Last week I covered Chaosium's Call of Cthulhu role playing game which used what became Chaosium's Basic Roleplaying game mechanic and basic rules. Larry Niven's Ringworld roleplaying game (Ringworld for short) was another game using that same basic game mechanic as the foundation for the game.
Ringworld was released in 1984 and I probably purchased it that same year because it wasn't in print all that long. A supplement--the Ringworld Companion--also came out in 1984 and I was able to pick it up as well.
As some of you may guess, the game was based on science fiction author Larry Niven's books Ringworld and The Ringeworld Engineers--the only two novels he had written about the Ringworld at that time--and set in his Known Space setting. I was a big fan of Larry Niven's Known Space short stories and novels, including the Ringworld books, so of course I bought the game.
For those unfamiliar with the setting, the Known Space setting covers the next 900 or so years of history, tracking mankind's expansion into space, the eventual discovery of FTL drives, contact (and war) with alien species. In the 29th Century, when the Ringworld books take place, Known Space (the part of space known to humans) was a rough sphere of 80 light years in diameter (and with Human Space being about half of the that volume).
At the time of the Ringworld books, humanity was aware of several ancient intelligent species that had died out. The most important of these for purposes of the books and this game were the Slavers and the Pak (or Pak Protectors). The Slavers had psychic powers that allowed them to enslave whole worlds of other intelligence species, and had sown life and strange life forms all across the galaxy, but had been wiped out in a long and bitter war resulting from a uprising led by one of their slave species. The impact of this is that some of their technology has survived and been found (and copied) by humans and other species: things like stasis fields and disintegrators (used both as excavation tools and weapons).
The other significant species are the Pak which originated on a planet near the galactic center. They are the ancestors of the human species. They went through three life stages: children and breeders which are like primitive hominids, and an adult stage where they consume a the root from the "tree of life" which contains a symbiotic organism that triggers the transformation into an adult Pak with its long centuries of lifespan, incredible intelligence, armored skin and super-human strength. Pak are very protective of their breeders (hence, the Protector moniker) and very violent toward any perceived threats to breeders, including breeders of other bloodlines.
Occasionally Pak would leave the core worlds they had colonized near the center of the galaxy and travel out to remote worlds to begin new colonies. (They did not have FTL technology, so this was all done at relativistic speeds). Earth was one of these colonies where, unfortunately for the Pak Protectors, the tree of life organisms died off. So the Pak eventually died and the breeders evolved into modern humans. Humans of the right age can still transform into adult Pak, but due to evolutionary changes, the resulting adult is not as strong as a regular Pak, but is more intelligent and better able to view all humanity as its "breeders" rather than just ones just within its bloodline.
Another significant alien species for purposes of the game are the Kzin--a very aggressive alien predator species--that has gone through several cycles of vicious wars with humans. The humans always won, but the wars eliminated the most violent of the Kzin such that they have essentially been bred to be slightly more docile. Think of them as the Klingons of the Known Space universe.
And then there are the Puppeteers. Puppeteers are a herbivore based species with three deer like legs, a central body that is larger than expected because it contains the brain and other vital organs, and two long slender necks ending with a mouth and eye. The lips of the mouths have lumps that sort of act like fingers, and allow the Puppeteers the fine manipulation we get from our hands. They are highly intelligent, manipulative, and greedy, but extremely cowardly as well. Although they had carried on quite profitable trade with humans for several centuries, at the time of the Ringworld novels they had been absent for 200 years, after abruptly pulling up stakes and disappearing (other than a few individuals that occasionally return to wrap up business contracts and resolve other issues). The Puppeteers always kept the location of their home world a secret.
The reason that the Puppeteers disappeared is that they learned of a chain reaction of super-novas that detonated at the center of the galaxy sending out a blast of radiation that will sterilize every world that it impacts until almost the edge of the galaxy. Although it will take tens of thousands of years to reach Known Space, the Puppeteers are deathly afraid of using FTL technology and so they must travel at relativistic speed. And so they withdrew from Known Space, used their technology that can move whole worlds, and arranged the worlds of their solar system in a stable formation that is being accelerated toward the edge of the galaxy. Their expectation is that when they reach a safe zone they will encounter humans and can reestablish their trade empire.
The novel Ringworld follows the adventures of Louis Wu (from Earth), Speaker-To-Animals (a junior Kzin diplomat), Teela Brown (Wu's young lover), and Nessus (a crazy Puppeteer) on a journey to an artifact well beyond the bounds of Known Space--an artificial ring almost the diameter of the Earth's orbit around the sun, and a million miles wide, with walls a thousand miles high to hold the air in, and spun to provide Earth like gravity. The material of which it is made is, of course, extremely strong and dense. Dense enough that it could protect against the radiation blast.
In any event, the characters in the novel travel to the Ringworld, are shot down by a meteor defense system, and do exploring, and meet a variety of hominid species (with hominids filling many of the environmental niches on the Ringworld), including the remains of an advanced human-like species (the City Builders) that apparently spread across a substantial portion of the Ringworld until their civilization collapsed. Eventually they figure out how to launch their ship off the ring so they can return to human space--except for Teela Brown who has met a warrior whom she falls in love with and decides to stay with rather than leave.
The Ringworld Engineers has Wu and Speaker-To-Animals kidnapped by another Puppeteer, the Hindmost, and traveling back to the Ringworld. There they discover that the Ringworld was apparently created by ancient Pak who wanted to create a super Pak world, but the Pak had died off at some time, allowing their breeders to evolve and, as mentioned, fill many niches in the ecosystem. But they also discover that the City Builders, in order to explore solar systems near the Ringworld, had removed giant fusion drives used to stabilize the Ring to use as engines for their starships, with the result that the Ring had become unstable. Thus the story follows our travelers attempt to restabalize the Ring.
