Heros Unlimited as Superheroic Fantasy

"Fantasy Heroes 

This is an option similar to the Medieval Heroes setting mentioned previously, but instead of being set within a historical Earth time frame, it is set in a world of fantasy, magic, and legend, such as the one presented in The Palladium Fantasy Role-Playing Game®, 2nd Edition . In this setting, dragons and magic are very real and the characters mesh easily into it with their super powers, psionics, and other strange abilities. The G.M. can make super abilities available to all inhabitants of this world, or have the player characters belong to one particular race or class of people that demonstrates these powers." 

- Heroes Unlimited GM Guide, page 70.

So, I want to be a dragon-man paladin in a fantasy world, have natural body armor, fire breath, a light blast power, extraordinary strength, fire and heat resistance, and karmic power to lead a "blessed by the gods" life where my natural resistances (and those around me) are heightened. He goes around, saves villages from skeleton armies, defeats demons, and battles the dark necromancer and other nefarious villains.

That paragraph in the Heroes Unlimited GM's Guide gets me thinking...

It would take me 10 minutes to create that exact character in Heros Unlimited, swapping out skill packages for the ones in Palladium Fantasy. Still, I can get there using a template for a mutant-animal superhero. My dragon-man will be unlike any other, and I could do another using an ice-dragon template and another character class inspiration, and get exactly what I want right from the start.

There is no buying $80 crowdfunded books for expanding the game.

There is no waiting for a book to see if the game designers will give this to me.

There is no praying; a class gives me the powers I want, and I am waiting for the power to unlock, forced to go on weeks of pretentious adventures to finally unlock something weak, and I can only use it once or twice per adventure.

There is no begrudgingly accepting weak powers because "they have to be balanced," and there is no being forced to agree to lame things like your flame breath only working once a day. Sorry, Sir Scalelord the Holy can blast holy light and breathe fire all day, blessing everyone around him at will without a short rest, thank you for nothing, Seattle game designers.

And my warlock black dragon-man can breathe pure darkness, summon demons, teleport, have a shadow form, and control minds. My elf can be a trained swordfighting expert. My gnome can be a tinker gnome with a set of steampunk fantasy armor. My dark elf can be a magic-infused rogue who can disappear at will, phase shift through solid walls, and throw huge fans of blades as an area attack. My bard has a sonic attack blast, mental charms, and can strum their lute to bring up a temporary force shield.

Whatever I want, I can have. It is such a simple concept. Why don't more people play fantasy as a superhero game? This is where it all ends up anyway, and you get what you want right from the start.

Why?

Why, why, why?

This is what D&D 4E promised us, fantasy superheroes, and what 5E pulled way back on, bringing back old-school class roles and making the game boring again. I want the superheroes! I want the instant gratification! I like having it all when I start, and being the uber-character who kicks down the dungeon door and snarls, asking, "Who wants some?"

That is why we loved D&D 4E, not for the rules, which were horribly broken, but for the design theory that says, "You start as a fantasy superhero, and it only gets better."

In D&D 5E, you start off as a mid-level OSR character, you get superpowers around 7th-10th level, and then the rules break, you can't die, and you get bored with the campaign. Anticipating having extraordinary powers is more fun than actually having them.

With a superhero game as the base, I get my fantasy world, and since every superhero is different, all the characters are unique, and your dragon-man won't be replaced by a paladin with the same exact powers. Guess what? My paladin dragon-man is the only one like him in the world. And I didn't need to spend thousands of dollars buying subclass options to expand the choice pool so I could have a semi-unique character.

No, he starts off unique, the only one of his kind, and that is fine by me.

In fact, this is what D&D promises, but it keeps delivering the same cookie-cutter characters, copies of each other. Heroes Unlimited has random super-hero character generation, and if I translate that into a fantasy setting, who knows what I will end up being? I just need a few drops of imagination to translate the powers and origin into a fantastic setting, and there I go.

Heroes Unlimited gives me what D&D 4E promised me.

Fantasy Cyberpunk Games

The last major version of Shadowrun I bought into was the 4th Edition, and I skipped 5th and 6th. I hear the 6th is a complete mess, so I am not in the market until another major revision. I never liked any of the editions and the rules, we spent more time figuring out the rules than playing. I still like the concept, but the setting always felt a little forced.

