In this adventure, your heroes of Gor take to the Northern Forests at the behest of a fallen warrior. Panther girls are shocking enough, but what awaits them there will shake them to their very core.
Contains additional rules for generating Tharlarion.
In this adventure, your heroes of Gor take to the Voltai Mountains on a quest of import for the distant and unknowable Priest-Kings. Peril may well descent into farce as a complex kidnapping plot requires the involvement of an out-of-practice conjurer, and flight from a city known for its deadly tarns…
Contains additional rules for aerial combat.
Far in the frozen north of the Counter-Earth, bondmaids share whispered stories of Sinter Klass, the legendary Jarl of the frozen wastes. It is said he thunders out of snow on his war-sledge, drawn by eight enormous northern tabuk, their spiral horns rusty with the crusted blood of his enemies.
He seeks out slaves who have been dutiful and good to their Masters and rewards them with wood and amber beads. Slaves who have been neglected he rewards with a romp in the furs and a dash of slave perfume. Slaves who have been spiteful and bad may be spanked and whipped or carried off in his sack to learn their place in his hall.
Masters who are cruel for no reason may face his wrath, stealing from them, enslaving them or challenging them to a duel to the death – though even when he loses he seems to reappear the next year.
Klaas’ booming laugh and the giggling of his three bondmaids, Hi, Ha and He, along with the jangling of the bells of his war-sled heralds his arrival. It is traditional to leave a spoonful of slave gruel or a much-prized candy out for him and his girls.
Agility 4D
Athletics 4D+1
Blades 7D+1
Clubs 4D+1
Evade 7D+1
Fistfight 7D+1
Riding 4D+2
Spears 6D+2
Stealth 7D+1
Throwing 6D+1
Dexterity 3D
Bow 3D+2
Draft Beast 6D
Rope Work 6D
Body 5D
Fitness 8D
Endurance 10D
Run 6D
Survival 10D
Reason 3D
Healing 5D
Initiative 6D
Navigation 6D
Senses 6D
Arts 2D
Charm 3D
Animal Handling 6D
Command 6D
Intimidation 6D
Slave Handling 6D
Will 6D
Health: 60/30
Power Damage: 4D
Accuracy Damage: 2D
Move: 18/27/54/90
Honour: 4 (Regenerates each Winter season)
Gletscher: Legendary Axe – 7D+1/7D+2
Uartig: Legendary Long Sword – 7D, ignores one pip of armour.
Pæn: Legendary Long Sword – 7D, +1 pip on attack rolls.
In this supplement for Tales of Gor you join a rebellious inventor on a quest for a mythical lost island and city. Will his technological innovations anger the Priest Kings? Will you fall afoul of the pirates that ply their trade across the Thassa? What will you discover beneath the waves, far from the politics and skulduggery of Civilised Gor?
This book also contains information on a (non-canonical) Farther Isle for you to use as a setting or base of operations for your player group.
A new adventure/supplement for Tales of Gor is now out. You can buy it HERE on PDF, or HERE on Lulu (search online for coupons, they often have discounted or free shipping codes!).
A ‘side quest’ from the line of Tales of Gor adventures, The Game of Worlds is an excellent way to bring Earth-based characters to Gor and set them off on their adventures as an introduction. It starts on Earth and takes them to Gor, in the wake of being caught up in the intrigues on their own world, from there they can return – or stay – to live a life of adventure on a more colourful planet.
This booklet also contains non-canonical speculation, rules and ideas for Earth-based campaigns and characters, as well as the interplanetary cold war as it plays out on that world.
Ta Sardar Gor!
The art pieces by artist Michael Manning that were created for Tales of Gor and World of Gor.
Accomplished and talented fetish Artist, Michael Manning, brings the Counter-Earth to life in these illustrations for the RPG and world guide to John Norman’s Gor. Here you can see the illustrations in their full-size glory and appreciate their detail and style.
Buy it HERE in PDF.
The hardcopy version is a Lulu EXCLUSIVE and will not be available on Amazon or other outlets.
From John. A. over on RPGNOW.
The Gor section at RPGNOW can be found HERE.
The World of Gor: Gorean Roleplaying World Encyclopedia is a fantastic addition to the Tales of Gor rpg. First the technical points. The pdf’s organization was well done. It contains an introduction section on Gor, followed by the author’s experience with Gor, a summation of all 34 Gorean series books, and then a chapter by chapter, A to Z encyclopedia. I’m a sucker for a well laid out book.
The content itself is phenomenal. The book is worth it even if you don’t play the rpg but just enjoy the book series. I know from now on, that when I read Norman’s books, I’ll have this handy so I can look things up quickly and easily. As a gaming tool, it’ll make explaining aspects of Gor to the group a breeze. For example, castes can be a rather daunting task to explain. With the encyclopedia, I have an entry for each caste, that describes their profession, dress, and general lot in life. Great detail has been given to each entry within.
