Yags is Another Game System, with a moderately crunchy set of rules that is designed to give a gritty cinematic style of play, which can be used in fantasy, science fiction and modern genres. So far, Yags has been used to run games in a variety of settings.

A low fantasy setting which was originally designed over 10 years ago specifically for Yags.

Yags has been used to run games set in the Babylon 5 science fiction universe.

It has been used for modern horror adventures.

A version of Yags was specifically written for a campaign set in the Harn fantasy setting, replicating the magic system of that world.

The latest Yags campaign is set in a classic Traveller universe.

Yags is a Free - game system, released under the terms of the

GNU Public License - . You are free to download, modify and redistribute Yags as long as your modifications are also released under the GPL. The preferred source format for Yags is

Yagsbook - , and the source can be found

here - .

Yags aims to be simple, but also aims to capture certain flavours of the real world using rules where necessary. It is not as simple as games which aim to be simple, and represents a lot of things with hard numbers.

Yags can be deadly, and even the greatest hero can be felled by a well aimed bullet or unseen sword thrust. However, an experienced character which is played intelligently can cause carnage on a large scale just as Beatrix Kiddo, Azumi or Conan can.

The core system makes use of a simple task resolution mechanic. You take an attribute, multiply it by a skill and add a 1d20 roll. This is then compared against a target number to see if you succeed. The more you succeed by, the better the result.

A typical professional will have an attribute of 3 and a skill of 4, meaning that they roll 12 + 1d20. An exceptional character may have an attribute of 6 or 7, and someone who has mastered a skill may have a skill of around 12-14. This means that there is a huge gap between standard characters and exceptional heroes.

The most current version of Yags is version 0.7. It is currently being used to run an SF campaign set in GDW's

Traveller background - . Rules for modern combat, vehicles and spacecraft are the areas which are the focus for this setting. It has also required some work on planet generation software for the automatic creation of

planetside maps - .

The current set of rules - are all available online in both HTML and PDF formats.