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Edgewar is an original role-playing system, setting, and story. I created Edgewar in the mid-1990s. I’ve been evolving Edgewar ever since, with help from my players. On the story side, I’ve run more than 80 sessions. (Before that, I ran countless sessions of D&D, Shadowrun, and White Wolf’s World of Darkness.)
I run Edgewar in two settings.
The setting is present-day Earth, with additions. Paranormal powers are real, like telepathy and invisibility. Some humans possess these powers. Some non-human, paranormal beings live on Earth, including some sentient beings. Throughout history, extraterrestrial and extradimensional beings and factions have contacted, visited, or migrated to Earth, influencing politics, science, culture, and ecosystems (including human evolution). Likewise, some humans have contacted, visited, or migrated to other planets and dimensions. Hence, many folktales, myths, pagan deities, and beliefs in magic have at least threads of truth.
There are varied, conflicting explanations for the low prevalence and public awareness of paranormal and alien phenomena. Certainly, part of the charade is deliberate. Many contemporary factions compete to acquire and exploit paranormal technologies, alliances, and other resources. These factions include some nations and corporations, as well as some religious organizations, cults, secret societies, and the like. These factions usually act in secret, both to hide their advantages and to avoid public confusion or panic (e.g., some fundamentalist religions would view most paranormal activities as evil).
The story is a mix of contemporary hard sci-fi/cyberpunk, modern/dark fantasy, and international military/espionage technothriller. The player-characters usually have prior careers in military, paramilitary, intelligence, or clandestine science or paranormal fields.
The setting is the same as EVE Online: the galaxy of New Eden, thousands of years beyond the 21st Century. After the closure of the EVE wormhole and the loss of the gate home, humans were cut off from their ancestors. Over millennia of diaspora and reinventing civilization, humans have reclaimed and then far extended the technologies of present-day Earth. These technologies include warp drive, brain scanning and body cloning, cerebral implants and other cybernetics, artificial intelligence, nanites, photorealistic holograms, cloaking, and more. Empires, corporations, outlaw alliances, and other factions compete for power across thousands of solar systems.
The story is a mix of hard sci-fi/cyberpunk and interstellar military/espionage technothriller. The player-characters are capsuleers, but most of the story takes place outside of capsules.
As a GM and game designer, my inspirations and influences are too numerous to catalog. But here’s a starting place. Role-playing games include Shadowrun, White Wolf’s World of Darkness (especially Mage), and Cyberpunk. Video games include the System Shock/Bioshock series and Beyond Good and Evil. Movies include the Aliens series, Strange Days, Star Trek, Stargate, Screamers, Pitch Black, the Bourne Identity trilogy, Ronin, Ghost Dog, The Professional, Serenity, Gamer, Tom Clancy movies, and a variety of zombie movies (including 28 Days Later and Resident Evil). Television includes Buffy: The Vampire Slayer, Firefly, Star Trek, Stargate: SG1, and Burn Notice. Authors include Neal Stephenson (Snowcrash, Diamond Age), Neil Gaimen (American Gods, Sandman), William Gibson (Neuromancer, All Tomorrow’s Parties), and H.P. Lovecraft.
The system is somewhat freeform and fast-and-loose. There aren’t a lot of detailed rules. I had several goals as a designer, but foremost was streamlining combat and other die rolls, and minimizing interruptions to look up rules. This allows for more combat and/or more story in each gaming session, even with a large group of players. The system assumes that the Game Master (GM) can confidently stop flagrant abuses of the freeform rules.
There are two exceptions to this freeform approach: character creation/advancement and magic. Creation/advancement is complex, because of limiting ratings. Often, if you want to increase one rating, you will have to increase 2 or more other ratings first. I’ve tried to offer more sophisticated/interesting rules in this area, since it mostly happens outside of game sessions. Magic is complex, because the possibilities are infinite, so the rules have to enforce some fairness.
Whenever possible, the rules are written in 2nd person, "you" language. "You" may refer to the player, the player-character (PC), or both, based on context. I hope the "you" language makes it easier to understand the rules. Almost all the rules also apply to non-player characters (NPCs): the characters the GM controls.
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Edgewar | CC 2009 (Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 
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Last revised 01-Jan-2012