Worlds of Wonder
Encyclopedia
Worlds of Wonder is a 1982 multi-genre role-playing game
Role-playing game
A role-playing game is a game in which players assume the roles of characters in a fictional setting. Players take responsibility for acting out these roles within a narrative, either through literal acting, or through a process of structured decision-making or character development...

 produced by Chaosium
Chaosium
Chaosium is one of the longer lived publishers of role-playing games still in existence. Founded by Greg Stafford, its first game was actually a wargame, White Bear and Red Moon, which later mutated into Dragon Pass and its sequel, Nomad Gods...

. It is a boxed set consisting of four 16-page booklets: Basic Role-Playing
Basic Role-Playing
Basic Role-Playing is a role-playing game system which originated in the fantasy-oriented RuneQuest role-playing game rules...

, 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
Steve Perrin
Stephen Herbert Perrin, born January 22 1946 and simply known as Steve Perrin, is a game designer and technical writer/editor.Perrin is probably best known for creating the role-playing game RuneQuest for Chaosium...

), Henderson (Steve Henderson)
Steve Henderson (game designer)
Steve Henderson was a co-designer of several Role Playing Game titles and supplements, including RuneQuest, Worlds of Wonder and Superworld, and a partner in DunDraCon...

, Monson (Gordon Monson), Stafford (Greg Stafford)
Greg Stafford
Francis Gregory Stafford , usually known as Greg Stafford, is an American game designer, publisher and shaman.-Glorantha and gaming:...

, and Willin (Lynn Willis)
Lynn Willis
Lynn Willis is a wargame and role-playing game designer who has done work for Metagaming Concepts, Game Designers' Workshop, and Chaosium.Willis began by designing science fiction wargames for Metagaming, starting with the Godsfire in 1976. He also designed the microgames Olympica and Holy War...

.

Multi-genre

Worlds of Wonder is considered the first commercial multi-genre system, predating Steve Jackson
Steve Jackson (US)
Steve Jackson is an American game designer. After working for many years at Metagaming Concepts designing such games as Ogre and The Fantasy Trip, he left to found Steve Jackson Games in the early 1980s...

's GURPS
GURPS
The Generic Universal RolePlaying System, or GURPS, is a tabletop role-playing game system designed to allow for play in any game setting...

 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 is an attempt to bring the Basic Role-Playing basis of RuneQuest
RuneQuest
RuneQuest is a fantasy role-playing game first published in 1978 by Chaosium, created by Steve Perrin and set in Greg Stafford's mythical world of Glorantha. RuneQuest was notable for its original gaming system and for its verisimilitude in adhering to an original fantasy world...

closer to the popular Dungeons & Dragons
Dungeons & Dragons
Dungeons & Dragons is a fantasy role-playing game originally designed by Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson, and first published in 1974 by Tactical Studies Rules, Inc. . The game has been published by Wizards of the Coast since 1997...

rules. Character abilities are based on individual skills and percentages, and initial characters can start as one of 4 professions or character classes. Warriors start with more fighting skills, Rogues with adventuring skills, like stealth, Sages with non-combat knowledge skills, and only Sorcerers are permitted magic spell casting
Magic (gaming)
Some role-playing games or game systems can include a set of rules that are used to portray magic in the paranormal sense. These rules simulate the effects that magic would have within the game context, according to how the game designer intended the magic to be portrayed...

. Only Characters could also be members of the standard Tolkienesque  fantasy races, such as dwarfs, trolls, goblins, and elves.

Casting spells in Magic World is a skill, and Sorcerers must succeed with their skill roll in order to cast it. This system was later incorporated into RuneQuest.

Magic World is also the basis of the first version of the Swedish
Sweden
Sweden , officially the Kingdom of Sweden , is a Nordic country on the Scandinavian Peninsula in Northern Europe. Sweden borders with Norway and Finland and is connected to Denmark by a bridge-tunnel across the Öresund....

 role-playing game, Drakar och Demoner
Drakar och Demoner
Drakar och Demoner is a Swedish fantasy role-playing game first published in 1982 by the game publishing company Äventyrsspel .First edition was basically a translation of Steve Perrin's Basic Role-Playing Drakar och Demoner (Swedish for Dragons and Demons, in Sweden commonly referred to by the...

 (Dragons and Demons).

