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What's it about? What's its history?
ORX is the role-playing game about...orcs. Oh no, not another game about the most over-used bad-guy in all fantasy! Yep. But this isn’t your typical "let’s play the bad guys who aren’t so bad" or "hey, look, a detailed non-human culture" game. Heck no, this is about getting down, dirty and humorously nasty. And it isn't your father's RPG.
ORX aims to please both the casual player interested in tactics and gaming and the hardcore storyteller who loves to write novels based on his character's experiences. The game supports a range of style from dark-and-gritty to light-and-humorous, depending on the group's whim, and with no changes to the mechanics in order to play either.
ORX features an innovative system aimed at making play fun -- even while your orcs get beaten, maimed, and squished -- while staying true to the idea of what orcs are and how they go about doing things; resolution is quick and intuitive, but still provides tactical options to the players, keeping the game fresh and exciting on both story and mechanical fronts.
ORX began as an idea put forth on the RPG-Create mailing list, and over the years mutated into something more than a dice mechanic for measuring the effects of having a bad day, especially once it began to garner interest and discussion on the Forge (www.indie-rpgs.com). The first rough beta version was published for free as a webpage, the second version was a cleaned up and clarified PDF made available during 2005, and the print version finally saw the light of day on New Year's of 2007.
ORX might never have appeared from the mountains to raid and plunder at all without the help and support of a number of individuals. Those responsible for this travesty include Ron Edwards, for inspiring me to publish, and for showing that quality independent publishing was a viable and reachable goal; Nathan Banks, Mike Holmes, and Travis Casey, all of whom played, gushed (and not just blood!), made suggestions, and asked questions; Ed Heil, for his artistic contributions; and Bob McNamee, both a playtester and without whom we would not sport such an awesome character sheet. I must also thank Jasper Polane and Remi Treuer for their exceptional artistic talents, as well.
ORX also owes a great deal to Ainur Elmgren and her essays about Tolkien, orcs, and the attraction that orcs hold for gamers and fiction readers, as well as showing me that I'm not the only one who likes them green-skinned beast-men; and all the other folks out there who have expressed interest in or praise for the game, and encouraged me to take the step from badly-formatted game available on a webpage to (hopefully!) better-formatted game available in print. In that vein special thanks go out to Grant Gigee (Gravity Press Games) and Phillip Foster (Scarlet Mars RPGs) who liked my game enough to link to it from their own sites, play it, and even use it as inspiration for their own games.
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