In Short

Legends of Alyria presents a dark, corrupt, post-apocalyptic science fiction and fantasy world that incorporates evil dragons, nanotechnology, interesting societies, and descriptive roleplaying into a truly unique setting. Using a simple game engine to resolve story level conflicts, Legends of Alyria puts the focus on participant narration more than anything else.

The Good: The setting here is fascinating and has a lot of promise.

The Bad: The game system is simple and many consumers may not be satisfied with it. The setting just doesn’t have the detail it needs, despite the majority of the book being devoted to setting material. The book has no art. Almost 10% of the product is dedicated to converting the game to the Multiverser system. The clock face mechanic is unnecessarily confusing and doesn’t add enough flavor to make up for the added work of learning new lingo.

The Physical Thing

This 6.6x10.2 (about the size of a hardcover novel) 184 page black and white softcover showcases below average production values for its $25 price tag. The editing is good for the most part, though some errors do creep through. The artwork here is particularly a problem for me – there isn’t any. Such an interesting setting really deserves pictures of broken down cities, smog spewing factories, and dragons lurking in the mist seas.

The seven page index showcases one of several ways in which your money is buying wasted space. Such a detailed index is completely unnecessary, and even goes so far as to have entries like Amber that just refer to a discussion of the author’s favorite RPGs. The clock face charts are useful until you realize that by just using a d10 roll rather than comparing clock faces the game could be simplified and most of the mechanics discussion (and need for repeated charts) would disappear. Finally, the product contains a 17 page document discussing converting the game to the Multiverser system and setting. This should be a web enhancement for the tiny number of people who want to perform such a conversion rather than a part of the base product.

The Ideas

Over a thousand years ago a colony ship crashed on Alyria. Terraforming equipment did the best it could to make an inhospitable world a little more livable, but people were largely confined to major sections of the colony ship. In the darkness of the mist seas, perhaps awoken by these newcomers, great dragons possessed of a sinister intelligence and need to cause evil and pain arose. While settlers slowly built up idyllic communities these dragons offered power to the greedy and built up a small army of cultists. Then, one day, the dragons attacked. Cultists gunned down their friends and neighbors, a horrid biological weapon was unleashed upon mankind, and the dragons themselves rent the colonies asunder. Only a few colonies managed to survive. One survived because of five powerful military leaders, who would later build five noble dynasties that continue to this day. Another survived because of impenetrable doors that malfunctioned and trapped the population inside for a thousand years.

Today the doors have been opened and people are venturing further out into the world. Monks who worship a great god, actually a super computer, carry word of its greatness to new colonies. Soldiers with shining, fluid metal armor covering their skin serve a noble lord as bodyguards and shock troops. Reanimated corpses fill smog spewing factories, unicorns appear to protect the helpless, and evil lurks around every corner.

Under the Cover

Setting Material - 88 pages.

Largely as described above, Legends of Alyria provides the reader with a mix of one to three page discussions of places, organizations, and setting concepts and one to three page bits of short fiction. It’s largely enjoyable and maintains the same sort of gloomy mood and feel throughout.

By way of example, allow me to introduce you to the Citadel. The Citadel is one of the few surviving major population centers on Alyria, and for good reason. Five powerful generals founded noble families here a thousand years ago and today those dynasties each run part of the city, maintaining factories and electrical systems while also raising their own militias to protect the Citadel from threats at home and abroad. Above the city is the Web, a shanty town made from ropes and other supports that have been connected together for years until a sort of slums formed. With its own tolerant but criminal and gang led culture, the people of the Web are often raiding the Citadel for supplies.

While the Web is filled with its own dangers, many prefer it to dwelling at the bottom of the Citadel. The Reclaimed, reanimated corpses, perform sanitation, factory, and other jobs that no one else wants. Controlled by special chips, sometimes these creatures slip their reigns and go on murderous rampages. And, of course, there’s the… refuse... from the Web.

In the center of the Citadel there stands a great clock tower, with a massive bell that rings the hour every hour. Built for a 24 hour day, Alyria has a 25 hour day and so every night a monk climbs the steps of the clock tower and stops the clock right at the start of the 25th hour. During this “Devil’s Hour” all electricity stops flowing, the factories die, and the city sits still and quiet. Some say horrors wander the streets during this dark and frightening period of the night, and some know they’re right. The faces of this clock tower are integrated into the mechanics of the game.

Dragon cultists, psychics, mask wearing democracies devoid of individuality, blood colored nanites falling from a blood red moon to prey upon the living, and even more fanciful concepts can be found throughout the book.

The Game System - 42 pages.

The rest of the product is primarily a conflict resolution system and storytelling advice. Let’s look at the conflict resolution system!

To start, the group creates characters (including NPCs), defines the conflicts, and generally builds a story map (a piece of paper with names and lines indicating relationships and how everyone is connected to everyone else). Player characters are built through a very quick process involving just a few steps. First, however, you need to know that the game uses “Clock Dice” or d10s that have clock faces on their surface (you can build these or just use normal d10s and consult a chart). The various attributes in the game are rated in clock faces, effectively 3 AM, 6 AM, 9 AM, and 12 PM, the good faces called Lauds, Prime, Terce, and Sext, 3 PM, 6 PM, 9 PM, and 12 AM, the evil faces called None, Vespers, Compline, and Matins, and the Devil’s Hour. The Devil’s Hour is a die result (a critical failure) like the others but is not otherwise used in the game. Attributes range from very poor (Lauds/Compline) to incredible (Sext) in value. After building a story map character creation begins by defining a Virtue as one of the clock faces to indicate disposition towards good or evil. The character’s Virtue determines how many Inspiration or Corruption it takes to bring a Trait into play.

