About

(Originally posted here: http://oldguyrpg.blogspot.com/2009/09/siege-perilous-ultima-rpg-playtest.html)

"Siege Perilous" is a tabletop RPG based on the Ultima Age of Darkness CRPG games. It is developed from an adaptation of the Swords & Wizardry White Box (1st printing) and uses several other sources - Skathros's S&W Companion Rules, a magic system developed by Arminath (from the OD&D Boards forum), the Minimal Space Combat system by Timoth Swenson and a lot of glue, rewriting, adaptation and content by myself. This game uses names, monsters, spells, settings and features from all 3 of the games.

Siege Perilous - Rulebook (ver: 9/2/09)
Siege Perilous - Game Referee's Guide (ver: 9/2/09)
Siege Perilous - Hawkwind's Gazeteer: Perinia (ver: 9/2/09 - no more than outline at this point)

It's not a faithful representation of the "canon" timeline - I had to make a hybrid game that a Game Referee could use to represent any point in time with the established Ultima universe within the Age of Darkness. It's also adaptable enough that a Game Referee can make their own Ultima. Future settings information is going to assume the state of Sosaria in Ultima 1, based on my campaign world.

The rules themselves that I've been hacking over the months are "finished" in that they can be playtested. The chargen, task resolution, combat, magic, naval combat and space travel/combat is complete. The list of monsters and treasure is complete. That's the purpose of the campaign that this blog will cover, to shake out the rules and to start bringing my vision of Sosaria to life - a vision that heavily incorporates on the Age of Darkness as a main foundation, rather than completely shaking things up and starting over, like Ultima IV did.

Before we go much further, let me please say two things:

First, these rules and settings use content from the first three Ultima CRPG games: Ultima I – The First Age of Darkness, Ultima II – Revenge of the Enchantress and Ultima III – Exodus. These three games were released from 1980 through 1983 and formed the basis for the wildly popular Ultima CRPG series and the Ultima On-line MMORPG.

Any content stemming from the Ultima games is used without permission and all copyrights, registered trademarks and licenses for the Ultima CRPGs are property of Electronic Arts and Origin Systems. I am doing this interpretation as a fan derivative work, under what I believe is Fair Use. I hold no license to any content save the adaptations to the rules/content that is of my own creation. The sole purpose of this work is to add to the pleasure and experience of the Ultima world and to bring new fans to enjoy the fantastic story and setting that was created almost 30 years ago.

That also means that technically, I'm in violation of the Swords & Wizardry White Box OGL license and terms, but I've also spoken with Matt Finch (who owns/enforces the copyright of S&W) and he basically said "I'm not going to sue you." Thank you, Matt!

So if you go and use these rules, understand this is a homebrew system that I'm sharing with other Ultima fans. If you try and make some cash on this deal, I'm not responsible for the lawyers that might come your way.

The second thing I want to say is that being this is a homebrew system, it's liable to be tinkered with, changed, and even rewritten wholesale. I will try and announce when I've made changes, but the version you download/print is liable to be different from something that is in the future. That also means that if you discover a problem, bug, errata or major issue, I'm more likely to change it on the fly if it fits with my Ultima campaign.

So having said all that, please enjoy!


Ultima® & Lord British® are Registered Trademarks of Origin Systems, Inc. & Richard Garriott. Ultima I – The First Age of Darkness © 1980 Sierra On-line and Origin Systems. Ultima II – Revenge of the Enchantress  © 1981 Sierra On-line and Origin Systems Ultima III - Exodus © 1982 Origin Systems, Inc. All rights reserved. Swords & Wizardry, Copyright 2008, Matthew J. Finch. Swords & Wizardry: Whitebox by Matt Finch and Marv Breig, Copyright 2008, Matthew J. Finch. Swords & Wizardry Companion, Copyright 2009 Salvatore Macri. Minimal Space Combat, Copyright 1996 Timothy Swenson. All other content is Copyright 2009-2012 Michael Shorten.

Any game content that I have created that does not include product identity/protected content from the above copyrights and content is declared as Open Game Content. Basically, that means rules, algorithms, charts and figures.