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Unfortunately, this is where the good news mostly ends. This game is a classic "fantasy heartbreaker" as per the classic essay and expansion by Ron Edwards, which means it's basically a set of AD&D houserules (with plenty of shades of Rolemaster in this one). It could have described itself, quite accurately, as an inventive and original roleplaying game in 1982, but certainly not now.
There are ten characteristics rolled, in order, on d100 (Strength, Endurance, Dexterity, Intuition, Self Discipline, Reasoning, Ego, Awareness, Presence and Attractiveness). Nothing that an old Rolemaster fan like myself is scared of, although at least that game system had the great thirty year old narrative advance of allowing players to allocate characteristic in the order they wanted. Female characters get to roll their Attractiveness a second time, which was good because my test character had 33 for her initial roll. It should be pointed out that everyone gets three rerolls at any point in character generation.
Next is a whole bunch of derived statistics; hits (Strength + Endurance), stun (1/3 of hits), morale (Self Discipline and Ego divided by 3), and various breakpoints for fatigue (winded, exhausted, burnout). This is followed by Power (10 if you're a mage, 5 if you're a dilettante and 0 otherwise), Fate (1d6, major personal events, tied with magic use), and Luck (3d6, spend 1 for a reroll, spend 5 to stop a deadly event). Then some more calculations, this time magic resistances (Ceremonial, Natural, Extrasensory and Black Arts) which is based on two characteristics divided by ten. I found the degree of detail in the Characteristics, where apparently 51 Intuition has to differentiated from 50 Intuition, strange when compared to the 0/5/10 differentiation to Power which, being a much more important characteristic in the game system, possibly deserves more detail.
Finally the optional rule for modifying characteristics for female characters. Their strength is reduced to 0.75%, but their dexterity and intuition are increased by 10% and their attractiveness (remember the reroll?) by a further 25%. So starting with a homely 33% my character is now a total babe at 90% Attractiveness; I guess the designer is deeply heterosexual ans further evidence follows. Interestingly, female characters don't gain any Endurance benefits, which is what one would expect from what seems to be a misguided attempt at simulation. Note that this optional rule is after you've calculated derived statistics, so you have to go back and redo those stats, which is always a pleasant experience.
Next is determining the character's piety, which is basically a "how Christian are you?" chart. I chose not to believe in God (only worth 10%) but was baptised (+5%) and confirmed (+10%) - after all they killed apostates in those days, and I would know. Taking a personal vow of silence, poverty, or chastity would give a further +25%. Keep in mind the Piety score is used for Divine Intervention. An atheist, the most heinous heresy of the middle-ages, can still get a decent ability at this. Apart from various modifiers due to Faith, Virtues, Service & Vows, and negatives due to Sins, one can also receive Devotions, temporary bonuses, or extra piety for using blessed rosaries or other artifacts. Don't forget to calculate your character's Spirit, which common-sense would suggest being rolled with the other characteristics, which is on a d100.
Returning to realm of random rolling, there's modern functionalist sociology which correlates social class with income levels. I rolled "Upper Class", which is good to know. This gave me a Rank of 4 which meant that I could basically choose (goodness, why not rolled?) any professions ranked four or lower. I could choose higher (5 is Knights and Nobles), but that would require extra initial skill points as a cost to entry, which incidentally are randomly rolled on 100+1d100. There are 89 professions whose description is a name, an income, annual savings, and a selection of skills which are related to the profession. This is certainly nothing about the complex of feudal obligations, rights and responsibilities and certainly nothing which suggests cultural, religious or even historical specificity.
From the starting experience pool, 75% must be spent on professional skills. I picked a mage, which gave me (among others of course), the ability to distinguish between circle and ritual dancing and the ability to make candles, albeit poorly. Skills, it can be quickly mentioned are given a base skill value (characteristic divided by five as a percentage) and a final skill value (base value plus skill pool expenditure). Most skills are described in a sentence or two, which is hardly adequate, as there are no listed modifiers. Take the skill "Seamanship". This is pretty important in the middle-ages, indeed the breakup of the Venetian power was during one of the campaign settings. So how about some information how far one sails in a day and conditional modifiers? No chance; the skill description for seamanship? "Sailing". That's it; ONE WORD. Likewise "Skiing" is "The ability to ski", "Physician" is "Medical practice" and "Storytelling" is "The ability to write a book eloquently", Seduction is "the ability to entice another into sexual intercourse without the use of force" and for some incomprehensible reason, of all skills, Dancing requires specialisation which includes, "Erotic Dancing"!
There are also thirteen "forbidden" skills which deal with magick. This is where the only mention of experience is provided as well; 1-10 experience points per game session. I presume, perhaps wrongly, this is not determined randomly, but again guidelines are not provided. By spending experience points characters may increase skills by a variable amount depending on their existing level and by rolling over their current skill chance, which does mean of course that one could lose all their experience points and gain nothing for it. Further, there is a total absence of rules concerning training or out-of-session life experience.
