Judge Dredd: Drokk City

[Arabin]

John Caliber has just launched a free and completely unofficlal Judge Dredd rpg. While I am enjoying the Mongoose d20 version, I'll be downloading John's material with a view to using it in my games. For me, this will in no way replace the Mongoose d20 version.

2000ADOnline will be hosting the actual files as he releases more and more information so this appears to be an officially supported unofficial work...

Anyway, here is the link for full information... do with it as you will.

http://www.btinternet.com/~john.caliber/

Arabin

 

[Arabin]

How do you feel about Drokk City? I'm really interested in other peoples opinions on this, and whether they will try to combine the two.

Arabin

 

[Arabin]

Bump... still hoping for someone to respond.

Arabin

 

[Tom Cusworth]

Bump... still hoping for someone to respond.

Arabin

Hello everyone! I'm new here but thought I'd respond to your post asking about Drokk City. I've played in a few of John's recent Dredd adventures (as Judge Boscorelli in Magic, My Eye and as Judge Kingard in Spiderfall).

Drokk City (or the Book of Law or the Roll Call Rules as they once were known) are extremely rules light. They allow the GM to focus on the story not get bogged down in rules & dice rolling. The sourcebooks are excellent, too. John puts a hell of a lot of work into them, meticulously referencing mostly from the Wagner & Grant strips.

Sector 53 East is coming soon, which is intended to be a highly-detailed Sector sourcebook, after John's current project - Megaheim, the Scandinavian (Norwegian) MegaCity...

John's moved all his Dredd stuff over to the Drokk City Yahoo! group where you can find the latest news and dscussion Just search Yahoo! Groups for Drokk City. As you said, they are still carried on the 2000AD site, which (AFAIK) is not likely to change soon.

-Tom

 

[synabetic]

Hey, I was really interested in checking Drokk City out, but can't find it anywhere. Even the yahoo group seems to not exist.... Anyone have any ideas what's up?

 

[Daithi O'an tSionnaigh]

Yeah I checked it out also and it is no longer there. Weird!

 

[numanti]

John decided to take it all down.

He'd done a ton of great work on the site and went over and above the call of duty in his support of dredd as an RPG, but he had his reasons for finishing it.

When I get around to playing dredd again (I've been GMing a Warhammer FRP campaign for the last 9 months or so - it's got about a month more left in it before I switch back to Gangs and Dredd instead) I'll be working on my Dredd RPG site again.

I would like to make it more useful to people outside my own actual games and am thinking of content that fits the purpose of my site (a detailed sector and bunch of campaign ideas and reports for both the RPG and the Gangs games) so any feedback on the sorts of things you'd like to see there would be appreciated. Obviously I won't be able to do PDF files in huge detail like Drokk City was, but would like it to be of use to the Dredd gaming community in general as well as a useful in-game aid for my own campaign. I will post again once I start updating with the url and that sort of stuff.

 

[Daithi O'an tSionnaigh]

Man that sucks that he took it down! Would have been great to see all the work!

 

[synabetic]

Grud dammit! Yeah, I would have liked to have seen that stuff, too.
Poo.

So... no way ever to see what was up there... ?

Oh, and on a completely unrelated note, I noticed your sig there Daithi... I just watched Beowulf & Grendel last night. Good film!

 

[Daithi O'an tSionnaigh]

Yeah I LOVED Beowulf and Grendel!!

 

[numanti]

Grud dammit! Yeah, I would have liked to have seen that stuff, too.
Poo.

So... no way ever to see what was up there... ?

Oh, and on a completely unrelated note, I noticed your sig there Daithi... I just watched Beowulf & Grendel last night. Good film!

I don't think John wouuld be too happy if anyone put them back up for people to get. He took the PDF's down as far as I know from 2000ADOnline, so I'm guessing he doesn't want them available anymore. I don't have contact details for him so I can't ask, unfortuately. It's a real shame he stopped before he got round to putting up his Cursed Earth guide.

I'm just hoping Mongoose decide to produce something new for the game, but that possibility is lookig more and more remote. I suppose it's up to the fans to keep the game alive. I just use 2000AD for all of my background so I've no shortage of ongoing detail - I'm not great at writing or design but I reckon I could make a go of compiling enough info on a website to at least be a useful resource for people who want to roleplay in the Dredd universe (it's such a rich roleplaying universe, too - I'm surprised it's not far more popular than it seems to be...)

 

[synabetic]

Awww... that's a shame, but I can understand. Thanks for the info

As for seeing more Dredd RPG material published, that would be awesome. But I do understand not wanting to publish material that doesn't sell very well.

And I agree, the Judge Dredd universe is rich with content and oppritunity. Plus, with all the info available out there and what Mongoose has put oot so far... well, there's years of material there.

I hope that the JD RPG doesn't die, still. I just started getting into the d20 version of the rpg and it would be a real tragedy to see it go. I'm still kicking myself for not getting into it earlier, what with me being a near-lifelong 2000AD fan and all... sheesh.

