So what went wrong with the Ringworld RPG?

In 1984, Chaosium produced the now largely forgotten Ringworld RPG, based on the works of Larry Niven.

In terms of rules, it used Chaosium's well-tested Basic Role Playing percentile skill system, with a couple of refinements. First off, it provided detailed rules for all sorts of environmental hazards characters might run into, from falling through to vacuum, asphyxia and radiation.

Secondly, it replaces the combat round with continuous one second "impulses". A character can take a major action (drawing a weapon, aiming it or changing a magazine) which take number of impulses based on their DEX - typically 4-5 impulses for an average character - or minor action (eg fire a weapon that is already aimed) which only takes one impulse. It's an elegant system, though one that does require a certain amount of book keeping.

Physically, the box contains four books plus some reference sheets and a set of stand-up "cardboard hero" character silhouettes to use in lieu of miniatures, plus various reference sheets and a set of dice.

The first book is the "Explorer book", which covers character generation, including Kzinti and Puppeteer characters as well as humans. It also explains the basic game system, including detailed rules for scientific research projects, which may well come up in play. Almost a third of the book is background material about Known Space, so players can understand the characters' homeworld and society. While the game is focused on the Ringworld, this information would give a good basis for running a campaign elsewhere in known space, and indeed some of it (such as travel times between worlds) isn't much use to characters who are on the Ringworld.

The second book is the "Technology Book" - the equipment available to explorers is as important as you'd expect given the setting, and players really need to have read this in order to be familiar with the capabilities of their equipment. Nicely, items are specific rather than generic, so while knowing that your transfer booth is made by Pelton Industries of Earth isn't necessary to use it, it's a nice piece of fluff.

The "Creatures book" does exactly what you'd expect, giving examples of Ringworld creatures, both sentient and non-sentient. It also includes creatures from other Known Space worlds, such as Bandersnatchi, Grogs and Kdatlyno. These may have been transported to the appropriate map in the Great Oceans on Ringworld but can equally be used for running non-Ringworld scenarios.

Finally, the "Gamemaster book" primarily consists of some (excellent) essays setting out how the Ringworld actually operates, plus examples of Ringworld technology and some things (like rules for psionics and different gravity) which didn't fit in anywhere else. Finally, there's a short introductory scenario, though frankly this isn't much more than "OK, you crashland on the Ringworld, and get to meet some of the inhabitants".

All told, it's not a bad package, though there are areas it doesn't cover, such as rules for spacecraft - we see the one that takes the characters to Ringworld and that's it. Even so, I'd actually recommend much of the material simply for its own sake, as probably the best exposition of Niven's Known Space setting.

Despite this, it's fair to say that the game sank pretty much without a trace.

So, what went wrong?

Chaosium published one supplement - the Ringworld companion, which essentially gave you more Ringworld creatures, more tech (including a second starship) and one long scenario. There was a single scenario published in Different Worlds, and that's it.

Of course, that's a chicken-and-egg point - if the game had been more successful, more would undoubtedly have been published for it, especially given that Chaosium was one of the "big three" RPG companies at the time, alongside TSR and GDW.

It's commonly held that SF RPGs are more difficult to sell than fantasy ones. That may well be true - Traveller was very successful, but few others have been. However, Ringworld seemed to fail to achieve even the success of second-tier SF RPGs such as TSR's Star Frontiers or the Star Wars RPG.

It's also worth noting that FASA's Battletech was also a 1984 launch, and while more of a wargame than an RPG, it does seem to show that an SF product could still succeed.

Arguments that Larry Niven wasn't a big enough brand to carry the game are probably a little spurious; I'm pretty sure that far fewer players were familiar with the works of HP Lovecraft when Chaosium launched Call of Cthulhu, which became one of the best selling and most durable RPG lines.

It may have been unfortunate in its timing - although it wasn't obvious at the time, the RPG boom had probably hit its peak by 1984, and the industry would soon start to move back towards wargames such as GW's Warhammer and Warhammer 40K.

However, while rates of growth may have slowed, the hobby still had plenty of mainstream life in it, and successful second-tier games such as Twilight 2000 (1984), GURPS (1986) and Shadowrun (1989) were still launched well after this point.

I think the problem was two-fold. First, Ringworld isn't an easy "Plug and play" game - while the game envisages exploring the Ringworld and repairing their damaged ship as long-term goals, there isn't an obvious "default" immediate action for players such as explore a dungeon or find a patron in a seedy starport bar. The PCs don't need money or supplies, and thus don't have to do anything they don't want to.

Given that characters are also almost certainly equipped with (at least) 5,000 MPH flycycles, they can easily run from trouble or mistakes, and cover very wide areas quickly. This means the GM has to do a lot of prep work and either come up with something that'll really pique his player's interest enough to get them to engage, or railroad them into doing so.

Second, the game was entering a crowded market and new games either needed to made a relatively immediate impact, in which case they'd attract fan support, magazine articles etc and drive further popularity, or they would drop out of sight and the spotlight would move on to newer releases. I don't think Chaosium managed to secure enough publicity for Ringworld - by comparison, I'd seen plenty of advertising for Twilight 2000, but don't recall any for Ringworld.

It's a pity, as the game perhaps deserved better, but far from unique - plenty of other worthy games including Chaosium's own Stormbringer RPG suffered the same fate, along with (for example) pretty much everything published by FGU.