We had a d20 Modern version of a fantasy cyberpunk setting when we played D&D 3.5, and it was very over the top compared to the more serious Shadowrun. It assumed a modern world, plus all the monsters and races from the 3.5 SRD were present. It was like the Urban Arcana setting for 3.5 but turned up to eleven.

When you put a full load of 3.5 monsters and races in a modern world, with magic, a lot of strange things happen. I don't even know if the world was Earth; it was some messed-up generic 3.5 setting that got shifted into a modern reality with full cities, industries, freeways, and nations. The land between cities was too dangerous to trek in, so the cities were fortress towns filled with all sorts of crazy neighbors. We had one scenario go through a slum where the PCs encountered a beholder sleeping in his home, surrounded by dozens of empty TV dinners, and the beholder hoarded televisions and had a few hundred (all turned on and in every room) in his run-down house. They let him be, and that beholder is probably still living there to this day.

There weren't really "monsters" in this setting, not how D&D has this ingrained xenophobic and genocidal outlook against monsters in the setting. If a monster was halfway intelligent, it lived in the city. If it wasn't intelligent, like a basilisk, those could possibly be tamed and kept as pets. Pretty good home security with a pet basilisk, I tell you, and the beholder had one in a doghouse out back. Like factions (drow, dwarves) tended to group in places they liked and had jobs benefitting the city. Dwarves ran the underground trains and maintained the infrastructure below the streets. Drow drifted towards security, infiltration, and corporate espionage and lived in windowless ebony tower skyscrapers - keeping with that web-like theme of their influence, isolation, and eternal darkness.

The government has to be evil (and very powerful) to keep things together, but they tolerate good factions in the city. Good factions were insular and tended to have their own communities. Dragons (with armies and control of nukes) ran the government, and they used lawful angels and devils to keep everyone in line. The angels and devils had a truce, mainly because they knew neither of them could challenge the dragons, so they acted as enforcers and "the feds." The government let everyone live as they wanted, but if things got too out of control, teams of angels and devils would sweep in to keep things from blowing up civilization. The locals had their own civil and corporate cops that handled the low-level stuff.

There were a few good dragons working within the system to make things better, and they (and their supporters) were the eternal underdogs. Demons (the chaotic ones) were the troublemakers wanting to tear it all down, and they had a couple allied factions helping them. Chaotic and violent monsters lived outside the cities where they were constant threats.

It was a cool setting, one that had a few long-lasting and popular NPCs stick with the group, so the setting always hung out there but was never used that much. It was a fun "alt-Shadowrun" with a more 3.5 flavor and a lot of zany black humor and silly monsters hanging out in unexpected places. It was almost too wild for our group's tastes, but as an exercise in imagination, it was a great alternative setting.

If I were to do this today, I would likely use Cities Without Number as the base system, and augment that with the Swords & Wizardry (revised) game for any of the fantasy stuff. I am done with the 3.5 rules, and CWN does a good job of merging the B/X combat, AC, and hit-point systems with cyberpunk concepts and plenty of random charts. And any Sine Nomine game can drop in B/X characters, monsters, races, and magic without many changes at all, and it just works.

Cities Without Number is a great "basic B/X" rule implementation, cross-compatible with everything. I am liking this system the more I read it since it allows a great deal of customization while keeping the core mechanics very rules light. Having B/X characters drop in and work as-written is also a huge plus. They assume a lower power level and like to carefully consider spells and magic before they are added to the world since high-fantasy magic can be game-breaking. I tend to agree with that assumption.

If I used Earth, I would change it so much things would be unrecognizable. The "magic storm" the planet went through would shift continents around, raise some out of the ocean, create inland seas in others, and generally mess things up to keep things fresh. you could probably hex-crawl and randomly generate the world and it would work, and just keep the major landmarks and cities in the same places and meld them in. Things outside cities are more 'Thundarr the Barbarian' ruins with chaotic monsters infesting the ruins. Call everything "The Wastes" and keep people in cities and you have a great campaign world.

That is what I did in Shadowrun 1.0 back in the day. We assumed the shift in the world destroyed the outside world, made rural areas too dangerous to live in, and kept cities their feudal cousins. Low Fantasy Gaming's excellent (and beautifully made) cyberpunk-fantasy game Lowlife 2090 does the same sort of thing, with a 5E shell and compatibility. You could run the same style of game here in 5E, with cities filled with fantasy races and wild wastelands between the major feudal population centers.

