character, but one who actually has a fairly defined list of skills. Cliches range from "Cliche"(1), to "Cliche"(6).

Additionally, characters, when created, are assumed to have the tools of their Cliche. A Viking has his sword, throwing axe, and paddle. A Bowman has his bow and arrows. A Cajun Chef has his crockpot and gumbo ingredients. Again, this makes for a quick, but appropriately equipped character.

The Game's system itself is fairly well played out. Characters wishing to perform a task they could fail at, are assigned a target number for the Cliche they wish to use (the target number being influenced by how appropriate the Cliche is for the task), and they then roll a d6 for every level of their Cliche. A Viking(3) who wants to scale a slippery cliff (Target Number 10), has to roll a 10 or better when all his d6s are added up. Target Numbers range from 5 (ridiculously easy), to 30 (nearly impossible).

Battle, or Slaughter?

Combat is surprisingly uninteresting. Characters roll off, with the loser losing either a single level off their Cliche. Whomever is brought down to 0 Cliche Levels in ANY Cliche loses.

One of my two problems with Risus stems from the combat system. It's clunky, and rather one-sided. Almost universally, a character with even a single Cliche higher will decimate a character with a lower Cliche in the initial bout, and as a character loses in a faceoff, he only gets worse...

A character with two Cliches more need not worry... It's so unlikely that they'll lose, that the better character would have to have angered every god of Fate. A character with four Cliches has a range of 4-24... with their average roll being around 13-14. A character with six Cliches has a range of 6-36, with their average being around 20-21. Given the high number of dice, it's a near impossibility for the lower-level character to win in a one on one fight. Unless...

...the GM uses the Advanced Option of pumping Cliches.

This dangerous option is only useful for characters with multiple Cliches. A character can pump his Cliche, but afterwards takes the number of dice he pumped his Cliche by in Cliche "damage". So, with a Cliche of 4, you bump yourself up to 7 so you can hope to take on the opponent... and afterwards are reduced to a Cliche of 1. Time to switch.

This method also favours the use of wacky, out-there Cliches, which is fine for more comedic games, but not useful for "serious" games. Since an "appropriate" Cliche is one dedicated to fighting for example, you could switch over to your Feng Shui (the one which doesn't involve Gun-Fu) and bust out on your opponent using your Mad Arrangement Skillz(tm) to take them down a three notches (since, you take three times the damage from losing against an innappropriate skill), and then switch back over to your Ninja Cliche for the quick win.

While, as I said, this is fine in a wacky game, a serious gamer will have problems with this. Practically anyone can describe something well enough to use most Cliches (since they're such an all-encompassing thing), so you're likely to see the Poodle Trimmer(4) winning in fights against the Ninja(3).

The system, as it is, is not very good for serious games.

Advancement

One thing which really struck me as well done, was the way advancement was handled. The method used is incredibly simple, but very well suited to a rules-lite system. At the end of every adventure, any Cliches which were used significantly are rolled... and if all the dice come up even, your Cliche increases. It provides a nice curve for the character's advancement, and makes the end of the adventure exciting.

Extra Options

The Funky Dice additional option deserves some note, in and of itself. It offers a way for players to utilize the extra dice they have hanging around, and offers a more point-based system for character creation. Worth taking a look at for a superheroes type game, but other than that, the characters would get far too disproportionate to be any fun.

Conclusion

A fun game, and well worth taking a look at if you're in the mood for a light-hearted game. I'm almost tempted to run a Call of Cthulhu game uses Risus now. It'd be worth the look on my player's faces alone when the scary tentacle monster has the Hentai(5) Cliche and is looking to use it...

If that don't cause your players to check their sanity, nothing will. ;)