How did the piece-of-$#!T game I wrote in 1985 get downloaded 6,000 times in the last 2½ years?

More than that, how did it become a guy in Brazil's replacement for GURPS?

Wait! What's that you say? You've never heard of The System? You must be new to the blog, then. I only mention this 28-page crapfest every time I get the chance.

This is the universal RPG I originally wrote in 1985, composed and printed from my dad's Wang (the computer, of course; not his penis), and published in a select run of only THREE COPIES! Then one day a buddy showed up to school with this brand new game called GURPS and I said, "Damn. There goes that idea," and I shelved it. Bitten by the OSR bug a few years back, I dug it up, only minimally polished up my crappy high-school writing, did a real typeset job on it, and published it in February of 2011 (with a retro-type-feel reminiscent of the old Traveler books, and strategically-selected-but-quickly-growing-tiresome public domain art). And now PDF downloads from MediaFire have topped the 6,000 mark! That's 6,000 folks who've downloaded a free PDF copy of The System from MediaFire, not including any Lulu or 1km1kt downloads. (BTW, the PDF is no longer available from Lulu because I don't like not being able to track free downloads. They need to remedy that situation.)

As per my previous 1K-interval blog posts, I have to thank Chris's Compendiums of Free Role-Playing Games, John Kim's Free RPGs on the Web, and Rob Lang over at 1KM1KT (1,000 Monkeys, 1,000 Typewriters), all of whom have taken on the vocation of helping rule-makers and home-brewers to get their work out there. Rob even goes above and beyond, working double-duty with the 24 Hour RPG competition, and triple-duty with the Game Chef competition. But now I also have to thank Heder at the RPG4Free blog; more people download the PDF from his blog every month than they do from the New Big Dragon web site.

• If you want the full story on The System, check out this post.

• To download a free PDF from MediaFire, click here.
• To buy a print copy of The System from Lulu, head over here.

Pictured below at top: Cover and first 3 pages from The System, as published in 1985.
Pictured below at bottom: Sample page from "25th Anniversary Edition" published in 2011.