For cyberpunk, you want characters (and everyone else) stuck in cities. This is a genre requirement and sets up rural areas as no-go danger zones filled with monsters, destroyed ruins, and Max-max-style roving gangs (if you are not doing fantasy). When we finally read the Shadowrun world books for 1.0, we were a little shocked they assumed rural areas were filled with safe havens. Not in our version of the world, those hoop snakes were killers.

I like the fantasy and cyberpunk mix since it is the peanut butter and chocolate of cyberpunk gaming. The genre outgrew Shadowrun for us, which always tried too hard to explain things and make them realistic. Also, the cities outside Seattle felt 'meh' to us, and never could live up to that one amazing place - which was a huge weakness of the setting. With the Cyberpunk rules, I could make Dallas engaging as a setting, whereas Shadowrun always felt like it couldn't. Seattle became the too-popular focus of the world, like Waterdeep in the Realms, and killed the game world, and also, the game itself.

With a B/X set of cyberpunk rules, I could make all of Manhattan an arcology structure, a large sealed-off mega city run by the corps, and have the surrounding areas be crime-infested areas with plenty of places of interest to have adventures in. I could even have Manhattan Island be several competing arcologies, each run by a different mega-corp and trying to grow into each other and take each other over in a Game of Cities sort of conflict. That is a cool story.

Mixed with a cyberpunk-fantasy theme, that is an epic story, especially if you flavor the factions with traditional fantasy races and monster types. The Drow of Wall Street and their shadow dragon allies are eating up the south, with the elves and green dragons controlling Central Park and the surrounding areas, and no one gets along.

It would be a fun setting, and pay tribute to the original game that started this, but play on a wider variety of fantasy tropes.

Savage Worlds: Fantasy Companion Alpha

For late backers and the original backers, the alpha PDF dropped today and is available for download. I don't want to do a review since this is an alpha, but what I was interested in were the differences between Savage Pathfinder (SPF) and the Fantasy Companion (FC) since there was a lot of overlap.

This is a nice book, and it presents a more general genre of fantasy than the more world-specific Pathfinder setting. You get a big box view of fantasy with a super broad view of fantasy races, classes, powers, and other material pulled from open-source fantasy games rather than sticking to the Pathfinder core material. If you have a world that is more kitchen-sink than Pathfinder, or a setting like D&D 4 with dragonkin, this is the perfect book to use to convert things into Savage Worlds.

A note here, the ancestries in the Fantasy Companion are at +2 points, compared to Savage Pathfinder's +4 points. They give you an option to add two points to these to bring them up to that "heroic level." I am betting this is to keep things in line with the original rules and balance level of the established settings. 

The races here are way more varied than the standard Savage Pathfinder collection, and you get a bunch of the new classics to play with, and some inspired by movies, games, novels, and even MMORPGs. If you ever wanted to play Savage Worlds: World of Warcraft, Skyrim, Elder Scrolls, Witcher, or Everquest, this is your book. You also get new racial abilities such as diminutive, dark vision, and breath weapons, so a lot more types of custom races can be created.

There are a few reprinted monsters between SPF and FC, but that is to get both games to a basic level of support without requiring the other book, and that is a good thing.

This works well on its own or with Savage Pathfinder as expanded content, so I am very happy with this. FC is more of a hacker and creator's guide to creating fantasy settings and games, whereas SPF is more of a specific game for a specific world.

More soon as this develops and gets even better.

Highly recommended and worth jumping in on.

The Sword of Cepheus and Westlands

I just love these old-school 2d6 roleplaying games. They are endlessly hackable, simple, and blazingly fast. They get the job done without a whole lot of fuss. The swords-and-sorcery version is the very cool Sword of Cepheus game, while the sci-fi version is Cepheus Deluxe. Want to hack the rules and make your own version of the game? Well, they have SRDs in MS Word format too:

• https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/380839/The-Sword-of-Cepheus-Reference
• https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/371216/Cepheus-Deluxe-Reference

It feels like Linux, and with some excellent layout software and some incredible art, you too can make your own roleplaying game. All you need is a game concept and, section by section, you would go through the rules, make additions or edits, and then playtest.

