The Inside Scoop on Gaming

Imagine that AD&D had literally been the only game in town since the 1970s. Now imagine that someone decided to make a new fantasy game with consistent and playable rules but couldn't quite bring himself to cut the umbilical to the AD&D system and its underlying inanities. The result might look something like Legendmaker.

THE BOOK

Ordinarily, I review the book itself last… but for a game like Legendmaker, the book's style is key to understanding why the game doesn't quite succeed at what it sets out to do.

The author is quite proud of his game. From his introduction, you might think that you held in your hands a book to revolutionize the RPG industry. If this book had come out around 1980, you might even be right.

The language of the book seems targeted at young teen players who have either never heard of roleplaying games or have played only AD&D. This tone is set early on: the author explains that the game contains no board, dice, or playing pieces, which, he says, may be causing the reader to exclaim, "What a rip!" The names used throughout the book just reinforce this juvenile feel: the canine humanoids are called "Kaynyns", the cat people "Pheelynes", and the merfolk "Osheanix". The author is apparently unaware that only holdout fans of "He-Man and the Masters of the Universe" would find such "creative spelling" cool.

Of course, it may be that these names are supposed to be amusing. To be honest, I couldn't quite decide how seriously the author wished to be taken. Maybe he didn't know either. On one hand, he makes use of vaguely intellectual-sounding hyphenated jargon such as "Klepto-Concealment", "Psycho-Sensory", and "Necro-warrior"; on the other, he gives many spells and magic items goofy names like "Run Really Fast", "U.R. Here", and "Heebee Geebee's All Powerful Skull". The tone, like many elements of this game, is annoyingly inconsistent.

One matter the author obviously does take seriously is avoiding AD&D terminology like the plague - he seems to have a profound fear of being linked to that game. (Which, of course, means that this review is probably already looking pretty bad to him.) Halflings, for example, become "Shirelings". (If you're going to rip off a race from a game that in turn ripped it off from Tolkien, you can at least use their accepted name.) The shape-changers are called Xenomorphs (alien forms), even though Polymorphs (many forms) would have made more sense; but then, "polymorph" smacks of AD&D. Even golems become "synthetic animations", or "synthans".

The game has more acronyms than a government bureaucracy, and these, too, seem designed to avoid any common ground with AD&D. Non-player characters become Non-Player Adventurers (NPAs). Experience points become Improvement Points (IMPS), which are converted into Character Improvement Points (CHIMPS), which in turn are divided between Skill Improvement Points (SKIMPS) and Proficiency Improvement Points (PIMPS). You get the idea.

The book is supremely well organized, however uneven the content may be. The reader is taken step by logical step through the system, starting with a comprehensive list of terms and ending with a comprehensive glossary/index and quick reference sheets, with many examples of play along the way. The answers to most rules questions can be found in seconds, a feat I've been unable to accomplish with many games put out by major manufacturers - yet more proof that there is no excuse for not including an index.

Legendmaker includes many tips on roleplaying in general, such as ideas for snacks and ways to play by email, irc, and MUD. Sidebars run throughout the text, but their function is wildly inconsistent, offering everything from vital stats to inane comments to frequent and repetitive reminders that Legendmaker does not encourage violence, thievery, magic, belief in spirits, any individual religion, or even - no, I'm not making this up - attempts to create golems. (Oops! Sorry - I mean attempts to create synthans.) Obviously, the AD&D witch hunts of the early 1980s are still fresh in the author's mind.

The book includes a long list of spells for both clerics and mages and a bestiary of respectable size; however, the latter gives only the most threadbare descriptions of all creatures except dragons, lycanthropes, spirits, synthans, vampires, and the undead. Many seem little more than targets that hit back.

THE SETTING

The author might argue that Legendmaker doesn't have a setting at all, since the book is meant to help gamemasters create their own fantasy worlds and therefore contains no world maps or histories. However, many key elements are quite world-specific, apparently springing from the author's own setting, "The Carousel".

