After playing narrative/storytelling systems such as HeroQuest, Wordplay, the unpublished Otherworlds (by Mark Humphries) and Burning Wheel for the last 10 years or so I feel I’ve learnt enough about such games to have a go at writing one myself.

In a very basic sense it’s a continuation and evolving of the system in Monkey, which in itself used a very early version of Wombat (now lost in the mists of hard drive failure).

It’s called Wombat because I believe that such games should be light and fun and having a silly name prevents me from taking it too seriously and stalling development as a result to remove my head from my ass. Besides its more fun than “Universal Generic Storytelling System” (UGSS)!

Wombat as a system revolves around three core concepts.

1. The Action Roll – a simple conflict resolution system, roll D6 add modifiers vs Opponents roll or fixed difficulty. Conceivably if you don’t like this, simply substitute your favourite D20 or D100 method. The default D6 method is to make the game accessible to non-gamers.
2. Story Opportunities – Players uses these to take control of the narrative, to their advantage.
3. Experiences – Not only a way of rewarding play, i.e. an experience system with benefits for character development, but also a way of bringing those Experiences into future play.

Its intended to be involved as a game experience, but rules light so newcomers easily adopt it (and give it a warm hug).

It is intended to be short and to the point, so I can include it the self contained games that I intend to produce using it. i.e. it will be D101 Games’ house storytelling system.

It will not (as previously announced via the interwebs) be publically available via creative commons or even OGL, although I will be operating a ‘Friends’ licensing system (email me if interested). Also email me if you are interested in helping out with development in any capacity.