The encyclopedia doesn’t just tackle the “low hanging fruit” either by just giving certain topics like slavery one entry. But instead, we get the whole picture. I now can confidently understand and explain the intricate and complicated concepts of Gorean slavery to my group. Or Kaissa, a game like chess on Gor, could have had a simple entry but instead we essentially get the game explained to us. With entries such as this, my Gor rpg can come alive for my players because it gives me the tools to do so.
Normally, I’d have to go to various websites to prepare background information or go from book to book of Norman’s work to prepare for a game like Gor. Now, it is all at my fingertips. If you are a fan of Gor, I recommend this book, just like I did the actual rpg. They are wonderful reading enhancements to the world. And if you are a Gor rpg player, then to me, this is a must! Also, the price is very, very fair for the amount of time and work that must have went into creating this encyclopedia!
The Silver Cult thrusts the characters into a conspiracy that threatens to overturn the natural order of Gor and the city of Tharna. Will they side with the revolutionaries who seek to usurp the power of that city, or help crush the rebellion?
This supplement also contains rules for slave-breaking and torture, and for encouraging better roleplay through mechanics.
Ta Sardar Gor!
You can get it in PDF at RPGNOW HERE. (Make sure you log in and activate ‘adult content’).
Or in print HERE.
The Gor section at RPGNOW can be found HERE.
‘Emma of Gor’ has written a useful guide for those wanting to take a very purist approach to making and playing their characters. You can find that link here:
More so than most games, ‘Tales of Gor’ cries out for players to create characters that seem a natural fit to the thriving and detailed world they live in. This is not really the campaign setting for you to foist a generic D&D adventurer on. To get the most out of the Gor setting you’d do well to consider the kind of people that live on the Counter Earth. While you don’t have to play ‘typical Goreans’ – the game after all makes the point many times that Gor is yours to interpret as you will – what follows is a guide to character creation if you want to truly capture the flavour of the kind of people who live, fight and lust throughout the Gorean cycle.
World of Gor, meanwhile, has been reviewed, link below.
In strict alphabetical order, the entries cover everything from prominent individuals to flora and fauna, popular beliefs and customs, and matters of everyday life. They are illustrated by relevant quotations from the books as well as splendid pen-and-ink drawings that capture the exotic feel of the world well. Even where slaves are involved, they remain tastefully done… and are particularly fascinating when they depict the exotic animals of Gor.
This rather lovely review of Tales of Gor dropped on RPGNOW, written by Emma R. You can buy the books at RPGNOW (in PDF, you may have to log in and change settings to make adult content visible) or at Lulu.com in hardcopy.
***
It’s fair to say that Gor has something of a polarising opinion on people.
And that’s putting it mildly.
While ostensibly derived from the same pulp ‘swords and planet’ genre that spawned adventure romps by Edgar Rice Burroughs, Robert E Howard, Leigh Brackett and Michael Moorcock amongst many others, Gor from an early age ensured its commercial popularity and courted controversy at the same time by making slavery an integral part of the setting, to the point where nowadays that is pretty much all it is (in)famous for.
That said, it was once a common series of books in the 1970s and early 1980s in the Science Fiction sections of bookshops, occupying vast tracts of shelf space, and the basic core idea (setting aside the more controversial elements) of a primitive Counter Earth orbiting the Sun on the opposite side to the Earth, and the secret war between two alien races vying to control both Gor and (as a secondary prize) Earth is a good one and cries out for a role-playing game to match. And now at last it has one.
The core set comes as two volumes – game stats and character design (plus an introduction to the culture setting) in the first, and an encyclopaedic compendium of A to Z reference material in the second. This makes commercial sense as there are thousands of potential Gor fans who might wish to pick up the reference material, even though they don’t play RPGs, and wouldn’t need to know how many hit points a Sleen has.
43 on average, just in case you’re wondering. 🙂
The first thing to remark upon as I crack open (in a virtual pdf kind of way) the electronic spine of the Tales of Gor game manual is how uncontroversial it actually is once you skim its pages. Yes, there are some pictures of naked breasts, but the author has not produced a game book that beats you about the head with lectures about slavery and the natural order of the genders. What you have is what you would actually want – a sleek, easy to grasp set of rules to establish characters and campaign adventures set on the ‘sword and sandal’ world of Gor.
It takes the adventure setting of Gor first and foremost, and while it doesn’t shy away from the prevalent nature of slavery on that world, I wouldn’t say the slavery aspect in the game books is any more prevalent than in the old Mongoose Conan RPG or in the Rome TV series. Because the author recognises that any tabletop Gor RPG is going to be about sword play and adventures first, with the erotic overtones of that world mostly on show in the background to add spice and kink to the decadent nature of Gorean society.
And here it comes down to your personal preferences. If you don’t like the idea of old school pulp stories having a sexual undertone, then of course this game is never going to be your thing, in much the same way I don’t really take much to Cyber Punk or Japanese Manga. But reading the book you’d probably be surprised how readily accessible it is as a complete body of work to anyone who is interested in pulp Science Fantasy games.