All the usual fantasy races are here: elves, dwarves, gnomes, etc. Of course, there are a few twists to remind us all that this is Not D&D. For example, half-orcs, for some inadequately-explained reason, are exceptionally religious instead of nasty and larcenous. Then there are the three new races thrown in to show us that this is Really Not D&D: Kaynyns, Pheelynes, and Xenomorphs. All races have some innate magical ability except humans, who have a small chance of having psionics. Yet, for some reason, the author assures us that humans will always rule any campaign world.

Probably the best example of the world-specific nature of the book is the description of dragons. They are, the author tells us, what he has always thought dragons should be: stupid, mute, four-limbed, non-spellcasting herd animals - hardly the traditional dragon of fantasy literature. Of course, as the author says, we can make dragons - or anything else in the book, for that matter - anything we'd like them to be, since it's "our system". The point, though, is that placing such non-generic dragons in a theoretically generic fantasy game just doesn't make a whole lot of sense.

The frequent black-and-white artwork ranges from fair to quite good; some of the charcoal illustrations are especially whimsical or evocative. Perhaps more importantly, it maintains a consistent feel throughout the book. The rather surprising exception is the cover, which seems much more amateurish than the rest of the game's artwork. (Speaking of the cover, the author might want to consider putting a bit of descriptive copy on there; as it stands, the sum total of cover text consists of the game and company names.)

THE RULES

Legendmaker's core rules excel as an introductory system. The game uses only d10s, and all rolls aside from damage are percentile-based. If you really must have classes and levels - and these things do work well in an introductory game - then this is the way to go about it.

Character creation, with its four-page character sheet, seems at first to be a daunting prospect. Don't let that scare you - the calculations involved are quick and easy, and the sheet is very well laid out. I found that character creation takes from 20-30 minutes - one of the advantages of the limited choices a class system offers, I suppose. It was fun, however, and that's the important thing.

Attributes are determined from a racial base plus a die roll, with roughly 50% being the human average. One-tenth of this amount, rounded down, serves as a modifier to attribute-related skills and abilities.

Here's where déjà vu really kicks in. There are four basic character classes: Fighter, Thief, Cleric, and Mage. (Shocking, I know.) However, the classes are not all that restrictive. Class determines proficiencies: the skills at which you must improve in order to increase in level. These are just what you'd expect: weapons skills for fighters, magic skills for Mages, etc. Characters start out with a base 30% skill in all of their Primary Proficiencies, plus any attribute adjustments, plus 10 points to distribute as desired. When characters gain 10 additional points in their proficiencies, they advance to the next level. Character level, in turn, determines such things as saving throws, spell points (see below), and hit points. (Yes, the game retains D&D's problem of infinitely expanding hit points.) In other words, class doesn't tell you so much what you can do as it does what you must improve in order to be better at your chosen profession. Of course, experienced roleplayers wouldn't need character classes to tell them that...

Characters also have a number of points based on their intelligence to spend on non-proficiency skills, allowing for sneaky fighters and sword-swinging clerics. (All classes can use all weapons and armor, by the way - another big improvement over AD&D.) These skills, like proficiencies, start at 30% plus modifiers and points spent.

Unfortunately, things get fuzzier from here on out. Characters can be multi-classed by choosing to have secondary or tertiary proficiencies with starting bases of 15% and 5% respectively. Such characters get 10 points to spend on proficiencies for each class. So, because level = proficiency points/10, multi-classed characters start out at second or third level and advance at the same rate as single-classed characters. Mechanically speaking, I can't see any incentive not go the multi-class route.

There are also two subclasses, the Holy Warrior and the Necro-Warrior - fighter/clerics and fighter/mages, respectively. These differ from multi-classed characters in that the subclassed character must spend at least five levels in each class separately, and, once this is done, may cast spells in combat.

Secondary skills, which start with a base of 15%, are picked up during play at the gamemaster's discretion - no guidelines are given.