Also, a similar game for 2d6 fantasy called Westlands is only a dollar and comes in PDF format. It is not as nicely laid out as Sword of Cepheus, but it is very similar and will work well. It does a few things differently, and this is good to keep in mind if you find Sword of Cepheus a bit too dark fantasy and not enough swords and sorcery.

Strange Magic

Sword of Cepheus uses a magic corruption system and categorizes magic in white, gray, and black flavors - with black giving corruption. They have a strange system where spells take 10 minutes to cast unless you pre-charge with one-shot or rechargeable foci items. It is a different type of casting system, and they give you an option to fast cast at a penalty, so the game does its own thing with magic and requires a bit of expense and pre-planning with the spells you want to cast.

It feels like a bit of slamming the brakes on caster power, and it may seem excessive to some, and a lot of bookkeeping, pre-casting, and preparation for spell casters. When I first read it, the system turned me off, and it felt like a huge hassle. Until I read Westlands and realized that game ignores foci and the 10-minute casting time and does things more like I am used to.

Oh, yeah, I can just mod the game and fix it. I swear I am reading too much of Pathfinder 2, and in this mode, if it is written in fun, I can't change it, or I will break the entire system. And yes, it took me reading a 95% similar game to realize that. This is your brain, and this is your brain after reading 600 pages of rules.

Use the Westlands casting style if you want to play this game with straight swords and sorcery with easy magic. If you tried to ignore corruption, that is up to you too. These magic systems are hackable, and you can turn options on and off like toggles in a video game.

And, in fact, you should.

Ugh, these games these days where if you change something, you break everything else.

2d6 Systems

These 2d6 systems are popcorn to me. My brother and I hacked together a Car Wars RPG out of the original Traveller, and that system held up for 20 years. It works incredibly well, and I am doing the same thing for Battletech. Seeing hackable 2d6 systems these days for new games is such a cool thing.

Ask yourself, how much game system do I need?

All I need is a quick 2d6 system with a few customization options for many things. The Cepheus engine adds traits to the mix, which are like feats for character improvement (and you get during generation). These could be the "pilot abilities" on those Battletech pilot cards or special abilities you create for your character and get GM approval to use in fantasy games. These traits add to the game's current level of character customization and make it more than the traditional "ability plus skills" we expect from conventional 2d6 systems.

You could bolt on a heritage system like they have in Pathfinder 2, where you can level up your racial abilities and pick different powers as you go, like an asimaar getting wings or a holy aura. A dwarf could buy ore sense or detect vibrations. You could add class packages that do the same things. Hey, mod the game, go ahead.

Where other games try to give you a complete package and experience out of the box, these 2d6 systems are Linux distributions inviting you to make the game your own.

Or, put another way, it gives you the tools to make your own game.

Savage Worlds: Classic Mystara

So another possible setting for Savage Pathfinder (or Fantasy) is a pretty cool one, the classic Mystara setting for the original B/X D&D games. I just picked up a set of the original PDFs (plus the PODs you can buy, please make more of them available) on DriveThruRPG, and this is a strong contender to take my #1 spot - just because I have a long history with these lands and they were the home of the first adventures I ran as a DM.

Everything is here, the world, a cool setting I have a history with, that familiar feeling, and plenty of places to explore and visit again. I could use this for classic B/X as well, just grab Labyrinth Lord and we are good to go for years of fun, no conversions, no waiting for the Savage Pathfinder books to come (I have the PDFs but books are so much easier), and I have everything I need to make it work.

So the question becomes, B/X or Savage Worlds?

B/X vs. SWADE: Goals

This comes down to if you are a fan of the "gamey games" that Savage Worlds implements as a part of the system, such as chases, initiative, bennies, raises, social interaction, and the other systems that Savage Worlds ships with that B/X does away with. Me? I am a fan, and while playing solo it is fun to navigate some of these systems and play through them. Also, initiative in Savage Worlds I feel is way easier than d20 style systems and it does away with a lot of math and sorting of up to a dozen combatants when a combat begins.

I like Savage Worlds combat as well, there is a lot more play and options in a modern system such as this, and you can make a lot of choices and switch up tactics from turn to turn, work together, and use edges or skills to manipulate the flow of the action.

One thing about B/X is you don't need to convert, and you have everything right there. You do lose things in the conversion, and things get mechanically soft (or you forget a monster ability). If you like rules-as-written and want things clear, do not convert. If you are shooting for more of a story and the type of action Savage Worlds simulates well, then convert.

