This old Chaosium RPG was based on the award-winning Ringworld novel by renowned sci-fi author Larry Niven. This game is a must-have for any Niven fan, including such hard-to-find things as the Hyperspace Approximations (just how close can you safely get to a neutron star in hyperspace?), hyperdrive statistics, and diagrams of all the General Products hulls. If you know what I'm talking about, you know you want this stuff. If you don't have any idea what I'm talking about, let me suggest you go find some of Niven's books. I'd start with the short story collections Crashlander and Tales of Known Space, and then hit what is arguably his best novel — Ringworld.

The old Chaosium RPG focuses strongly on the Ringworld and its inhabitants, but you're given enough information on the other sentient races in Known Space to play them too. This is the only place I know of where you can get game stats for Kzin and Puppeteers — as well as equipment like the infamous variable knife and Slaver disintegrator. There's enough information in the game to let a Niven-savvy GM run an entire Known Space campaign; it's truly a pity that these books are out of print.

The only problem I had with the game was that they included some decidedly non-Niven technologies in the equipment section. Pneumo-rifle? Where did that come from? Still, such flaws are easily enough overlooked when there are pages of information on the Ringworld and all of humanity's colonies. I'm dying for a reprint!

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