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I found out just recently from Greg Costikyan's blog (he's a game designer. Bears a large part of the responsibility for Paranoia, which alone cements him occasional shordurpersav status; if your eyes just glazed over, you probably don't want to follow the next link) that Violence: the Roleplaying Game of Egregious and Repulsive Bloodshed has been released under one of those Creative Commons license deals--in other words, for free.

It's not really a game per se; it's more of a short gamebook-length abusive rant, and a pretty damn good rant at that. The fact that its system--pretty much pulled out of the proverbial ass, I suspect completely on the fly--actually looks like it'd work about as well as many other, just adds to the effect. You have to admire an rpg whose "what you need to play" section includes things like this:

6. A variety of sugary and salty snacks, accompanied by fattening dips, plus high-calorie sodas and/or beer. Actually, you'd be much better off avoiding snacks between meals and spending thirty minutes a day in intensive aerobic exercise, but I mean, you're a bloody gamer, so I guess that's a lost cause.

Good stuff.

In the comments section of aforementioned entry, the fellow who originally published the "New Style" line of small art-house "games" says he's currently contacting the other authors of them to see if they're copacetic with releasing them for free, as well. That's also a good thing, since the ones that I saw all have nice points to them--Baron Munchausen has the second-greatest obligatory "this is just a game" disclaimer I've ever seen, and Power Kill would make a terrific bookending framework for most computer games, for instance.
posted by Gar @ 3:17 PM