The game has no set time, but apparently is supposed to take place between the first and second novels, although it could easily take place concurrent with or after the second novel. The characters are explorers to the Ringworld sent there to explore, and discover and recover technology or other valuable items (perhaps biologicals that can be used for new drugs, or some other high value cargo).
The game comes with four main rule books. The Explorer Book covers character creation, skills, the basic game rules, natural hazards (everything from abrupt pressure changes and ageing, to the effects of radiation, thirst, and zero atmospheric pressure, and much in between), descriptions of the major human worlds, and special rules on creating a Kzin or Puppeteer character.
The Gamemaster Book contains a great deal of information about the Ringworld--information that the Gamemaster must know but the characters (and players) will have to discover. It also has advice on designing an adventure, some rules that apparently could not be fit in the Explorer Book, and an introductory adventure.
The Creatures Book details the aliens of Known Space, details the Pak and Pak culture, a large number of hominid species that can be encountered on the Ringworld, and then a sampling of animals and flora of the Ringworld.
The Technology Book, as the title suggests, describes the computers, equipment and tools, vehicles, and weapons available within Human Space.
In addition to the rulebooks described above, the box set came with some cutouts of people and creatures to use as game markers (in lieu of miniatures), a booklet with some basic information about the Ringworld (the auto-pilot printout) and character sheets; a booklet entitled "Reference Sheets" with commonly used tables; a catalog of Chaosium products, a list of what is in the box, and an information card to send to the publisher. The game originally came with dice, but I've long lost or given those away.
Almost immediately after the game was released, Chaosium released the
Ringworld Companion. Although the book contained errata for the boxed set rules, its primary purpose appears to have been to collect material that just couldn't be shoehorned into the main rule book. Thus, it provides details of additional alien species in Known Space; additional hominid species, animals and flora on the Ringworld; more technology items; information on space travel; and another adventure scenario.
Similar to Call of Cthulhu, the characters in Ringworld have 8 attributes: Strength, Constitution, Size, Dexterity, Appearance, Intelligence, Power, and Education. Players roll 2d6 and add 6 for the score for each attribute. Characters can come from various worlds within Known Space which might have some impact on the character creation; or, as noted above, players can create Kzin or Puppeteer characters. Characters are further developed by going into careers and obtaining skills.
The basic game mechanic is to roll a 1d100 (or percentile dice) with the goal of rolling under a certain target number. If using attributes, the game uses a Resistance Table that provides a target number. Otherwise, the skill score (or fraction thereof) will provide the target number.
There is very little artwork in the rule books, although what little there is is generally high quality (see, e.g., the Kzin illustrated above). But otherwise there is a lot of small type sized, dense text and occasional tables.
The game was not a commercial success and was quickly out of print. I don't know if this was because there was not much demand for the product, Niven pulling his license, or both. There is not much information about this game online.
Although I greatly enjoyed the essays about the Ringworld and Known Space, I'm not too surprised that it did not find much of a following for several reasons.
First, as noted above, the game books are dense with lots of information and small print, which was probably overwhelming to most people that might have been interested in the game. It wasn't helped by a lack of clear examples of how the rules worked to help game masters and players.
Second, although I was familiar with the setting, it just wasn't a well known setting for the majority of people that would have been playing the game. The game manuals had all the background someone would need that hadn't followed Niven's works, but this goes back to the first point about the sheer volume of material to read and it being overwhelming.
Third, the setting was overwhelming. The Ringworld is too huge for a good game environment. I realized this when running a scenario where the players were traveling from one point (where their ship had crashed) to another and I was checking for random encounters every 1,000 miles, but then had to increase it to once every 5,000 miles because otherwise I was having to check too often. But the idea that they might only encounter something once every several thousands of miles seemed weird. And yet even at that scale, it was still infinitesimal compared to the size of the Ringworld. The consequence is that you are forced to operate on unimaginable scales if you wanted to feel like you are impacting the whole of the Ringworld; but otherwise, you are operating at scales that are too small to be of any importance.
Fourth, the types of scenarios seemed limited. After all, you are not playing characters that belong to any of the cultures on the Ringworld, but humans (or other aliens) traveling to the Ringworld to explore. And that is basically all you will be doing. I'm sure that with more time my friends and I could have come up with other ideas for adventures, but it just seemed that adventure options were limited.
This could have been helped by setting adventures more generally in Known Space. There is sufficient background for doing that if you wanted, but it was not the subject of the game; and it shows by the general lack of rules or information on space travel and starships.
That said, with a group that was already familiar with Known Space and the Ringworld novels, this game has a lot of promise. But I think it would make more sense to set the game more generally in Known Space with the Ringworld as a merely one location to potentially adventure, rather than be the focus of the game. To borrow from another set of books, adventuring only on the Ringworld makes about as much sense as limiting adventures in Middle-Earth to just the mines of Moria. Yes, you could play a whole campaign in Moria, but it would ultimately be limiting; and, likewise, focusing on the Ringworld is limiting as well. In this regard, although Niven wrote a couple additional Ringworld novels, it is informative that most of his subsequent Known Space novels have not involved the Ringworld. Rather, there is a whole series of books focused on the Man-Kzin Wars, and Niven has a series set around the Puppeteers and humans they have been using to explore ahead of them as they journey toward the edge of the galaxy.
So, if I were to try this game again, I would either shift the focus to Known Space more generally; or if focused on the Ringword, make it more epic and impactful than just the character's starship crashing and the adventurers exploring, which was the focus of the two scenarios that came in the game rules and companion book.