Steve Perrin
Steve Perrin
Stephen Herbert Perrin, born January 22 1946 and simply known as Steve Perrin, is a game designer and technical writer/editor.Perrin is probably best known for creating the role-playing game RuneQuest for Chaosium...

 and Gordon Monson are credited as authors of this booklet.

Superworld

Superworld is a generic superhero
Superhero
A superhero is a type of stock character, possessing "extraordinary or superhuman powers", dedicated to protecting the public. Since the debut of the prototypical superhero Superman in 1938, stories of superheroes — ranging from brief episodic adventures to continuing years-long sagas —...

 game in a modern setting, in many ways similar to Champions
Champions (role-playing game)
Champions is a role-playing game published by Hero Games that is designed to simulate and function in a four-color superhero comic book world. It was created by George MacDonald, Steve Peterson, Bruce Harlick, and Ray Greer....

. Superpowers are bought with Hero Points
Character point
Character points are abstract units used in some role-playing games during character creation and development.Early role-playing games such as Dungeons & Dragons assigned random values to a player character's attributes, while allowing each character a fixed number of skills...

 at character creation time. These points can also be spent to raise characteristics like strength or dexterity. Additional Hero Points can be gained by taking disabilities like blindness or vulnerability to certain attacks.

Unlike Champions, starting points are not fixed for each character, but instead are based on the total of each character's characteristics.

Steve Perrin
Steve Perrin
Stephen Herbert Perrin, born January 22 1946 and simply known as Steve Perrin, is a game designer and technical writer/editor.Perrin is probably best known for creating the role-playing game RuneQuest for Chaosium...

 and Steve Henderson
Steve Henderson (game designer)
Steve Henderson was a co-designer of several Role Playing Game titles and supplements, including RuneQuest, Worlds of Wonder and Superworld, and a partner in DunDraCon...

 are credited as authors of this booklet.

Superworld
Superworld
Superworld is a superhero-themed role-playing game published by Chaosium in 1983. Written by Basic Role-Playing and RuneQuest author Steve Perrin, Superworld began as one third of the Worlds of Wonder product, which also included a generic fantasy setting, "Magic World", and a generic science...

 is the only one of the three genre settings to see later life as a standalone roleplaying game
Superworld
Superworld is a superhero-themed role-playing game published by Chaosium in 1983. Written by Basic Role-Playing and RuneQuest author Steve Perrin, Superworld began as one third of the Worlds of Wonder product, which also included a generic fantasy setting, "Magic World", and a generic science...

.

Future World

In the same way that the other two booklets took inspiration from other popular existing genre systems, Future World (or Future*World, as it is sometimes written in the game pages) was partly inspired by the then most popular science fiction
Science fiction
Science fiction is a genre of fiction dealing with imaginary but more or less plausible content such as future settings, futuristic science and technology, space travel, aliens, and paranormal abilities...

 role-playing game, Traveller
Traveller (role-playing game)
Traveller is a series of related science fiction role-playing games, the first published in 1977 by Game Designers' Workshop and subsequent editions by various companies remaining in print to this day. The game was inspired from such classic science fiction stories as the Dumarest saga series by...

. Like the Traveller background, Future World hypothesized a huge interstellar empire, and like its character generation rules, Future World characters started as members of one of six professions (Army, Civilian, Criminal, ICE, Scouts, or Science), and learned skills during terms of character generation.

Unlike Traveller, though, non-human characters were encouraged, and robot
Robot
A robot is a mechanical or virtual intelligent agent that can perform tasks automatically or with guidance, typically by remote control. In practice a robot is usually an electro-mechanical machine that is guided by computer and electronic programming. Robots can be autonomous, semi-autonomous or...

s, and several alien races (ursinoids, insect
Insect
Insects are a class of living creatures within the arthropods that have a chitinous exoskeleton, a three-part body , three pairs of jointed legs, compound eyes, and two antennae...

oids, and sauria
Sauria
Sauria is a clade of reptiles that includes all living diapsids, as well as their common ancestor and all its extinct descendants. The ancestral saurian was probably a small lizard-like creature living in the Permian Period...

ns), were presented as character possibilities. Also unlike Traveller, travel between planets was by means of interstellar teleporter gates
Interstellar teleporter
An interstellar teleporter is a hypothetical technology appearing in science fiction, typically in hard sci-fi, which teleports people and/or other objects over interstellar distances instantaneously...

, 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.

External links

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