Well, I noticed there were no reviews of this item in the database and
I thought to myself: What a shame...
For those of you who don't already know: This is a fantasy RPG written
by none other than Gary Gygax, the man who brought us D&D and allegedly
roleplaying as a concept. When this game was published in 1992, GDW had
been hyping it in a big way for about a year and their hype was enthusiastic
indeed. Just to give you an idea, here is the first sentence of the game's
back cover blurb: Roleplaying at it's finest - simple or with elective
complexities which place this game far beyond any other. The blurb goes
on for about a half dozen paragraphs with that same level of modesty.
So does Mythus live up to it's promise of being the finest RPG ever
produced and being placed far beyond any other? Well, let's see, shall
we?
The book is a huge softcover volume of just over 400 pages. There's
a rather lackluster Elmore painting on the cover and a fair amount of black
and white art inside plus the occasional color plate. Few of the color
plates are really worth the color printing or the full page that's been
devoted to each of them. They're not terrible or anything, but they're
just not very good. The book is fairly cleanly laid out and all of the
text is easily legible, though.
The book opens up with an editor's preface that explains who Gary Gygax
is and then goes on a bit about just why this is undoubtedly the finest
RPG ever made. We then get the usual explanation of what an RPG is together
with a very quick description of the setting called Ærth. You don't
get an in-depth description of Ærth in the book. For that you have
to purchase a separate supplement called ìEpic of Ærthî. This book
is just the rules with a bare minimum of setting information.
And it's actually split into two separate games: Mythus Prime which
is a sort of ultra-lite version of the rules and Advanced mythus which
is the complete deal with all the elective complexities.
In Mythus Prime, you generate your character (who Gygax wants us to
refer to as a Heroic Persona by distributing a number of points among
three Traits: Mental, Physical and Spiritual, which are rated from 20 to
60. You also have to determine a Socio-Economic Class, which determines
which Vocation you can choose. In Mythus Prime, there are only seven Vocations
to choose from. Each Vocation has a list of skills (which we're supposed
to call Knowledge/Skill Areas), the ratings of which is determined by adding
a number to one of your traits. You're supposed to call your skill rating
STEEP. This is an acronym for Study, Training, Education, Experience, Practice.
This is clearly much more convenient and logical than calling it Skill
Level or Skill Rating or something. It's very revolutionary. Gygax seems
to have had an obsession with coming up with new terms for things. Well,
to get back to the rules: K/S Area Checks are made by rolling a d100 equal
to or less than your STEEP.
Combat in Mythus Prime is as simple as it's pointless. Combats are
fought in time units called CTs (Critical Turns), lasting about 3 seconds
each. Initiative is rolled on a d10 and opponents basically take turns
whacking away at each other. Armor reduces damage, and it's a good idea
to wear a lot of it, because there's no way to defend yourself from being
hit. Fortunately, you can take a fair amount of damage. An average HP can
take about 40 points of damage and a Great Sword inflicts 6d6 points.
After Combat follows a short and mediocre section on running a game.
And then comes the Adventure!
The Adventure may be the least interesting RPG scenario ever printed.
I haven't read every RPG scenario ever printed, of course, but I've yet
to come across something as almost bizarrely uninteresting as this one.
It's called High Time at the Winged Pig. It starts with the characters
sitting in the tavern of the title and instead of being approached by a
patron who wants the PCs... Sorry, the HPs to go out and perform some task,
a patron has cunningly arranged a series of tests for the HPs to see if
they're good enough to be sent out on a task. That's it. If they succeed,
the patron in question will approach them and inform them that he thinks
they're good enough to be allowed to perform tasks for him. I'm pretty
convinced that if I actually attempted to run this scenario for my group,
Iíd be lynched. Just like a dungeon crawl, but without the dungeon! Or
the crawl! Or the excitement! Or the treasure!
After this we get to Advanced Mythus, which must be the part of the
book with all the elective complexities placing the game far beyond any
other.
And this too starts out with rules for HP generation. These are a LOT
more complex than the ones in Prime. The HPs still have the same three
Traits (the range of which is now about doubled). But each trait is now
divided into two Categories, the sum of which equal the Trait's value.
