Review of Demon'sLair Tome of Rules

I was exposed to this product about about three months ago when a friend of mine gave it to me as a birthday present. He played a demo of the game and thought I might enjoy it, too. At first, I wasn't impressed with the comb bound book, but after paging through it a few times I began to catch on. After finding a few friends who were interested in giving it a whirl, we got our campaign set up and its been going strong ever since.

First, I'll start with character creation. There's about a dozen races. Some are your standard fantasy RPG stock (human, orc, elf, dwarf), but there are a few new ones, like the draga (winged lizard men), and the frivik (human-like people who talk by singing). There are 8 attributes, ranging from 1-20 (strength, agility, endurance, empathy, luck, intelligence, charisma, and spirituality). One of the things I liked about character generation is each character has 1-4 traits (strong points) and one drawback (a not-so-strong point). Some traits and drawbacks give you a bonus to a die roll, while others improve or hinder your attributes. Next, you choose a class (base abilities) and profession (how you use said abilities). I also like how there are no class/race restrictions (Yes, you can have a dwarven archmage!) Each character also begins with a certain amount of skill points (used for non-combative know-how) and battle skill points (for skills related to combat). Each character is rounded out by a five point code, a creed your character tries to live up to. Good role playing in accordance with your five point code and character back ground will help net you more XP. There is also a well written social status system, which determines how much gold and equipment your character starts out with. Character creation takes a while the first couple of times, but once you start to become familier with the system things get a lot easier.

For classes, there are four groups: warrior, rogue, scholar, and miscellanious classes. All the classes are fairly well balanced, so a third level fighter probably won't be too much stronger than a mage of equal level in steel vs. spell combat. Also, as we start to discuss the magic system, you'll find that low level mages aren't just the proverbial sleep spell on legs!

Combat is pretty easy. After calculating any dice modifiers, you roll and compare it to your opponent's roll. Higher roll wins with ties going to the attacker. It works the same way with magical combat. One of the things I enjoyed most about Demon's Lair was the well developed combat system. Battle skill points allow you to buy not only weapon skill levels, but weapon styles as well. These skills allow you to perform stronger attacks, disarm opponents, fight with two weapons, and do a multitude of other things. The martial arts system is amazing! Martial artists can actually inflict damage! In most games, unarmed fighters usually get gipped on damage, but with the right skills Demon's Lair martial artists can do some pretty impressive attacks. Weapons do pre-set damage and armor is there to absorb damage, not block attacks. There's also a good critical hit and miss system. Demon's Lair also has a fall and crash injury chart, which I've never seen in any other game I've played. So if you fall out of a tree, not only will you take damage, but you might twist your ankle, dislocate your shoulder, or even break your neck!

The magic system is also well worked. Magic spells are divided into Books, each book covering a broad catagory of spells (divination, necromancy, elemental attacks, etc). Also, A character's spell books are written in such a manner that only he can understand it. So if your mage's arch-rival steals your spellbook collection, you don't have to worry about your magic being used against you. Spells are based on a level/MP system. So as long as you've got the power, you can keep throwing spells. Damaging spells are very customizable. So you can throw a fireball the size of Texas and have it inflict 2 points of damage if you'd like (and if you have the MP!). Or you can throw everything into one all or nothing blast (however, you risk running out of MP, of course).

The Tome of Rules doesn't go into too much detail about the game world (though it does have an interesting creation myth at the start). Most game world info is in the GM's supplement, or can be found on the company's web page (http://www.lasalion.com). The website is awesome-it features game info, npc information, and columns written by the game's creators. This information has helped fuel our group's game for the last couple of months. Worth a look for players and GMs alike.

So to sum things up I'd say the game's strong points are good role-playability, lots of options for creating characters, and focus on role playing over dice rolling. My only complaint is that level advancement becomes a little slower at higher levels that most RPGs I've played. That's probably because XP from encounters are based on how hard the encounter was instead of the caliber of the opponent. So if you slay Lord Doombringer the 150th level warrior of darkness with one lucky critical hit, then you're not going to rake in as much XP as you think. Another reason level advancement is slow is that as you gain more abilities and magic goodies, encounters tend to become easier if the baddies aren't played properly.

All in all, Demon's Lair is worth a look.