For this playthrough I want more story and pulp action, problem solving and NPC interaction, and I am not as concerned with an old-school simulation. I love B/X and the old-school ethos, it is just for this game I want to play more with the characters and setting than the dungeons and the monsters. Some settings to me beg to be played as a grand drama, where others are a darker crawl into the dungeons and the nature of greed and power.

Focus on Quality, not Quantity

Old school modules are notorious for using quantity as quality, to make a fight challenging they will throw 13 rats in a room and expect you to handle hit points, initiative, and attacks per rat, and they will give you a hit point list for all of them individually (1,1,1,2,2,2,2,3,3,3,4,4,4). In Savage Worlds, that's one swarm. But if you are playing an old-school module in SW, adjust the monsters in quantity and shoot for quality encounters rather than the adventure-as-written.

Similarly, if you have a room with 10 goblins, think about knocking that down to a wild card goblin leader and four extras - and maybe give a few special weapons and attacks/defenses (bow with poison arrows, burning pitch, caltrops, or an entangle weapon). You just took a "bulk fight 10 goblins" sort of old-school hit point grind and turned it into a fight with some interesting options and challenges. Less combatants but more quality that leverages the special parts of the Savage Worlds rules is better than a boring bulk creature fight.

Similarly, consider non-combat options to resolving encounters such as stealth, skill rolls, negotiation, role play, and using powers or gear. Again this is obvious when you are playing Savage Worlds, but if you are in a certain old-school mindset you may get locked into the "if there are 15 orcs in the mess hall, you gotta defeat 15 orcs to get through the room" and all other options disappear from your mind. This happens to me on conversions, and I have to take a step back and wonder, could a food fight be started? Can you wait out dinner? Where would they go to afterwards? Is the time of day even right for a meal to be served? Could the food be spiced to be extra spicy (for laughs or other reasons)? Could an illusion be used to make the food less appetizing? What happens if a large rat or insect runs through the room?

Are there other ways of dealing with this encounter than the obvious?

Again, instead of a "fight quantity of X" sort of encounter, you are creating something that can be roleplayed through, skills used, or other inventive uses of the rules and leveraging the options and powers the system gives you. The resolution to the problem the room presents can be solved with more than just combat, so your quality is being reflected by a wide variety of resolution options supported in the rules and character abilities.

In B/X the referee ruling on player experimentation is the core of problem resolution, with a default focus on combat as the final resolution. You don't need special rules or abilities, maybe perhaps a save or ability check if there is a question of success chances. Nothing says you can't do any of the above in B/X either, you can be just as inventive and have a good referee play off that.

In Savage Worlds you have systems, edges, player abilities, skills, and the minigames built into the rules that help you resolve problems. These need to be considered when you think about how an encounter can be resolved. For a solo play experience, I find the structure here to be of great assistance when I make rulings and try to have characters influence the story through skills and abilities.

My Second Go Around

When we played this in our years-long campaign the stories started personal and NPC-based, and then naturally shifted into "superhero save the world" plots. When that happens I feel you lose the personal and dramatic stories that are lower-level and a lot more meaningful. By the time our campaign ended the only  reason to go anywhere in the world was because of a world-ending plot, and frankly, it got tiring. We were young and did not know any better, but what else can you do when you lack hindsight and experience?

I tire of superhero movies these days for the same reason. Plots where you start out invested in a few characters and their struggles always turn out to be an "end of the world" plot and you lose that connection to their personal stories. And honestly, in many cases the world never ends or can change much because the next movie needs a normal world to setup the next end of the world. The story becomes "too big" and we lose the intimate feel that drew us in.

I would run these on a lower-level and make all the plots driven by NPCs and stories instead of extra-worldly threats. You can change the world, things evolve, towns can rise or fall, and the world is a living world where making a difference in an area matters and continues on in the campaign.

Classic Modules

One thing about out campaign was that Greyhawk and the Forgotten Realms did not exist in our minds. All the classic AD&D modules took place here. The Slave Lords, B-series, S-series, Tomb of Horrors, and everything else is scattered around the world here on the map. We have a world, just put the dungeon somewhere and let's play! We were kids, so we kit-bashed everything, played using D&D rules and tossed in AD&D as we needed it (like the classic Labyrinth Lord setup), and all the best modules and adventures were in this world.

