As February looms large, the desire to get away from it all presses down. That feeling is more oppressive this year thanks to the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic. It’s easy to imagine being in a tropical paradise like Al-Amarja, sitting on a beach, waiting for orders from your Secret Masters from the future.
Wait, what?
Over The Edge is an RPG that originally debuted in 1992 but seems even more prescient now. It grabbed hold of the conspiracy zeitgeist by creating a surreal setting where all of them could be true at once and plopped characters right in the middle between a struggle between robot overlords, secret squid people and a cult that worshipped cereal mascots like saints. A new edition recently came out to update, recontextualize and reinvent the personalities, organizations and groups that made Over the Edge a classic 90s RPG.
The game is set on Al-Amarja, a mysterious island that’s one of those nebulous small countries that people have heard of but few know much about. (The game has even changed the island’s general location between editions to add fuel to this sense of mystery). Al-Amarja has several strange customs, unusual shops and organizations, and is a convergence point for conspiracy and weirdness of all kinds. Players get wrapped up in these plots and come out the other side weirder for it.
The original RPG had a very light system, now known as WaRP, but designer Jonathan Tweet decided he wanted to rewrite the rules from the ground up. Characters are still relatively simple to create, but the system now involves rolling 2d6 looking for a 7 or better. Difficulty is handled by rerolls. Characters are rated in broad levels and if they are above the difficulty level of the task, they get rerolls in the hopes of hitting the number. If they are below the difficulty level they have to hope they can hit it again.
The key to Al-Amarja’s weirdness are the unexpected twists in the story and the dice rolls now include this in the mechanics. If either of the dice shows a 3 or a 4, it introduces a twist. A four is a good twist and a three is a bad twist. It’s a very clever way to introduce the narrative axis of games like Genesys where dice aren't just pass or fail. Players can even choose to use their rerolls to avoid these twists if they don’t like the looks of a bad twist coming their way to compound a failure or darken a success. When I ran the most recent edition for Theatre of the Mind Players I happened upon a way to help inspire these twists. Al-Amarja was the setting for a CCG called On the Edge. These cards are still floating around dead CCG booths and even Atlas Games still has some available. Pull together a deck of these cards, shuffle them up and then pull a few when a twist pops up. For more collaborative tables, let the players stack the decks with cards they like.
With conspiracy now more mainstream, the new edition also took the time to revise and expand the ones from the original game. The island is still run by the D’Aubainnes, but the family has been expanded and discussed in more detail. Fan favorites like Sad Mary’s Bar and Girl are still around but they might have been changed. The good news is that all the material from the older editions still works with the new edition. GMs can pick and choose which version of Al-Amarja is the one in their game or use the ideas as a jumping point for their own out there ideas.
Beyond the simple system or the gonzo settings, Over The Edge is a massive warehouse of strange ideas for any modern supernatural game. I’ve owned the game since the first edition. I purchased books for the second edition. Third edition was the first time I’ve ever run the game as intended. But ideas from all of these books have ended up in various campaigns over the years like CHILL, Monster of the Week, In Nomine, Mage: The Ascension and more. It’s one of my favorite idea books right up there with GURPS Warehouse 13. Even if a tropical conspiracy paradise doesn’t sound a place where you might want to spend time or space, Over the Edge is brimming with weirdness that will hook anyone looking for a chance to get away from reality.
