Friday, April 17, 2009

4C System: an underated retro-clone

Some of you may or may not be aware that some time ago...damn...a year or more now? Phil Reed offered to "clone" the most "marvelous" superhero RPG of all time, for a supporter fee. So he started a fund and reached his projected fund in no time, wrote the game, and released it to the public domain.

I'm sure most old-schoolers are familiar with the original game, but I think overall the 4C system has kind of fallen under the radar. You can download it here:

4C System download

You can also buy a hard copy at cost from Lulu.

There is a small amount of publisher support for the system as well...

Support at RPGnow

The reason I bring this up is that the Old-School Renaissance must not be focused solely on fantasy games. There are many other great old-school games out there, and the 4C System is just one example. It is a simple, fun game which I would like to support also. I think it is ripe for customizing into other other non-superhero genre games as well. I see no reason we couldn't have a FASERIP Fantasy, Sci-Fi, etc.

Anyway, just a heads up to anyone who missed this. I started a section on my forums where people can discuss this game. It's funny (ironic) that the community paid Phil Reed a few thousand dollars, if memory serves, to produce this game...and it has pretty much stagnated.

13 comments:

Michael S/Chgowiz said...

Do you think that's because Marvel released their ruleset for free? http://www.classicmarvel.com/

Dan of Earth said...

I dunno, could be. The issue of course is trademarks. Even though you can download the books for free, they haven't made the system open to others.

But then that is only relevant to people who want to publish using it.

Jeff Rients said...

It's funny (ironic) that the community paid Phil Reed a few thousand dollars, if memory serves, to produce this game...and it has pretty much stagnated.Yet another example of a game where following the production process only led to aggravation. Only this time, I had paid money for the priviledge of watching the deadline slip by.

James Maliszewski said...

I agree it'd be great to see other, non-fantasy RPGs cloned.

Joseph said...

Chgowiz, is that going to be the old Marvel Superhero game? I LOVED that game.

Your link led to a placeholder, btw...

Dan of Earth said...

You used to be able to download all that old Marvel stuff for free, by permission I think.

Anonymous said...

The idea was for publishers to use 4C in order to publish new material for the MSH RPG. It has nothing to do with being able to download the material for free.

Dan of Earth said...

yep!

Mallius Vane said...

To be honest, this passed me by completely. It seems there has been little promotion of it on the various old school forums...perhaps a little self-promotion on Dragonsfoot's 'Simulacra' and 'Other RPGS' forums or adding it to your Old School Renaissance Publsihing Group might help spread the word...

Dan of Earth said...

Working on it, I contacted Phil Reed and he plans to join.

Jay said...

@Joseph, you mean this Marvel Super-heroes game?

/love this game!
//learned rpgs though this game!

Daniel M. Perez said...

Thanks for chatting up 4C System. We've enjoyed doing support for it and plan more in the near future, including some extrapolations into other genres (no timeline on that one though).

The best promotion 4C can get are posts like this: talk it up to your readers, mention about any game experience you may have had (like, did you know there is a 4C System Actual Play post over at the Highmoon Games forums?).

Don't forget to also support the publishers taking a chance on the system as well. Right now all products for 4C are really cheap; take a chance.

And FYI, the rules for Marvel RPG may be out there for free, but AFAIK, they are not legally released, so you know how that goes.

Unknown said...

Hi,

I just wrote an adaptation of 4C for fantasy RPG called Foresee Alpha. I am releasing it for free, including an at-cost print on demand version and similar minimum possible cost Kindle etc.

I blogged the art-free review version here:

https://flyingtigercomics.wordpress.com/2015/11/25/foresee-alpha-fantasyrpg/

A friend of mine has started running it for his five? six? children so we will see if it engages the little ones.