Would I keep that? I probably would. If this is the D&D homage playthrough, this will be it. Everything is on the table here. I may change a couple things, add characters, change up the stories a little, but if I feel the need to pull these adventures in, they are there and they could fit in if I needed them.

And I can get the PDFs, so that is cool.

Fantasy Companion or Savage Pathfinder?

Classic Mystara can stand beside Pathfinder's Golarion and be an equal. The settings are comparable, and Mystara has the benefit of me knowing and playing in this world since I was a kid. Now, Mystara does not have all the things Golarion has, two I can think of off-hand are a Cheliax-like evil kingdom and a ruined starship fantasy-tech place. I could fit places like that in if I really needed them, and I could take a huge isolated area and crash Barrier Peaks S-series style starships into the planet and have my tech-fantasy area with that classic twist. A evil kingdom of demons (or just a city) could pop up somewhere as a story drama to play through.

I am leaning towards the Savage Pathfinder rules, with a scattering for the Fantasy Companion mixed in (like the magic item generator). I hope the printed books come quick, or I may be ordering some print outs from somewhere of the PDFs I have or printing out a few sections for reference.

More when this game gets going, since I have a couple things in the way of playing. I am now focusing on teaching another player how to play Savage Worlds, and she should be getting up to speed and happily having adventures soon.

Review: Legend (Mongoose)

Are you looking for a 100% OGL percentile fantasy system? Are you looking for one where the PDF only costs $1? Do you like the percentile system in games like Runequest or Call of Cthulhu?

Then Legend is worth your time.

It is a remarkable little gem of a game that gives you the best of a Runequest II style rule-set in an OGL package. You can write your own game using these rules if you would like, or come out with a game based on them. The books are digest-sized, which instantly gives them a Traveller sort of feel to me, and the rules are not all that complicated at all.

This sort of OGL effort is what will make our games last forever, and will plant the seeds for generations to come so that they may enjoy the games we did. Like Labyrinth Lord, Basic Fantasy, Mutant Future, and many others, these games will keep delivering enjoyment forever and will also be opportunities for others to share the creations of their dreams and visions. In an age where companies lock things up and where sharing is rare, having a commitment to OGL at launch is highly laudable and worthy of praise. Mongoose is doing the right thing here.

So what do you get?

You get a basic set of rules covering character creation, combat, spells, and skills all in a tight little package that puts many of today's bloated encyclopedia games to shame. Role-playing does not need to be complicated, and we have a concise set of core rules here that proves it can be done. What do we lose? Options, such as page after page of spell lists and volumes of magic items. I am sure someone in the community has made these by now, and if they haven't, I am free to do this myself and sell them to the community or share them for free. I don't need approval, I just add an OGL on my work and it is legit and ready to distribute.

How soon we forget about the OGL and how cool it was.

I know there is a setting-neutral Runquest 6th Edition out there and I have yet to check that out, but that one is 450+ pages and this one is the smaller of the two. In my feeling, if you are going to go a couple of hundred pages with the Runequest name, I want some world and setting info along with the generic game. Plus I am taking a break from the huge book collection hobby for a while past D&D 5 and Pathfinder's latest releases.

Is it worth playing over D&D 5 or Pathfinder? You will be running straight into that "new game" smell with D&D 5, and Pathfinder is entrenched with its players with a huge buy-in and support. If you have players that like trying new things out, and want a more realistic and gritty combat system with hit locations and fun wounding rules, this is a good place to start. I liked the combat rules here, and they feel realistic without abstract concepts like hit points and armor class. They aren't that difficult either. They may be a little roll and counter happy, but the rolls and calculations are straightforward and on the character sheet.

Legend does gritty fantasy really well. If you are looking for a Game of Thrones style feel where someone can get their lightly-armored leg stuck with a spear and hobble around while making a heroic stand against multiple foes, I feel you will get much better results with Legend than you will either of the D&D style games out there today.

There's no level or class either, and character grow naturally into their roles. This is a plus, as you can be a sword-swinging whoosit for a while, discover an ancient order of sorcerers, and join to start learning magic and become a castit for a while without losing your sword-swinging whoosit abilities. You don't have to suffer with multi-classing or worrying that taking a couple levels of wizard will screw up your final character build. You learn as you go, and your character grows in a natural and organic-feeling way. I like character progression in this game very much.

