You've probably seen it being talked about around most of the other RPG blogs over the last week or so. BADASS is a free RPG system written by Jay Steven Anyong and published by Stargazer Games. I didn't see the point in adding my thoughts until I'd had a proper chance to look through it.

The basic premise of the game is that it doesn't make sense. Now I don't mean that in a surreal sense or that it has no real direction. What I mean is that if you take all those cheesy 80's action movies where the hero dodges thousands of bullets before leaping off the roof of a building and plunging a sword through the cockpit window of a helicopter to kill the evil boss and coming out unscathed then you might come close to describing this game. Your a BADASS and everything you do is BADASS. In fact the moment you stop doing anything that is BADASS you start to lose your power. The kid in me loves the premise! The adult in me is finding it very hard to actually get my head around it though.

Working your way through the PDF you'll notice that for for a free game it has been really well thought out and it looks good. The graphics and layout work well and it makes me want to read the rules rather than trudge my way through them in order to be able to play the game. In fact, and this is possibly more to do with the scale of the project, this game manages to pull off this kind of fluff writing that The Dresden Files failed at. I loved reading the DFRPG books but that style of writing didn't work well with getting the rules into my head. In BADASS's case though everything just seems far simpler and easier to take in.

Jay has put a lot of work into getting the feel of the game correct. Flava and BADASS points just scream the setting at you so loudly that it's hard not to start thinking of characters, backgrounds and finishing moves whilst your 'turning' the pages. Now bare in mind that I haven't actually played the game or even tested out the mechanics when I say this but it looks well thought out and easy to play. What you have to realise about this game though is that even if the played like worst combat mechanic you'd ever came across I'd still want to play this game purely from the setting. Many people have tried something similar in the past but no one has ever seen to have got the absurdity of the setting as well as Jay.

It's not all thumbs up though. As systems go there are a few things I think that could be improved upon. It's mostly layout issues though rather than anything of substance. I decided that this would be a perfect game to play with my stepson so let him have a look through the rules and before he was half way through he was asking me questions about things that aren't explained until further into the pdf. For example mentioning snake-eyes and boxcars pages before explaining what the terms mean or the mechanics of certain flava's confusing you until you read the rest of the rules at the end of the book. The robot and dinosaur race flava's just seem tagged on rather than an actual part of the game and in some places the physical layout of the pictures and text is slightly messed up and lacks that professional touch. These are all small issues and not one of them detracts from what looks like a great game but they still matter. The setting is that good that it demands to look it's best and with this distribution method so easy to fix.

Now all I need to do is find time to run the game with my stepson or, and I say this will all the love and respect in the world for my gaming group, that one of my normal players can't make it to a game so we can give this a shot to fill in for a week. In fact if what I hear regarding zombie version being in the works is true then I fear the news that World War Z is to be filmed less than 10 miles from where I sit will pale in comparison.