Skills are almost ridiculously specialized. For example, the art of healing is divided into Medical (the ability to diagnose an illness), Medicinal (the ability to treat an illness), and Pharmacology (the ability to make the medicines to treat the illness that's been diagnosed). Likewise, Pick Pockets, Prestidigitation, and Klepto-Concealment are all separate skills. Since characters don't get many skills, this could force them to choose between being highly specialized or having illogical gaps in their experience.

One other quirk regarding the Legendmaker skill system is its use of adjustments. Some skills get attribute adjustments, some don't. More troublesome, though, is the fact that some skills give flat bonuses to other skills; for example, having any points at all in Persuasion gives +10% to Deception, +10% to Diplomacy, and +15% to Protocol. That means that by spending just one point, the character gains 35 points worth of skills. I suppose this helps balance the problem of having such highly focused skill categories, but the min-max potential still seems enormous.

Combat is not particularly realistic, but, like character creation, is fast and easy. An attacker's skill percentage is reduced by the defender's defense score, which is determined by dexterity and armor. (Yes, we're back to armor reducing the chance to hit rather than damage.) If an attack is successful, the defender gets a chance to parry by rolling under the attacker's roll to hit plus the defender's parry adjustment, the latter being based upon dexterity and number of weapons skills divided by ten. So, if an attacker makes a successful attack with a roll of 45% against a defender with a parry adjustment of 11%, the defender can parry by rolling a 66% or less. Weapons are divided into broad categories such as Short Weapon, Long Weapon, and Pole Arm, each with an associated damage value and number of attacks per level.

The magic system is also quick and easy, although fundamentally flawed. Clerics get spell points based on Wisdom and level; Mages get spell points based on Intelligence and level. Spellcasting costs a number of spell points and hit points equal to the spell's level; some spells are unleveled, meaning that the caster selects the level of effect. Spells are divided into categories such as Offensive, Defensive, and Naturalist, and the difficulty of casting a spell is the caster's skill in that category minus 10% for every level beyond the first. So far, so good - easy and flexible.

Unfortunately, many spell descriptions are far too vague. For example, the spell Animate Object affects "one object" - apparently, this can mean anything from one toothpick to one 300' monolith with no change in casting difficulty. Then there's Summon from Other Plane, which summons one creature - anything from an imp to an elemental to a god - and keeps it around so long as the caster can control it, although how this control is maintained isn't mentioned. To make matters worse, the lists of spells required to create synthans include spells that aren't included in the book - we're told that the GM needs to write these up. The mage and cleric spells lack a distinctive feel, so much so that in several places the text for cleric rituals are cut and pasted for mage rituals. (I can only assume that the author found that D&D cleric spells didn't kick enough ass.) To top things off, there's no method for determining how many spells a magic-user knows. There's not even space to record spells on that expansive character sheet. Psionics are covered on both counts, but not magic. Go figure.

The system calls for gamemaster fiat for everything from awarding skills to characters' starting armor and financial status to secondary spell effects. I just don't think the GMs who would be comfortable with this amount of leeway would be using a system that also enforces a character class format.

As a final note on the system, Legendmaker wisely goes without an alignment system. Apparently some lessons from AD&D took.

SUMMARY

As I said before, Legendmaker has the potential to be an outstanding system for beginning roleplayers. In fact, it could be fun for more advanced players as well. Unfortunately, the book is too world-specific to be generic and too generic to be world-specific, and the rules are too restrictive in places for advanced roleplayers and too loose in others for beginners. This, when combined with the frequent and annoying gaps in the rules, prevents me from rating this game as anything above average.

My advice to the author? Keep your system and repackage it as an introductory game. It's not revolutionary to anyone who's moved beyond AD&D, but it is simple and easy to understand. Clear up as many of the ambiguities as possible - beginning gamemasters need more information than "you figure it out". Then, either make the setting elements truly generic or run with your setting of the Carousel. There's great potential here; it just needs to be tapped more fully.

