D&D 4E Introducing Orcus -- a 4E retroclone

[Nnesk]

Simply amazing stuff.

 

[GMforPowergamers]

this is amazing... GREAT WORK (now to get some players to try it)

 

[Greggy C]

What I am most impressed by, is the prescience to call it ORCus.

 

[Enrahim2]

That copyright notice - did you shout out to all third party content creators you could find, or is it indeed using material from all those sources? In the later case I consider this impressive almost beyond belief!

 

[Sanglorian]

That copyright notice - did you shout out to all third party content creators you could find, or is it indeed using material from all those sources? In the later case I consider this impressive almost beyond belief!

There's 62 sources of material for Orcus, including 14 for the core rules. But because I have to cite every source that those sources use, the Section 15 is much more than 62 entries long!

A lot of the sources are only for one or two things. For example, Goodman Games had a handful of 4e adventures under the OGL, usually with a couple of new monsters in each. They're all in Orcus' Section 15.

In retrospect I should have been more selective for the main Orcus books because the Section 15 is quite unwieldy because it's so long.

 

[Sanglorian]

Hi folks, I'm excited to share the release version of the Orcus Heroes' Handbook!

Download the Orcus Heroes' Handbook PDF or buy a print copy on Lulu.

Buy a print copy at your own risk -- I haven't (yet) ordered this version of the book from Lulu, so it's possible there's errors in there that I haven't picked up from the PDF version.

I'm also making the pre-release version of the Orcus Game Master's Guide PDF available. You can even buy a print copy on Lulu, but note the book will change before being finalised for a proper "release".

Thanks all for your interest! The SRD is available on Github Pages as always.

 

[GrayLinnorm]

I saw that this is available on DriveThruRPG. I downloaded the original in March; are there any changes?

 

[Sanglorian]

I saw that this is available on DriveThruRPG. I downloaded the original in March; are there any changes?

Good catch, submitting these to DriveThruRPG was my last step before officially launching version 1.0! There have been a bunch of changes since March, including a lot more flavour text for ancestries and monsters, fixing typos and other little errors, and removing references to material that isn't in the books (like iron golems and red dragons).

But I hope that v 1.0 represents a fairly stable version of the game.

Speaking of, here's the full details! Thanks to everyone in the ENWorld community who contributed or otherwise gave support.

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After over two years of development, today the Orcus Hero’s Handbook and Orcus Game Master’s Guide have been released on GitHub and DriveThruRPG as free downloads and print-on-demand from Lulu.com.

Orcus is wholly compatible with the fourth edition of the world’s most popular roleplaying game and consists entirely of open content.

Players can combine classes, kits and feats to cover a wide range of character concepts – and thanks to the power system and tactical combat, swashbucklers, tacticians, knights and beastmasters can hold their own alongside demonologists, enchanters, elemental duelists and divinely-inspired priests.

• Print-on-demand copies of the books are available at-cost.
• The game features original and third party content, rather than paraphrasing content from 4E, but it is entirely interoperable with official 4E content.
• Flexible character creation is a priority, with the class, kit and feat subsystems interlocking to allow for a wide range of characters right out of the box. Martial arts, psychic powers, demanding incantations, poisons with out-of-combat functionality and familiars are all included.
• The novel “threats” system makes setting up tactical encounters easy, with a readily available list of level-appropriate terrain features, traps and events for each terrain type. Just add the monsters!

Orcus by the numbers:

• 221 monsters
• 24 ancestries
• 9 classes and 25 kits
• 20 prestige paths and 6 epic paths
• 80 skilled practices and magical rituals
• 138 feats
• 848 powers, including advanced maneuvers and poisons usable by any character

Project lead Chris Sakkas says:

“Orcus would not have been possible without the Open Game License and the community of sharing and collaboration that it cultivated.

“Orcus has entirely new classes, ancestries, monsters and powers, as well as many others based on Open Game Content from dozens of creators across several game lines.

“Our hope is that Orcus will make it easier to publish sourcebooks and adventures compatible with 4E, as well as serving as the foundation for other clones and games.”

 

[jdrakeh]

I just wanted to say that this looks amazing! As somebody who never got into 4e due to the reams of errata that were never incorporated into the printed books, I've always had some degree of FOMO where 4e is concerned (I had some friends who very, very, into it despite the errata). Now I can experience a well-crafted 4e out of the box!

 

[bert1001 fka bert1000]

So, I just finished BG3 and had a lightbulb go off.

IMO 5e is not a great fit for CRPGs but 4e would be amazing.

If someone took the time to recreate the original 4e classes in ORCUS, then you could create an CRPG that was essentially 4e, right?

A lot of the BG3 problems would go away (combat unbalanced, etc,). Obviously BG3 production values would be unobtainable for most studios, but Solasta is proof that you can develop a game based on an existing rpg ruleset with a reasonable budget.

One can dream, anyway!