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Note: This is an article about the Worlds of Wonder role-playing game. For information on the Worlds of Wonder toy company, see Worlds of Wonder (toy company). Worlds of Wonder was a 1982 multi-genre role-playing game produced by Chaosium, and created by Steve Perrin and others. It was a boxed set consisting of four 16-page booklets: Basic Role-Playing, Magic World, Superworld, and Future World, an even shorter pamphlet on joining the settings together, a sheet of cardboard figures for each setting, and dice. The authors on the box are credited as Perrin (Steve Perrin), Henderson (Steve Henderson), Monson (Gordon Monson), Stafford (Greg Stafford), and Willin (Lynn Willis).
Multi-genre Worlds of Wonder is generally considered the first commercial multi-genre system, predating Steve Jackson's GURPS by 4 years. The idea, as stated in the pamphlet, was that characters could be created in any of the three settings, or even Basic Role-Playing, then physically travel to any of the three adventuring settings. The pamphlet proposed a neutral area that had magic connections to each of the worlds. Money from each setting would be valuable in the crossroads, at various conversion rates, and characters would be able to physically travel from one world to another. Each setting booklet, however, was effectively a game in itself, with different (though mostly compatible) character generation and rules. Magic World The Magic World booklet was an attempt to bring the Basic Role-Playing basis of RuneQuest closer to the popular Dungeons & Dragons rules. Character abilities were still based on individual skills and percentages, and not levels, but unlike the classless Basic Role-Playing or RuneQuest, initial characters could start as one of 4 D&D style professions or character classes. Warriors started with more fighting skills, Rogues with adventuring skills, like stealth, Sages with non-combat knowledge skills, and only Sorcerers were permitted magic spell casting. Only Characters could also be members of the standard Tolkienesque fantasy races, such as dwarfs, trolls, goblins, and elves. Unlike either Dungeons & Dragons or RuneQuest of the time, casting each spell was a skill, and Sorcerers had to make their skill roll with a spell to cast it successfully. This system was later incorporated into RuneQuest. Magic World was the basis of the first version of the Swedish role-playing game, Drakar och Demoner (Dragons and Demons). Steve Perrin and Gordon Monson are credited as authors of this booklet. Superworld Superworld was a generic superhero game in a modern setting, in many ways similar to Champions, the most popular superhero game at the time. Like Champions, superheroic powers were bought with Hero Points at character creation time. These points could also be spent to raise characteristics, to make super-strong characters, for example. Additional Hero Points could be gained by taking Disabilities, such as blindness, vulnerability to certain attacks, or permanently selling back starting skills. Unlike Champions, the starting points were not fixed for each character, but based on the total of characteristics rolled up, so heroes were not created equal. Steve Perrin and Steve Henderson are credited as authors of this booklet. Superworld was the only one of the three genre settings to see later life as a standalone roleplaying game. Future World In the same way that the other two booklets took inspiration from other popular existing genre systems, Future World (or Future Unlike Traveller, though, non-human characters were encouraged, and robots, and several alien races (ursinoids, insectoids, and saurians), were presented as character possibilities. Also unlike Traveller, travel between planets was by means of interstellar teleporter gates, maintained by ICE, the Imperial Corps of Engineers, not starships, changing play dynamics considerably. Rather than wandering the galaxy in their own spaceship, player characters would presumably be government or corporation associated explorers. | |||||||||||||||||||||||
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