 

[mthomason]

There was talk a while back about a possible new version under OGL (so complete rules and no D&D rulebook needed to run it)

Although, with all the RQ talk going on at Mongoose nowadays, I reckon there's a chance they could go that route instead - and I reckon it'd probably work a lot better than d20 does.

Of course, it'd be really annoying having all the old Dredd d20 supplements that didn't work with the new rules

 

[synabetic]

I've wondered why JD wasn't a self contained OGL-using game in the first place... not that I mind. I just have to adjust to using 3.5 (as I don't have D&D 3.0 hehe).

I wouldn't complain if they did a Runequest rules based Dredd game... If they do, hopefully they'll have a conversion system or something... Still, the d20 Dredd books are still worth their weight in gold as far as "fluff" goes. Great resource materials... after seeing what they offer in that dept, the rules seem a bit incidental... hehe.

Now if a new edition of d20 comes out, it might be best to use RQ based rulesets... Of course, no one knows when "4th ed" is coming out.

This reminds me, I've been meaning to check oot the new RuneQuest stuff...

 

[Daithi O'an tSionnaigh]

I hate 3.5 so I won't be getting any new D20 books. Plus I also have the original JD rpg by GW so between that and Judge Dredd D20 I am covered! :wink:

Nothing against emailing the Drokk info for some of us to look at is there?

 

[synabetic]

Yeah! I'm for the emailing of the info!


And lol... I was just doing the whole 1st vs 2nd vs 3rd vs 3.5 editions argument! Good timing.
Honestly, I like 3.5... but, honestly I think Dredd deserves his own syestem (whentehr it's a version of MRQ or d20... whatever)... and then the rest of any 2000AD material could fall under that (like Strontium Dog... why is there no Stronty RPG? Whhhyyy?).

 

[mthomason]

I've wondered why JD wasn't a self contained OGL-using game in the first place... not that I mind. I just have to adjust to using 3.5 (as I don't have D&D 3.0 hehe).

Dredd was pretty much one of the first "big" releases for Mongoose, back when they sprung out of nowhere to suddenly shove a pile of d20 stuff on the shelves The very idea of making a game using the d20 SRD and not stuffing a logo on back then was almost laughable - after all the whole point of the logo was to say "this works with D&D".

Of course since then things have changed a lot. The glut of d20 material from everyone and their dog has devalued the logo to the point where people actively avoid it unless it's something they specifically want (as opposed to the early "oooh its d20, lets buy it" days). Mongoose seemed to catch on pretty soon and were ahead of most of the field when it came to ripping that ugly little black and red box off their covers and including the rules to make a complete game that the logo licence prohibited them from doing.

I'd like to see Dredd 2.0, whatever system it ends up being done in - I'm mostly happy converting things over if they decided to make it an RQ game.

 

[mthomason]

Honestly, I like 3.5... but, honestly I think Dredd deserves his own syestem (whentehr it's a version of MRQ or d20... whatever)... and then the rest of any 2000AD material could fall under that (like Strontium Dog... why is there no Stronty RPG? Whhhyyy?).

Oh, I'd love to see a "2000AD RPG Core Book" with a ton of sourcebooks covering the various "universes". With the overlap we've seen between most of them it ought to be possible to make a pick-and-mix of whatever story elements you want from each one in your own game.

 

[synabetic]

Ha! I used 'honestly' twice in once sentence. Sorry about that.

Yeah, I agree with you on that first part there. I'd love to see 2nd edition JD regardless of having to change systems or not. And thank you for the info. Though I've rp'd for many, many years (now I feel old) I kind of refused for years to jump on to d20 for whatever reason (I'm stubborn... I've mellowed with age though ). So when I came on board, 3.5 was coming out... And man, is there a lot of d20 stuff out there. I can see what you mean.

As for a 2000AD Rulesbook... I think that would be a grand idea... but maybe now with all that Dredd material, it would be best to just release a source book that includes information on the Strontium Dog, Rogue Trooper, Durham Red (the 40k-ish future version), Nikolai Dante and even stuff like Fiends of the Eastern Front 'n so on.
Heck, I just got inspired to play around with something involving the Glimmer Rats and JD universes... hmmm...
Anyhow, yeah, would be cool to see a supplement like that. Of course, more focus should be on universes that are more noted/recognised (like SD)... I dunno... just ideas.

In the meantime, I guess we'll just have to make do on our own (as a long-time Warhammer FRP player, this isn't anything new )

I guess what I really mean to say without babbling is that I'd hate to see the 2000AD rp presence die, and would love to see more than what's out right now (and not see it abandoned etc). Don't get me wrong, though, I still love what I've seen for Slaine and Judge Dredd.

 

[mthomason]

Now I think about it, additional 2000AD submissions could be good material for S&P... unfortunately I've already got a queue of articles to plough through or I'd look at doing some myself.