So to get your Spiritual Trait, for Example, you simply add your Spiritual
Metaphysical and Spiritual Psychic Categories. Each Category is divided
into three Attributes: Capacity, Power and Speed. Power and Speed can never
be higher than Capacity. I believe that part of what's revolutionary about
this game is that a person's ability to lift heavy things is not determined
by a characteristic with a silly, arbitrary name such as Strength but
rather by the much more logically named Physical Muscular Power. If anybody
can tell me what adjective to use to describe a person with a high Spiritual
Metaphysical Speed, Iíd love to hear of it.
Anyway, after having generated Traits, Categories and Attributes, you
get to select a Vocation. Your choice of Vocation is still limited by your
SEC, but you now have all the vocations to choose from. As in Prime, your
Vocation determines your starting K/S Areas. In a truly revolutionary departure
from RPG tradition, Cavaliers (knights) don't automatically receive the
Riding K/S Area. But they do learn Handicrafts/Handiwork and Agriculture...
Many K/S Areas are divided into Sub-Areas, of which you get to learn
a number determined by your STEEP. The descriptions of the various K/S
Areas are somewhat inconsistent. The Criminal Activities, Mental K/S Area,
for example, is divided into 14 Sub-Areas none of which get any description
whatsoever leaving it entirely up to the GM just what Vice or Misappropriation
can be used for. The Buffoonery K/S Area, on the other hand, is considered
critical enough to merit a two-and-a-half page description with detailed
rules for just what the buffoon can do and how. I could make a snide comment at
this point about the detailed treatment given just this K/S Area
but I choose not to...
The Advanced rules also introduce the concept of Difficulty Ratings
in K/S Area checks. The difficulty of an action determines a multiplier
that must be applied to your STEEP when attempting a task. This means that
your level of expertise becomes less important, the more difficult a task
gets, and a poorly trained character will have fairly meager chances of
success even at an Easy task. Gygax is evidently of the opinion that you
can tell a true master from a bumbling wannabe by how well they perform
an idiotically simple task. At higher difficulties, the differences tend
to even out...
Combat in the Advanced rules is a good deal more complicated than in
the Prime rules. In fact, it's horrendously complicated but in such a way
that it never seems either particularly realistic or very exciting. The
idea of parrying attacks is introduced here. If you've got a shield and
you're a half-decent fighter, you will have a 98% chance of parrying melee
attacks, versus about 50% if you don't, so you'll want to get a shield.
In the Advanced rules, there's also Hit Locations. Again, Mythus revolutionizes
gaming by replacing such arbitrary body parts as Head, Arms, Kidneys
and whatever with the far more realistic and colorful Non-Vital, Vital,
Super-Vital and Ultra-Vital. I'm really not making this up, I swear. The location
hit gives a multiplier to the damage you inflict from x1 to x4. An HP can
still soak up an impressive number of blows even if he takes some of them
straight in the Super-Vitals.
The Magick chapter is extremely short, as the full rules for using
magic (which is also called Heka) appear in the separate book Mythus
Magick. The Mythus rulebook does contain the basic rules, though, and
some sample spells, which are called Castings.
There's a chapter on GameMastering which is actually pretty decent.
It's not great, but I've seen much worse. NPCs (who are referred to as
OPs - Other Personas) are split into three categories: Evil Personas (EPs),
Monstrous Personages (MPGs) and Mundane Personas (MPs). The same stats
are used to describe all of them and it's not entirely clear why it's necessary
to have three different terms for them.
Just before the appendices there's another adventure. This one is called
Condemned as Galley Slaves, a title that sums up the adventure rather
nicely. It's more interesting than High time at the Winged Pig but not
so much that I think Id be able to run it for my group without getting
lynched.
It may come as a surprise to you at this point, that I actually ran
a Mythus campaign for just over a year. Keeping track of the NPCs was a
bloody nightmare and was one of the reasons I stopped it. There were other
reasons, but they have nothing to do with the game itself. But the game
can indeed be played if you really want to. But it is in my personal opinion
not the finest RPG ever produced and its elective complexities fail
to place it far beyond any other. And it wasn't revolutionary in '92 either.
If you like rules-heavy Fantasy RPGs, there are far better and more playable
offerings on the market.
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(Due to spamming, old forum discussions are no linked.)