I encountered when I was about 14.

A friend had made up a system in which you played a species of intelligent insects, a colony as it were.  Chargen involved choosing the traits of your species, crawling, flying, insectivorous, fructivorous, limb types and so on.

You then played the leader of your colony and also the colony itself as it struggled to survive in an ecology in which insect species dominated and many of which were intelligent.

Size wise I think we were in fact the size of large insects, large real world ones I mean not fantasy large.

Too cool, great concept, I had as I recall a species of crawling leaf eaters and when the game ended we were trying to build a raft by sticking sticks together with chewed mulch in order to cross a river to better feeding grounds.

Awesome concept.

So, what about you?  What's the coolest homebrew you've ever encountered?

Sounds a bit like the boardgame Insecta.

My fave remains Pumpkin Town. I never saw with a system to make it shine but as far as a home-brew setting and concept, it's amazing.

Quote from: BalbinusSo, what about you?  What's the coolest homebrew you've ever encountered?

Other than the ones my group used?

OPIGS.  Why?  Because any system where the attributes are Beef, Brains, Hammer, Coruba, and Luck deserves a mention in a list of cool homebrews.  "Coruba" is the best attribute name ever.

Quote from: John MorrowOther than the ones my group used?

OPIGS.  Why?  Because any system where the attributes are Beef, Brains, Hammer, Coruba, and Luck deserves a mention in a list of cool homebrews.  "Coruba" is the best attribute name ever.

The "percent chance to be lucky" attribute is also the best thing ever.

CORUBA!

- J

Quote from: John MorrowOPIGS.

Holy Crap!  I hadn't seen this since 1999!

EDIT: Just found out that Coruba is kiwi hooch.

Fuck it all - from now on, I'm running everything with OPIGS.

- Q

Hey, Balbinus!  I don't suppose your friend was Antoine Drouart?  'Cause Antoine does have a similar RPG called "Insectes & Compagnie".  It's a free download, but it's in French.  There's even an adventure called "God Save the Queen."  

Quote from: Jared A. SorensenSounds a bit like the boardgame Insecta.

Sounds also a bit like Noumenon without the otherworldly weirdness...

OK, so I was going to reply to the RPGnet version of this thread first, but their server has gone all Three Mile, so now you lucky people will be the ones to hear of the glorious, magnificent, weak-joke-based homebrew that was... ROAD TO WANAMM.

It came about in the summer of 1998 or so, I'd say (which, fucking hell, is nearly 10 years ago now). Me and two of my mates had been reading HoL recently and playing a bit of Vampire: the Masquerade as well as our usual AD&D/WFRP type stuff and one evening we just started writing a game. It was sort of in the HoL style - i.e. handwritten on loose sheets of lined A4 paper by whoever came up with an idea, full of scribbly drawings in ballpoint pen.

The "Wanamm" of the title was the capital city of a country that I can't remember the name of. The country was but one kingdom on a single, mostly circular continent that floated in the sea in a giant frying pan that floated through space, orbited by a white Sun (eclipses occurred when the Sun went behind the pan's handle).

The name, incidentally, was just made by arranging our names in a certain order:
RO--WAN
AD--AM
TO--M
Clever, eh?

The description of the various races were substituted for how to make yourself look like one (elves dressed in 70s disco suits and pulled their ear-tips upwards, that kind of thing -- the hobbit directions were very involved and required two people, a table in front of a curtain and a pair of "gorilla feet" slippers). In mockery of heartbreaker naming conventions, the word "dwarf" had to be pronounced to rhyme with "barf". In mockery of Mage, magic was called madgyckdgf (the last three letters are silent).

All characters had "vegeplines", Vampire knock-off superpowers based on vegetables, the most common of which was Potatence. Yes, I know, I know.

Later we added some things that I still think are cool, like the Shergari motorcycle centaurs, or the clannish gelatinous cubes, who were divided into tribes based on what flavour they were (strawberry holding sway in the Tribal Council at present).

I only played it once with the guys, and ran a game for my brother (who played a gelatinous cube with a rebellious haircut (well, jelly-top sculpt)). But it was all good ludicrous freewheeling fun.

And that's the story of ROAD TO WANAMM.