Example: I’m building Dove, a young albino woman who, while mute, approaches every situation with faith in her heart that the god Pheric is making the world a better place through her. She works in the Citadel as a technician in charge of maintaining the Restored and has just discovered a Horrible Secret that this game is going to focus on. I choose Terce (9 in the morning) as her Virtue – she’s good to a fault and lives to serve the community.

Players then select up to 5 Traits of any clock face. These Traits may be invoked by spending Inspiration or Corruption (depending on if they’re good or evil traits and how far removed they are from the Virtue) to either help or hinder, and each may be invoked for free once per conflict. A player may invoke a Trait of any of the characters in the conflict, not just their own, so a character with Innocence could find their Innocence taken advantage of as often as it gives them strength.

Example: I choose Compassion at Sext, Confidence at Sext, and Cunning at Lauds. That’s all I can really think of, so I turn my last two picks into a bonus to starting Inspiration – I’ll begin with two points of it.

Attributes are the most commonly used means to resolve a conflict. The three Attributes – Force, Insight, and Determination – are purchased with 5 points and range from 0 (Matins) to 4 (Sext).

Example: I buy Insight at Vespers (2, tending towards evil) and Determination at 3 (Terce, tending towards good). Her focus and passivity give her strength, but in the times when she does apply her cunning it often takes a dark edge.

Conflicts in the game are rated between 1 to 3 in importance to the story (the Tension Level), with the number representing how many successes a given side must accrue to win. Task resolution is performed by each side rolling a clock die, a d10 with various clock faces, and trying to roll higher than their opponent’s clock face. Where both succeed, the side that succeeds by the greatest margin wins. A 1, Devil’s Hour, is a critical failure while a 10, Sext is a critical success (both result in either your opponent or yourself succeeding twice). Players may also spend Insight and Corruption points for automatic successes, though these can be canceled by the other side spending the opposite points.

Example: Dove is trying to convince a noble that a new procedure for processing Reclaimed is both cruel and dangerous to the public. She uses her Determination for this (I’m free to pick any stat) and the noble is using his Insight (Vespers) to try and convince her otherwise. This is a fairly major scene, so the Tension Level is 2. I spend a point of Insight to win automatically on the side of good, and the noble spends a point of Corruption to counter it. I invoke Confidence (Sext) and use it in place of my Determination. We then roll the dice, describing what actions we’re taking, and the first side to two successes wins. The noble rolls a Prime/Vespers, which is lower than my very high rating of Sext (one way of looking at this is that he rolled a 5,6, or 7 on a d10 when he needed a 10), while I roll a Terce/None (an 8 or 9 on the d10, which beats a 5-7, if you want to look at it that way), which is higher than the noble’s Vespers (I know all of this from looking at a chart). That’s one success in Dove’s favor. She just needs one more to win this conflict!

In addition to winning or losing whatever is at stake, players receive Inspiration and Corruption to spend on future die rolls if they win. A few other variations on these simple mechanics are also present, and once you get the funky lingo down it becomes intuitive.

Legends of Alyria may or may not use a GM at your group’s discretion. If it doesn’t use a GM then the players freely control different NPCs and share communal GM authority. Some discussion of interpreting dice rolls in different story-oriented ways is provided to get participants thinking about what the die rolls might mean for the story. The rules section wraps up with a short scenario to get a game going immediately.

The book concludes with 7 pages of ‘designer notes’ (other things the author likes), a 17 page conversion document to integrate the game with the Multiverser RPG, and a ridiculous 7 page index that even encompasses the designer notes and conversion document.

My Take

Legends of Alyria could be a great game, but it has some serious problems. Chief among these is its insistence on unnecessary lingo and clock faces. The clock faces just don’t provide enough mood to make up for the significant confusion associated with them. The game text itself does little to alleviate the confusion, and some readers (including me) may find themselves reading the rules a dozen or more times until they finally get everything. This is a serious problem, because even though I now understand the mechanics I’m hesitant to introduce this game to my friends. At a minimum I would need to create my own lingo key.

Another major problem here is that there’s a lot of wasted space. A 17 page conversion document to another RPG system is unreasonable. This should have been a web enhancement for the few people interested, not something every consumer needs to purchase. Designer notes are often great and I’ve always welcomed them in games, but 7 pages is way too much. Similarly, a detailed index is wonderful but 7 pages is excessive for this product. Surely the index doesn’t need entries for where the author talks about his love for Amber or respect for Ron Edwards in the designer notes. Add to this a vague setting and many consumers will find their dollar isn’t going as far as they would like with this product.

The lack of artwork is particularly unfortunate and I really wish the author could have found an artist capable of rendering his vision of Alyria. Artwork does a lot to convey ideas to the reader, and its lack keeps the product from being as enjoyable as it could be.

Not all the setting elements are equally compelling. While the core setting is interesting, various fringe ideas – sapient aardvarks, a very evil magic bag, etc. – just don’t fit as well into the game and could have been easily removed from the text to create a better product. Nevertheless, this is largely a matter of personal taste and you may find that all the concepts here are wonderful.

Finally, I’m not sold on the mechanics. One of the examples showcases a powerful warrior facing down a mist dragon alone, and I think that’s a little excessive. The dark oppressive world loses some of its oppression when I consider that my character is capable of almost any feat if I roll well enough. I feel like the mechanics are too generalized and too permissive, and I don’t like relying on a nebulous social contract between players to only do what seems appropriate to hold it all together.

All that said, Legends of Alyria provides an intriguing setting and very story oriented mechanics to enable groups to tell tales of fantastic adventure in a ruined and mysterious science fiction world. If you can see past its faults and that sounds like a good time to you, then pick it up!