14; for a very difficult task, 18; and for a nearly impossible task, 21. If an opponent is resisting the action, the difficulty is their roll. Style Tweet has stated that he designed Over the Edge to be more improvisational and open-ended than other role-playing games. On his website, he writes: I designed Over the Edge to be crazy and spontaneous, so that's how I ran it. I'd generally mix alcohol, caffeine, and nicotine to get my head right for OTE. I invented whatever came to mind as we played, and wound up generating dozens of weird clues to uninvented mysteries, many of which the players never followed up. The setting was a challenge enough, so I didn't feel I needed to present the players with hard-edged combat challenges. There were plenty of fights, but the challenge was to get into the right fights more than it was to win a particular fight. Setting Al Amarja – where nightmares go to breed The game is set in the fictitious Mediterranean island of Al Amarja. Geography Al Amarja is an independent island state in the southern Mediterranean. The western side of the island is covered by three interconnected cities (from north to south): the port town of Skylla, the slums of The Edge and the tract housing of suburban Traboc. Most of the population lives there. Freedom City, the capital of Al Amarja, is on the eastern end of the island and was inspired by Washington D.C. It consists mainly of stately government buildings and the opulent homes of government officials, surrounded by the rickety slums that house the government employees. The only difference between Washington D.C. and Freedom City is here the drug dens and brothels are in the good part of town and are very exclusive. The two ends of the island are linked by the "October 7th Memorial Highway" along the northern coast and "Freedom Road" along the southern coast. The rest of the island is undeveloped hilly forest, at the center of which lies an extinct volcano called Mount Ralsius. The French version of the game (called Conspirations) shifted the position of Al Amarja to the Caribbean for the same reasons it was placed in the Mediterranean sea in the original: an exotic place in an area of numerous islands sufficiently unfamiliar to the target audience, next to big western nations where many cultures and societies mix.