Style: 3 (Average)
Substance: 3 (Average)

Legendmaker
Author: Howard I. Scott, III Category: game Company/Publisher: Chaos Enterprises, Inc. Cost: 19.95 Page count: 231 ISBN: 0-9665-0440-8 Playtest Review by Dan Davenport on 11/08/98. Genre tags: Fantasy	Imagine that AD&D had literally been the only game in town since the 1970s. Now imagine that someone decided to make a new fantasy game with consistent and playable rules but couldn't quite bring himself to cut the umbilical to the AD&D system and its underlying inanities. The result might look something like Legendmaker. THE BOOK Ordinarily, I review the book itself last… but for a game like Legendmaker, the book's style is key to understanding why the game doesn't quite succeed at what it sets out to do. The author is quite proud of his game. From his introduction, you might think that you held in your hands a book to revolutionize the RPG industry. If this book had come out around 1980, you might even be right. The language of the book seems targeted at young teen players who have either never heard of roleplaying games or have played only AD&D. This tone is set early on: the author explains that the game contains no board, dice, or playing pieces, which, he says, may be causing the reader to exclaim, "What a rip!" The names used throughout the book just reinforce this juvenile feel: the canine humanoids are called "Kaynyns", the cat people "Pheelynes", and the merfolk "Osheanix". The author is apparently unaware that only holdout fans of "He-Man and the Masters of the Universe" would find such "creative spelling" cool. Of course, it may be that these names are supposed to be amusing. To be honest, I couldn't quite decide how seriously the author wished to be taken. Maybe he didn't know either. On one hand, he makes use of vaguely intellectual-sounding hyphenated jargon such as "Klepto-Concealment", "Psycho-Sensory", and "Necro-warrior"; on the other, he gives many spells and magic items goofy names like "Run Really Fast", "U.R. Here", and "Heebee Geebee's All Powerful Skull". The tone, like many elements of this game, is annoyingly inconsistent. One matter the author obviously does take seriously is avoiding AD&D terminology like the plague - he seems to have a profound fear of being linked to that game. (Which, of course, means that this review is probably already looking pretty bad to him.) Halflings, for example, become "Shirelings". (If you're going to rip off a race from a game that in turn ripped it off from Tolkien, you can at least use their accepted name.) The shape-changers are called Xenomorphs (alien forms), even though Polymorphs (many forms) would have made more sense; but then, "polymorph" smacks of AD&D. Even golems become "synthetic animations", or "synthans". The game has more acronyms than a government bureaucracy, and these, too, seem designed to avoid any common ground with AD&D. Non-player characters become Non-Player Adventurers (NPAs). Experience points become Improvement Points (IMPS), which are converted into Character Improvement Points (CHIMPS), which in turn are divided between Skill Improvement Points (SKIMPS) and Proficiency Improvement Points (PIMPS). You get the idea. The book is supremely well organized, however uneven the content may be. The reader is taken step by logical step through the system, starting with a comprehensive list of terms and ending with a comprehensive glossary/index and quick reference sheets, with many examples of play along the way. The answers to most rules questions can be found in seconds, a feat I've been unable to accomplish with many games put out by major manufacturers - yet more proof that there is no excuse for not including an index. Legendmaker includes many tips on roleplaying in general, such as ideas for snacks and ways to play by email, irc, and MUD. Sidebars run throughout the text, but their function is wildly inconsistent, offering everything from vital stats to inane comments to frequent and repetitive reminders that Legendmaker does not encourage violence, thievery, magic, belief in spirits, any individual religion, or even - no, I'm not making this up - attempts to create golems. (Oops! Sorry - I mean attempts to create synthans.) Obviously, the AD&D witch hunts of the early 1980s are still fresh in the author's mind. The book includes a long list of spells for both clerics and mages and a bestiary of respectable size; however, the latter gives only the most threadbare descriptions of all creatures except dragons, lycanthropes, spirits, synthans, vampires, and the undead. Many seem little more than targets that hit back. THE SETTING The author might argue that Legendmaker doesn't have a setting at all, since the book is meant to help gamemasters create their own fantasy worlds and therefore contains no world maps or histories. However, many key elements are quite world-specific, apparently springing from the author's own setting, "The Carousel". All