The next step in the character generation process is determining money (savings times 1d6) and purchasing equipment, which, following a good couple of pages on medieval coinage, is a comprehensive list of apparel, foodstuffs, a charming medieval menu, various products and services (nota bene: prostitutes are very cheap), slaves (four types of "pleasure slave" - are we noticing a theme yet?) and then, oh my god, the weapons and armour section. Seriously, including the three appendices of illustrations and suits of armour there are over 120 pages of this material. Sweet baby Jesus, there's thirty-one different knives, an entire page, in reduced font and the table abbreviations are without a key. This is followed by fourteen different hand-axes, twenty different axes ... and so on to siege towers, oxybeles and cannons. If you ever wanted to know the difference between a dart and plumbata, a mattiobarbuili, here's your chance.
Right, as a mage I decided to take a couple of sets of clothes and a staff and skip such nonsense. That was thankfully easy. But I forget, that mages get, well, magic. There are four categories of magic (see resistances) and thirteen skills (alchymy, conjuration, ritualism, spiritualism, deceiver, elementalism, enchantment, sorcery, mysticism, psychic, seer, talismanic and, of course, black magic). Despite being a game of historic fantasy, the magic system is decidedly ahistorical. Learning spells takes time, money or experience. Casting spells costs spell points, a combination fatigue and trauma (more on that later). Increases in spell points are achieved by successfully casting a spell above your current power, a nice evocative touch. Starting characters have a number of spells which can be increased by specialisation in magic and by taking mage solely. What follows is roughly a hundred pages of spells, each with variable spell point cost, range, casting time, duration, area of effect and component cost. So if you think that over 50% of the book is spells and weapons, you're right.
Finishing character generation, the storyteller determines the character's history including their nationality "if any" and the player determines the character's appearance. I'm surprised that's not rolled as well. Finally, there's a brief description of character background issues with one little gem; a player should choose a 'main flaw' for their character and any number of minor flaws to be resolved in play.
There, character generation only took an hour and half.
But wait, that's only character generation. Well, apart from stats, professions and skills, equipment lists that include everything from castles to individual nails, what else would you expect? You guessed it! Combat and monsters! The latter can be dealt with first because, well, there isn't any really. The chapter entitled mythical races gives descriptions for centaurs, dwarves, elves, half-elves and ... halflings. Yes, in the historical fantasy they had hobbits but apparently not dragons. That's all; five mythic 'races'. For a game that's set in the rich and diverse cultures of medieval Europe, north Africa and the middle-east this is an insult of biblical proportions to everyone on the eastern side of the Atlantic and to all scholars of the period.
As for combat a brief description is as follows (take a deep breath and read carefully). Combat is fought in two second rounds, with turns based on a initiative die roll (1d10) plus a modifier based on weapon use or surprise. A character attacks, rolls under their skill and if they hit their opponent reacts with either a parry or a dodge, the latter negating attacks in response. If a hit is scored, roll for general location (e.g., head) if missile or choose if melee and then roll for specific location (e.g., nose) then roll for damage, subtract armour and roll extra damage if the blow gets through by cross-referencing the location with the attack type. After this determine the severity level of the wound (which does not scale whether you have twenty hit points or two hundred). Multiply damage by the trauma level, which determines the total number of hit points lost. The person hit must roll under their stun value and check for critical and disabling wounds and bloodloss. Also check for weapon breakage; wood weapons will break 50% of the time and iron weapons 25% (also, wooden weapons cost the same as iron ones).
In addition to this standard procedure (which requires a eight or more rolls of the die per action on a successful hit), there are also additional rules for various special combat actions (feint, disarm, sever, break shield, strike & dodge, special rapier maneuvers (they get two pages), use of firearms, unarmed combat procedures, boxing and wrestling actions, and various close combat techniques. Also there is spiritual combat which causes psychic effects ("chilled", "numbed", "paralyzed" and "frozen") as well as damage to Spirit. Spiritual armour is increased by various prayers, blessings and sacraments. The core concept is good, but it really suffers from a lack of elaboration and imagination.
Finally, tucked away in Appendix E and F are the two game settings, being Europe in 1121 AD and Europe in 1348 AD which are, respectively, the time of the first crusade and the black plague, both of which are very well chosen periods of turmoil, real "turning points in history". However, a mere nine pages are dedicated to the first setting and eight to the second, which compares very poorly to the amount of space on weapons and spells. Each kingdom is described in a few sentences, usually on the behaviour of the current regent, rather than any description of language or cultural mores, let alone geography, except in the case of Islamic lands which are often described in terms of their wickedness. The designer's bibliography is indicative of their prejudices. For some utterly incomprehensible reason the Kingdom of Navarre (aka Pamplona) is unmarked on both the maps and is not described as part of the setting, dispute the influential role in both periods.
"Fantasy Imperium" is a heartbreaker, and a tragic one as well, given that it was apparently playtested by over 150 people. The production qualities are of a high standard and a real labour of love is evident in the sheer size of the book. The choice of the settings is excellent. However, character generation is manages to be both unplayable and unrealistic. The combat system tries to do everything and inevitably fails. The magic system is largely unimaginative, utterly ahistorical and does not evoke a sense of wonder. The settings are frustratingly sparse, albeit with a promised second book (I hope not). There are a couple of moments of cleverness, but in a tome this large, and with a price tag to match, the buying public is going to want something that isn't an unimaginative rehash of flaws in game design from thirty or more years ago.
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