Risus: Rules-Lite to the Min
Risus: The Anything RPG
By S. John Ross
I seem to have gotten into a Rules-Lite RPG series here at Black Gate. Not sure how that happened. I didn’t plan it, I know that for certain…
A few weeks ago, I reviewed one of the classics of “beer-and-pretzels” role-playing games, Kobolds Ate My Baby! Although a great game, KAMB! uses a specific (comically specific) setting with rigid character types. If you want to unleash a beer-and-pretzels RPG night without any limitations, you will want to turn to Risus, a generic system perfect for the slam-bang quick gag game.
Risus takes the term “rules-lite” and goes to the minimum with it: the whole system fits comfortably onto six PDF pages you can download here. I have to take caution with this review, because I might risk writing one that’s longer than the review subject. But those six pages provide only a blueprint for endless parody-RPG weirdness; I’m reviewing the experience you might get from putting Risus into practice.
If a single positive resulted from the work of that woefully misinformed but correctly acronymed organization BADD (Bothered about Dungeons & Dragons), a group that waged a crusade to stop children from jumping into the Bags of Holding that they learned to construct from an $11.99 hardcover rulebook purchased at a hobby store, it was the computer RPG 
Fourth Edition Dungeons and Dragons has been with us for about a year now; long enough for the gaming community to get a pretty good taste of it. I’ve been hearing various reports from gamer friends about the system, and opinions of it have fallen across a roughly tripartite spectrum, from favorable to neutral to negative. Among these views, though, there is agreement that this isn’t the same old Dungeons and Dragons. Fans of Fourth Edition sometimes call it a “transformation,” or point out, “This time around they didn’t have any sacred cows. They were ready to change anything.” Critics have generally agreed that “It might be a game some people like, but it’s no longer D&D.”
The death of Gary Gygax, co-creator of Dungeons & Dragons, marks the passing of an era. Gygax changed the face of fantasy like no other since J.R.R. Tolkien or Robert E. Howard. D&D brought people together, forged lasting friendships, and introduced a whole new generation to classic fantasy — in the process firing imaginations, heavily influencing the fledgling computer and video game markets, and laying the foundation for the billion-dollar online RPG industry. Just as importantly Gygax invited — indeed, demanded — that his readers become creators themselves, and the young fans he inspired eventually became some of today’s bestselling authors, including Raymond E. Feist, Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman, R. A. Salvatore, Ed Greenwood, and dozens of others.