the usual fantasy races are here: elves, dwarves, gnomes, etc. Of course, there are a few twists to remind us all that this is Not D&D. For example, half-orcs, for some inadequately-explained reason, are exceptionally religious instead of nasty and larcenous. Then there are the three new races thrown in to show us that this is Really Not D&D: Kaynyns, Pheelynes, and Xenomorphs. All races have some innate magical ability except humans, who have a small chance of having psionics. Yet, for some reason, the author assures us that humans will always rule any campaign world. Probably the best example of the world-specific nature of the book is the description of dragons. They are, the author tells us, what he has always thought dragons should be: stupid, mute, four-limbed, non-spellcasting herd animals - hardly the traditional dragon of fantasy literature. Of course, as the author says, we can make dragons - or anything else in the book, for that matter - anything we'd like them to be, since it's "our system". The point, though, is that placing such non-generic dragons in a theoretically generic fantasy game just doesn't make a whole lot of sense. The frequent black-and-white artwork ranges from fair to quite good; some of the charcoal illustrations are especially whimsical or evocative. Perhaps more importantly, it maintains a consistent feel throughout the book. The rather surprising exception is the cover, which seems much more amateurish than the rest of the game's artwork. (Speaking of the cover, the author might want to consider putting a bit of descriptive copy on there; as it stands, the sum total of cover text consists of the game and company names.) THE RULES Legendmaker's core rules excel as an introductory system. The game uses only d10s, and all rolls aside from damage are percentile-based. If you really must have classes and levels - and these things do work well in an introductory game - then this is the way to go about it. Character creation, with its four-page character sheet, seems at first to be a daunting prospect. Don't let that scare you - the calculations involved are quick and easy, and the sheet is very well laid out. I found that character creation takes from 20-30 minutes - one of the advantages of the limited choices a class system offers, I suppose. It was fun, however, and that's the important thing. Attributes are determined from a racial base plus a die roll, with roughly 50% being the human average. One-tenth of this amount, rounded down, serves as a modifier to attribute-related skills and abilities. Here's where déjà vu really kicks in. There are four basic character classes: Fighter, Thief, Cleric, and Mage. (Shocking, I know.) However, the classes are not all that restrictive. Class determines proficiencies: the skills at which you must improve in order to increase in level. These are just what you'd expect: weapons skills for fighters, magic skills for Mages, etc. Characters start out with a base 30% skill in all of their Primary Proficiencies, plus any attribute adjustments, plus 10 points to distribute as desired. When characters gain 10 additional points in their proficiencies, they advance to the next level. Character level, in turn, determines such things as saving throws, spell points (see below), and hit points. (Yes, the game retains D&D's problem of infinitely expanding hit points.) In other words, class doesn't tell you so much what you can do as it does what you must improve in order to be better at your chosen profession. Of course, experienced roleplayers wouldn't need character classes to tell them that... Characters also have a number of points based on their intelligence to spend on non-proficiency skills, allowing for sneaky fighters and sword-swinging clerics. (All classes can use all weapons and armor, by the way - another big improvement over AD&D.) These skills, like proficiencies, start at 30% plus modifiers and points spent. Unfortunately, things get fuzzier from here on out. Characters can be multi-classed by choosing to have secondary or tertiary proficiencies with starting bases of 15% and 5% respectively. Such characters get 10 points to spend on proficiencies for each class. So, because level = proficiency points/10, multi-classed characters start out at second or third level and advance at the same rate as single-classed characters. Mechanically speaking, I can't see any incentive not go the multi-class route. There are also two subclasses, the Holy Warrior and the Necro-Warrior - fighter/clerics and fighter/mages, respectively. These differ from multi-classed characters in that the subclassed character must spend at least five levels in each class separately, and, once this is done, may cast spells in combat. Secondary skills, which start with a base of 15%, are picked up during play at the gamemaster's discretion - no guidelines are given. Skills are almost ridiculously specialized. For example, the art of healing