It was Mike's fault. We were at the Origins game show in Ohio, back in 2003, when he suggested it. Mike told me to do it.

"You should write your own RPG system," he said. That was all that it took. Since then I've been pingling with ideas... but now something has changed.

After 10 years, and several false starts, we started to use something home-grown. The guys I game with were playing and enjoying the tweaks we made to our existing fantasy campaign. With encouragement to develop things further, I decided to do two things: write up the stuff we've created, and develop more stuff.

What you are reading is the home-brew project developed while planning a science-fantasy setting. It started as a collection of rulings made to facilitate play at our own table. Now it's something distinct: the Affinity System.

Alongside this book we aim to share our fantasy-genre, SF-genre, and modern-conspiracy-weirdshit-genre notes. The idea is simply to provide the author's home group with a set of the rules whilst also offering our setting ideas to the wider hobby community.

The game has roots in the Old School Renaissance (OSR) and the design was begun by mashing up several sub-systems from existing games with our own take on roleplaying. Now it has evolved into the game that I wanted to write and play. It's my game. The truth is, to your mind, it'll be flawed. If something works, it was probably inspired by one of a myriad of other game designers; if it's broken, that's probably my fault. 

The game has been developed openly with player contribution. There's a blog where you can both read about the reasons for decisions and suggest improvements. The whole thing is out there under Creative Commons, so feel free to remix or add to our stuff under the auspices of that license. 

Want to know more? Check out: ubiquitousrpg.net

Remember that, ultimately, this is now your game too; whatever you want to change, add or subtract is your choice.

Game on!