Review of MythLore

I'm a friend of the author, so I'm going to admit that some bias may slip in, although I have tried to avoid it. James has emailed me asking me to do the review without sugarcoating anything for him, so I'm going to call it as I see it as much as possible.

MythLore is a solid offering. It's a short system, and some more elaboration on various aspects of the rules might have been nice, but there is at least enough material to give GMs and players a firm basis to work from. James has told me that he took this approach intentionally, to maximize the freedom of the GM to interpret and expand upon the core rules. Personally, I think not wanting to spend a year writing a free RPG had just as much to do with it.

Basically, the system is based around templates. This is pure sword & sorcery, so you choose to run a warrior, wizard, priest, or rogue. You can also mix and match templates, but this costs you in terms of starting attributes. There have been some questions about the realism of penalizing characters for multi-classing, but our group has yet to think of a better way to maintain game balance. Lowering the amount of Attribute Points a multi-class character starts with seems simplest and most painless.

In the core rules, there are only two attributes (Physical and Mental), but optional rules allow for the core 2 to be expanded into 6 (3 physical, 3 mental). We didn't see why the optional scores were not standard, except maybe to allow easy NPC creation. Pretty much anybody with a PC will want to use them. They are all fairly straightforward, except perhaps for Craft, which is an attribute many gamers may be unfamiliar with. Basically it is wit and creative thinking ability.

Attribute scores range from 3 to 11, the higher the better. This allows all attribute checks and most gameplay to take place using 2D6. Whether or not this is an advantage is a matter of personal opinion. There are definitely simplicity benefits in using only a few six-sided dice, but some people like to use the polyhedrals as well. To these gamers, the author says 'go for it.' Our playtest group ended up using a D20 once or twice and rolled a few percentiles, but the 6 siders actually sufficed pretty well for most situations.

Checks are made by rolling 2D6 against the relevant attribute number, with a result equal to or lower than the score indicating success. It's not always easy to figure our just which attribute is relevant to a a specific action, but reasonable players and GMs can probably come to an agreement fairly quickly. Our group made a list of such rulings to allow for consistency.

Characters are also allowed to take a number of skills equal to their Craft score. If you aren't using the optional attributes, number of skills is equal to the Mental score, but I doubt that anybody will choose not to use the optional attributes.

Having a skill in a task or activity lets you roll 3D6 for the attribute check and throw out the highest die. In playtesting, this proved to make a pretty big difference, almost too big. The GM has to be careful what skills she allows a character to take, because a skilled character will not fail a whole lot of the time, except maybe in combat against a heavily armored opponent. If the GM allows skills that are too general and applicable to too many things, game balance could get out of control, so this is one thing that suggests that MythLore may be best used by experienced groups.

The combat system is pretty simple, so people looking for ultra-realism on the battlefield may not find much here to interest them. Still, many of us are more interested in speed of resolution and functionality, which this system has. Initiaitive is pretty standard. It can be individual or group init, depending on the GM's preference and the number of combatants. If you're using a melee weapon, you roll an Agilty check to hit. This check is modified by the target's 'hit penalty,' which is determined by the type of armor and other protections they are using. If you hit, you do damage equal to whatever the hit roll was, plus variable weapon damage and Strength bonus or penalty. Damage reduces health, which is based mainly on Stamina. If health is reduced to 0, unconsciousness results. If health is reduced to a negative number equal to the Stamina score, the character dies.

Combat in our playtest group worked pretty well. Once we got the hang of the system, it was pretty fast moving. One thing that bothered some players and pleased others was the fact that damage is more realistic - a couple of good sword hits will chop pretty much anybody down. Players inclined toward superhero type characters might find this somewhat discouraging, while those looking for realism will probably love it.

There are some optional rules for combat. Disarming allows a character to strip his opponent of his weapon. Grappling lets you overbear and beat your opponent into submission. Evasion lets you slip out of combat and re-examine your options. All of these options were used at various times in the playtest sessions. Most of the time they worked nicely, but they were not appropriate for all situations. Whether or not they were useful seemed to depend mostly on how tactically inclined the player using them was.

The optional critical hit system is just a simple, bare-bones approach to handling the possibility of critical damage. It worked very well whenever we used it, although some players found the criticals either to frequent or too rare, and some wished for more detail.

Magic ended up being the most 'iffy' area that we ran into. This is because of the fact that the magic system is very dependent upon the discretion of both the player and the GM, and players aren't always responsible or concerned with game balance. Basically, a wizard or preist can attempt to cast any magical effect they wish, and the GM will tell them how much of a penalty to their attribute check and how much 'mana' (from a limited daily allotment) will be required to succeed. The rules include some minimal guidelines, but it's not always easy to figure out what the penalty should be for a given magical effect. Still, our more experienced players seemed to have little trouble adapting - it seemed to be mainly the newer roleplayers who were experiencing confusion. This magic system has a lot of potential in the right hands, but I'd suggest that GMs make a special effort to understand it and maybe even run some practice sessions with newer players to get it all under control.

The experience system is one of the game's strong points. It is fast enough to allow new characters to leave the first level fairly quickly, but slow enough to keep the higher levels out of reach to anybody that hasn't fully earned them. At a base of one 'Karma' (experience point) per adventure/complete gaming session, we had a lot of second level characters, but only a few thirds. Fourth level (which is 'name' level in MythLore) is just an epic dream to our party, because it requires 40 Karma. Most of us agreed that this was as it should be.

This game is pretty similar to D&D in most ways, but generally simpler. You do pay a price in detail, but it seems to be adequately made up for by the large increase in simplicity and GM/player freedom. The framework is the standard campaign-based sword & sorcery fare, so there's nothing altogether new there. This game is basically a new perspective on a classic idea. It isn't the new messiah for fantasy gaming, but it is a very decent little system that delivers.

I'd recommend Mythlore for anybody who has been playing D&D or something similar for a while, and would like to try some new rules for the same sort of adventures. Like our playtest group, you may be pleasantly surprised.

MY GRADE: B plus.