is divided into Medical (the ability to diagnose an illness), Medicinal (the ability to treat an illness), and Pharmacology (the ability to make the medicines to treat the illness that's been diagnosed). Likewise, Pick Pockets, Prestidigitation, and Klepto-Concealment are all separate skills. Since characters don't get many skills, this could force them to choose between being highly specialized or having illogical gaps in their experience. One other quirk regarding the Legendmaker skill system is its use of adjustments. Some skills get attribute adjustments, some don't. More troublesome, though, is the fact that some skills give flat bonuses to other skills; for example, having any points at all in Persuasion gives +10% to Deception, +10% to Diplomacy, and +15% to Protocol. That means that by spending just one point, the character gains 35 points worth of skills. I suppose this helps balance the problem of having such highly focused skill categories, but the min-max potential still seems enormous. Combat is not particularly realistic, but, like character creation, is fast and easy. An attacker's skill percentage is reduced by the defender's defense score, which is determined by dexterity and armor. (Yes, we're back to armor reducing the chance to hit rather than damage.) If an attack is successful, the defender gets a chance to parry by rolling under the attacker's roll to hit plus the defender's parry adjustment, the latter being based upon dexterity and number of weapons skills divided by ten. So, if an attacker makes a successful attack with a roll of 45% against a defender with a parry adjustment of 11%, the defender can parry by rolling a 66% or less. Weapons are divided into broad categories such as Short Weapon, Long Weapon, and Pole Arm, each with an associated damage value and number of attacks per level. The magic system is also quick and easy, although fundamentally flawed. Clerics get spell points based on Wisdom and level; Mages get spell points based on Intelligence and level. Spellcasting costs a number of spell points and hit points equal to the spell's level; some spells are unleveled, meaning that the caster selects the level of effect. Spells are divided into categories such as Offensive, Defensive, and Naturalist, and the difficulty of casting a spell is the caster's skill in that category minus 10% for every level beyond the first. So far, so good - easy and flexible. Unfortunately, many spell descriptions are far too vague. For example, the spell Animate Object affects "one object" - apparently, this can mean anything from one toothpick to one 300' monolith with no change in casting difficulty. Then there's Summon from Other Plane, which summons one creature - anything from an imp to an elemental to a god - and keeps it around so long as the caster can control it, although how this control is maintained isn't mentioned. To make matters worse, the lists of spells required to create synthans include spells that aren't included in the book - we're told that the GM needs to write these up. The mage and cleric spells lack a distinctive feel, so much so that in several places the text for cleric rituals are cut and pasted for mage rituals. (I can only assume that the author found that D&D cleric spells didn't kick enough ass.) To top things off, there's no method for determining how many spells a magic-user knows. There's not even space to record spells on that expansive character sheet. Psionics are covered on both counts, but not magic. Go figure. The system calls for gamemaster fiat for everything from awarding skills to characters' starting armor and financial status to secondary spell effects. I just don't think the GMs who would be comfortable with this amount of leeway would be using a system that also enforces a character class format. As a final note on the system, Legendmaker wisely goes without an alignment system. Apparently some lessons from AD&D took. SUMMARY As I said before, Legendmaker has the potential to be an outstanding system for beginning roleplayers. In fact, it could be fun for more advanced players as well. Unfortunately, the book is too world-specific to be generic and too generic to be world-specific, and the rules are too restrictive in places for advanced roleplayers and too loose in others for beginners. This, when combined with the frequent and annoying gaps in the rules, prevents me from rating this game as anything above average. My advice to the author? Keep your system and repackage it as an introductory game. It's not revolutionary to anyone who's moved beyond AD&D, but it is simple and easy to understand. Clear up as many of the ambiguities as possible - beginning gamemasters need more information than "you figure it out". Then, either make the setting elements truly generic or run with your setting of the Carousel. There's great potential here; it just needs to be tapped more fully. Style: 3 (Average) Substance: 3 (Average)