World Action And Adventure

World Action and Adventure is a universal role-playing system, with character creation, skill, combat, and mass combat rules.^[1] The boxed set includes the Official Guide, a GM's screen, character record sheets, and blank forms.^[1] In its attempt to simulate the actual modern world, the game tries to quantify everything in the modern world, including life expectancies, animals, careers, and diseases.^[2] RPG historian Stu Horvath notes "minimum hours of sleep, a matrix for determining the outcome of a trial ... A set of tables for important events in a character's year includes a sub-table for embarrassment — at a party, with a friend, many people around, hundreds watching."^[2]

World Action and Adventure was designed by Gregory L. Kinney as a college project that earned him five course credits.^[2] It was play-tested by friends and relatives including his grandparents,^[2] and published by the M.S. Kinney Corporation in 1985 as a boxed set containing a 160-page hardcover book, a cardstock screen, a packet of blank forms, a small pad of character sheets, and dice.^[1] Several supplements were published the same year including Book of Animals and Geography (1985) and Actor's Book of Characters. Ads that appeared in games magazines that year offered a reward of $50 to the first 100 players who sent in the description of a scenario that had been designed and played by at least four players using at least ten tables or charts during play.^[3] The Official Guide from the main set was also published separately in 1985.