This curious document, probably not unearthed in a peat bog near Ballicazar in 1309 (but wouldn't that be fascinating?) is what happens when Risus: The Anything RPG - my freeware beer-and-pretzels roleplaying game - collides with Uresia: Grave of Heaven - my fantasy worldbook for BESM 2nd Edition, published by Guardians of Order. The result, Uresius: Grave of Anything, is a quick guide to using Risus as an alternate game system for heaven's grave.

You'll need two things to play. Risus is free; just click here to read about it and follow the links to download it. Uresia: Grave of Heaven is not free; it's for sale at your local game shop or from any number of online retailers (and it's a bargain at twice the price). This page won't make much sense without a copy of each.

Uresius characters follow standard Risus rules: 10 dice to divide among their clichés. Advanced Options I, II and III are recommended (Hooks and Tales, Pumps, and Double-Pumps). Funky dice are not. A couple of sample characters (one adapted from Grave of Heaven, one a personal creation) to give you the idea:

King Timberfell "The Lusty" Description: An aging (but sprightly) king more interested in food, sex, and naps than in the day-to-day responsibilities of being King. Fortunately, the City-States handle the important matters, leaving him to chase skirts and preside over daily clashes between the world's most impressive chefs. Clichés: Lecherous Hedonist (4), Noble (1), Otherworlder (3), Brat (2) Master Virinon the Wanderer Description: He was once a revered philosopher in Boru, until his defeat in the Great Contest of 1369. Shamed and determined never to set foot in his native land again, he set sail with his Troll valet for Sindra, where he expanded his knowledge of sorcery and accepted a position with the Loreseekers. His Troll companion was slain last winter in the dungeons of Trang, and now Virinon seeks an adventuring party to travel with for companionship on the road to wisdom. Cliches: Boru Sorcerer (3), Demonologist (1), Expatriate Philosopher (3), Loreseeker (3)

This list doesn't set any kind of boundaries; it's just a shopping list of ideas to demonstrate how some of the characters suggested in the book play out in Risus terms. Rewrite, alter, qualify and contradict to your own merry amusement.

• Alchemist (Making potions, seeking enlightenment, causing explosions)
• Ambassador/Diplomat (Currying favors, finding common ground and selling it)
• Archer (Routing cavalry, keeping a safe distance, downing distant eagles)
• Assassin (Stealthy slaughter, skulking in taverns, hissing, waxing cynical)
• Boru Sorcerer (Hypnotizing, tantalizing, distracting, inspiring feelings, dancin' & lovin')
• Burglar (Prowling around in houses, climbing buildings, assessing and fencing goods)
• Burly Lass (Carrying and/or combating livestock and/or drunken men)
• Caravel Captain (Mastering ship and crew, cutting a romantic figure, laughing heartily)
• Celari Balloon Pilot (Watching the world below, mad flights, not necessarily of fancy)
• Charcoal King (Lusty fighting, sooty penmanship, smoke magic, grunting)
• Chef (Using food to impress, entertain, manipulate, compete or just have lunch)
• City Watchman (Looking bored, looking grim, looking angry, fighting, sleeping)
• Demonologist (Summoning demons to mow lawns, kill people, lick walls clean, etc.)
• Diploma Warlord (Awkward attempts at combat, machismo, and leadership)
• Duandralin (Deadly beast-style hand-fighting, primal sorcery, grim regrets)
• Earthy Peasant (Knowing the countryside well, common-sense insights, mulching)
• Emerald Knight (Looking snazzier and more important than a Knight, armor piloting)
• Engine Driver (Shouting, driving trains, terrifying passengers, lifting huge things)
• Exotic Dancer (Spinning naked around poles with grease on, growing cynical)
• Expatriate Philosopher (Putting life in Boru in the past, confusing foes with exposition)
• Explorer (Surviving wild environments, wrangling native guides, finding a way home)
• Food Fighter (Like Martial Artist, but messier and tastier)
• Harebrained Gadgeteer (Building unlikely things with clockwork and elementals)
• Jongleur (Juggling, singing, jesting, distracting, flirting, drinking, complaining, dreaming)
• Knight (Looking snazzy and important, battlefield antics, horsemanship, romance)
• Lecherous Hedonist (Leering, lusting, gorging, ogling, nose-bleeding, peeping)
• Madwoman (Cackling, plotting, scheming, indulging in paranoid delusions, melodrama)
• Magical Girl (Whapping monsters, teamwork, cheerful moralizing, giggly girl-stuff)
• Martial Artist (Acrobatic butt-whomping, posing dramatically, meditating)
• Mercenary (Fighting, looting, inadvertent heroism, the pursuit of unlikely romances)
• Monster (Grr. Argh.)
• Necromancer (Manipulating the energies of the dead, emanating a pallor of death)
• Noble (Mixing in high society, running things, patronizing the arts, patronizing, generally)
• Otherworlder (Concocting oddball plans, missing home, owning unusual small items)
• Poet (Self-indulgence, annoying others)
• Questing Scholar (Seeking knowledge, minor magics, adapting to unusual customs)
• Roaring Drunkard (Macho posing, energetic partying, drinking)
• Saint-Sage (Comprehending Boru philosophy, rationalizing sensual excess, dancing)
• Shaman (Healing, knowing, comforting, cursing, blessing, chanting, spirit-appeasing)
• Slave (Leading or joining uprisings, surviving poor treatment)
• Swashbuckler (Sailing, pirating, fencing, partying, flashy acrobatic things in the rigging)
• Thug (Grr. Argh.)
• Treasure-Hunter (Poking into ruins, finding secrets, beta-testing deathtraps)
• Trickster (Lie-crafting, tale-weaving, selling, underselling, getting away with stuff)
• Villain (World domination, flunky abuse, failing to see vital flaws in plans)
• Willowy Lass (Being admired, being kidnapped, being rescued, being waited-on)
• Wily Merchant (Finding goods, appraising goods, finding buyers, appraising buyers)
• Witch (Being cryptic, boiling things, working spells, delivering dire warnings)