What James does very successfully here is he takes all the interesting and imaginative elements of the Gorean world – elements that are often lost or submerged beneath tedious copy and paste diatribes on the nature of the sexes in the later books (and one thing that can’t be denied, Gor is probably one of the most detailed and fleshed out worlds in pulp fiction) – and he plays to its strengths, playing down the exasperating aspects that even the most enthusiastic John Norman fan could probably live without.
So yes, it’s first and foremost an RPG of ‘High Adventure’ that benefits from a decadent setting that either appeals or doesn’t appeal. If you have set your mind to hating anything to do with Gor, well, this game probably isn’t going to win you over, but if you’ve simply heard it’s controversial, you may be surprised to see how the subject matter has been handled here.
The game mechanics are lifted squarely from the open source D6 system that powered the original Star Wars RPG – a system that incorporates ‘wild dice’ to produce extreme effects at either end of the spectrum. It’s simple enough to be picked up by people who are new to RPGs, but elegant enough that it can provide the sort of feel you want from a game that evokes heroism and larger than life adventures.
Gor’s strict caste system lends itself well to character templates, and although the most appealing one for me is obviously ‘head strong, condescending, reassuringly superficial, and somewhat overconfident agent of the sinister Kurii,’ you can if you wish role-play a builder instead.
Though honestly? A builder? Why would you? 🙂
The black and white art by Michael Manning is all bespoke and with only one or two exceptions, evokes the complex world of Gor very well indeed. I’d best describe it as a comic book take on Aubrey Beardsley with its solid chiaroscuro style. The exception for me at least are the faces of the Kurii that look a bit too cartoon like and not nearly ferocious enough. In some of the illustrations you feel like you want to give them a great big hug and stroke their lovely soft fur, and indeed, there appear to be one or two pictures where slave girls are indeed doing just that (Disclaimer: in real life, never actually attempt to stroke or hug a Kur). On the other hand, the pictures on pages 25 and 56 are just sublime and worth the price of admission alone.
Grim Note: The Kur are – much like many of Lovecraft’s creations, more horrifying on the page than when brought to life in art, but we did our best 🙂
Despite the single minded tone of the official books, the game is quick to assure us that it is designed to accommodate any manner of interpretations of Gor. It’s quite conceivable that a group of player characters could be anti-slavery, for example, odd as that might seem to John Norman himself. And it wouldn’t be that difficult to run a Gor game in the style of Robert E Howard’s Hyborian age, with the added flavour of the secret cold war between the enigmatic Priest Kings and the savage Kurii lurking in the background.
Moving on to the second volume (which was a bit of a beast to download to be honest) we have a hefty compendium of easily digestible background entries in an A to Z format, made more fun by randomly placed interjections by the author writing as an Earth man brought to Gor to live for a few years as a roving scribe. Breaking up what is essentially 202 pages of encyclopaedia entries, with a series of (often) humorous insights and anecdotal observations into everything from Samos of Port Kar to Pleasure Slaves, makes for fun reading, and my only criticism here is there isn’t more of it. It’s a stylistic flourish that I would love to see carried over into supplementary books, especially ones that flesh out specific regions of Gor.
Grim Note: I didn’t want to overstep my bounds as an author, rather than a game designer, in this creative writing element. I kept it shorter than I might otherwise have done if I were more self indulgent, but I will consider adding more to the supplementary material.
As I well know (because I role-play there), the Internet has long had a sizeable presence of ‘role-players’ gaming Gor in various forms in chat room based sites (not to mention the vast population of such people in Second Life) and it would be very cool indeed if this game with its simple enough rule system that lends itself very well to the dice rolling programmes in Gor based chat rooms, became a standard rule set for people to take their role-play further than it currently stands. It has that potential over and above the more usual tabletop format of role-playing games and it would be a vast improvement on the current anarchic system whereby two players simply argue about who stabbed who successfully with a sword.
Taking into account its small press origins, this is an impressive and inexpensive role-playing game that succeeds in bringing the full flavour of its source material to the tabletop. To my mind it presents a far more elegant and cohesive game setting than, say, the bloated and sprawling world of Pathfinder, and it has the potential to be expanded into all manner of meaty supplements.
High on my wish list would be adventure/sourcebooks for the various regions of Gor – in particular the Tahari, the Northern reaches of Torvaldsland, the Panther Girl forests and the Jungle interior. Taking one of those regions, populating it with fleshed out locations and a format of say, 101 adventure seeds, or perhaps a sprawling campaign on the scale of ‘Shadows of Yog Sothoth’, would make for a very cool package indeed.
And I can but dream of a source pack specifically tailored to haughty, over confident agents of the Kurii…
So, all credit to James Desborough who seems to have pulled off the near impossible, when you consider how toxic the concept of Gor can be in certain quarters.
Five stars, which frankly is four stars more than I’d give to the tawdry and demeaning plays of Boots Tarsk Bit. Needless to say, I of course only watch those plays periodically to remind myself how offensive they are… 😉
Postmortem Studios 