Legend also does a way better job at tying your character to a background, society, and even family within your game world than other games. This is critical for games where family and faction relations matter. These are instant adventure hooks, and there are plenty of fun rules in this book for cults, factions, and other groups that can either aid or harm the characters (or even join, if you choose). I prefer Legend's more world, occupation, faction, and family based method of story seeding than I do D&D 5's random trait table based method by far.

Monsters are an add-on book, as are some other subject you may want to check out. I kind of like not having an official set of monsters to trow around, or an official set of magic items. In my Legend worlds, players won't know what to expect. The monsters book does have some great "Chaos creature" tables and a list of monster traits that will be useful should you roll your own, so I recommend at least getting that book as well if you are playing more traditional fantasy.

There are add-on books for equipment and pirates (ship combat), and two available for different magic systems. To be fair, once you start buying, the price does go up for all of them, but the basic book is playable enough. Since most every book is OGL the information should be available somewhere in reference format. This reminds me a lot of the way the original Traveller was written, a basic set with everything, and add-on books going into more depth should you want (or need) the material.

Legend also scales well. With a little work, you could use these rules for modern or sci-fi settings without too much work (maybe add a couple skills and pieces of gear). Creating a new game from these rules would not be hard, and guess what? There's a door open to publishing it.

This game is also mostly cross compatible with other Runequest II, BRP, Call of Cthulhu, and any other system developed for a similar system. This is much like the D&D 3.5 OGL, and it is nice to see many games flourishing under a separate but equal banner and similar rule set.

The question to ask yourself is this: can your group play without D&D 5 or Pathfinder? In my experience, it is hard to get a group interested in something that isn't new or popular, so knowing your players and getting them to try something new will be important. Both of the big fantasy games have the advantage of those 'instant familiarity' tropes common to fantasy gaming, and thus are more accessible. If you want to look deeper and have background and character matter more than the same-old class-level-loot combo, then other games are worthy of your attention, including Legend.

Player's Pit: Warhammer Fantasy Roleplaying Game by FFG

Big Crate of Fun!

After some mail delays we finally got our huge boxed set from amazon of Fantasy Flight's Warhammer fantasy Roleplaying game deluxe set! Here is our un-boxing review:

Deluxe Packaging

I was surprised at the quality of the set! You get a ton of character cards, power cards, dice, high-quality cardboard minis and such. The only ding is they only give you 16 plastic stands or all the cardboard heroes, so we ended up 33 short. we found a deal on FRPGAMES.com that sells 10 stands for 3 bucks so we ordered a set of 4. One thing I love is that this big box game experience feels like getting a Christmas present with lots of goodies in it. FFG knows how to make game that tweak my collector's itch! I must resist ordering the GM, played, and monster add-ons before we've had a chance to get our game on with this....

Fresh Car Smell

The box has tons of room to add expansion books if you buy them, and from the look of the offerings, each one adds a different aspect to the game. they have a royals set for playing, royals, a war based set for military RP-ing and such. I love the focused product design aspect and you need to only add whats important to your game when you need it. My evil twisted royal idea may need the Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay: Lure of Power expansion though... so....tempting....FFG...you are a tease.

*pout* Game Envy!

The whole production makes me wish other companies spent this much time on engineering the "out of box" experience like FFG does. I like the feel that you get when you get something like this. You feel like your going to have a ton of fun times with all the toys you get. You could imagine a spy game or even a super hero game with all the trimmings like this game has.

So it spoils me to the standard "hey here are two 400 page books to digest and deal with it" approach many roleplaying games have. I do respect if your a small game publisher and putting out a couple books for people to enjoy your ideas; but when you get to the big budget games, I would more expect a nice velvet glove treatment in the way Fantasy Flight Games does. It is an impressive set, to say the least.

Overall: Imposing and Impressive!

If you plop this crate on a gaming group cold, you'll have casualties if you don't do some reading and mastering of this set ahead of time. I suggest getting up to speed first in a private session s a referee and them like a seasoned and suave host, and with a little impressive swagger, plop this down on your friends and start in. My first impression is like getting a huge 10,000 piece puzzle for my birthday and then settling in afterwards to dig into it and have fun.

My First Character

Evil duke bent on carving out his own kingdom in the chaos of the Empire through deceit, plotting, and good old fashion politics. Done. We'll see how it goes with the initial session and post a second part when we get there!


Stay tuned!

~G