Since Grave of Heaven is high-action swords-and-sorcery, there are plenty of clichés that serve as personalized variants of "warrior" or "wizard," described to taste. A few are in the list above, but there are dozens of common variants left to common sense (or your group's preferred substitute). Entirely omitted from the list is the broad category of mundane professions (locksmiths, carpenters, potters and so on). While they aren't really worth listing, these can be excellent Player Character clichés in Grave of Heaven style fantasy, since just about any ordinary ability - not just cooking! - can be perverted to adventuring applications, either with whimsically broad assumptions about available equipment ("Where'd he get that potter's wheel in the middle of the Ash Desert of Ruronar?") or just liberal applications of the Inappropriate Cliché rules.

Some clichés - like Questing Scholar/Loreseeker or Lecherous Hedonist - are all about an obsessive focus of some kind, a personal desire. This makes for a very anime kind of character, stomping around heaven's grave questing for something with a zeal that others might regard as excessive. These play best at the table when you treat them as fairly limited under ordinary circumstances, but something akin to magic when a character's personal obsession is at stake. A glutton faced with a 60-foot animated stone statute is in trouble ... Unless there's a pizza on the other side waiting to be "rescued." It's fun to make these kinds of clichés pumpable.

Specify your character's race as part of your Description. Races - even easily pigeonholed ones like Satyrs - aren't clichés in their own right. They make good modifying descriptors for existing clichés, though: a Troll Magical Girl (4) is a different sort of heroine than most - but she doesn't need "Troll" to have its own dice. The same goes for Snowman Assassins, Dwarf Exotic Dancers, Elvish Poets, and so forth! When a race has a special ability (most bird-like Beastmen can fly, for example) that's just a given. If the bird-man wants to do something interesting or challenging, roll against whichever cliché fits the challenge.

Cultures, too, make good descriptors. "Lawyer" isn't much of a heroic-fantasy cliché, but "Boru Lawyer" adds some color to the idea, given the convoluted nature of Boru society and laws. Even very pedestrian clichés might benefit; a Winnowite Mercenary is bound to have a few tricks and shticks that a Laöchrian Mercenary doesn't, and vice-versa.

The standard Risus rules apply: characters begin play with whatever equipment suits their clichés. Equipment - even magical equipment - is just props, unless something is lost or broken. The GM should be generous with allowing interesting items beyond the basic Tools of the Trade, though. Just make sure that if somebody is carrying a spatula for no clear reason that it's written on his character sheet.

Characters who want a really special item should discuss the matter with the Game Master. Odds are, it's just a matter of assigning the right kind of cliché. Want a suit of Emerald Armor? Take a die or two of the Emerald Knight cliché - the armor is just part of the deal. Want a Caravel? Take a cliché like Caravel Captain or Dreed Admiral or somesuch. The same applies to super-powerful magic swords and the like. Unless they're really special super-powerful magic swords (this sentence would be silly in a more traditional fantasy world) they're just props.

It falls on the Game Master to set boundaries for fighting styles and magical styles. As with any Risus game, any character can try just about anything; only the Target Number changes. Use Uresia as a handy guide to the many forms of Uresian magic, in particular - each style of sorcery is distinct, and while none of them are really limited in what they can achieve, each is limited in how they achieve it. A Yemite Necromancer, cornered by a group of unruly thugs, could easily engage in combat by summoning up waves of fragile-but-numerous skeletal minions, or by sucking the life-force of his attackers into his pinky ring or something. In that same situation, a Boru Sorcerer might drop a potion-bomb filled with hallucinogenic smoke and dart between his foes, convincing them to attack one another. In game terms, both just roll the dice, so the fun, as always, lies in the descriptions - and what happens if the PCs lose!

In Uresia, a few non-magical clichés imply dabbling in magic or something like it. A Chef, for example, can attempt to manipulate moods and feelings in a way that almost hearkens to Boru Sorcery - it's just not as potent or direct. A Loreseeker or Questing Scholar has probably pored through enough moldy books to try for-real spellcasting. With "dabbling" clichés, let them act just like magical clichés for Target Number based tricks only - just remember that the Target Numbers will be 10 or more points higher than for a real wizard.

I get a major kick out of Uresia, so keep an eye on my Uresia homepage, Blue Lamp Road, for more material now and then. If you like Uresia and you like my fonts, you'll want a copy of the Temphis Runes and Uresia Arcana, font-sets to make cool player handouts! If you're ever stuck with a rainy day and no gamers, grab some Sculpey and make some cool runestones for the next time you play. Finally, if all these things amuse or inspire, please join the Uresia Mailing List, where you can ask me to yammer on about the setting, post your own creations (Uresius stats are welcome, too) or just browse the archives. For more cool anime gaming, visit Uresia's home turf at Guardians of Order.