Screens?

I remember the old days when we all used screens to block our die rolls and maps. I had some homemade ones I made myself (yes- I’m cheap). This was before photocopiers, so I had to type out all the charts myself. During college, one of my buddies bought me the official screens, but I didn’t like it because it didn’t have all the tables I wanted. I wound up using a mix of my screens and theirs. Now a days, I mainly use my laptop. So again, I have a “screen” concealing everything. I still use paper character sheets for notes and recording damage, but the mission itself is usually on the lap top. I guess I’m a touch confused about tabletop RPGs. I’ve played them on-line, I’ve played them at a big table, and I’ve played them with everyone in chairs using TV trays. I don’t know what’s normal any more. Obviously I like my mix of laptop and paper on clipboard. For years I had to keep a file cabinet next to me for when I needed to check something. Now I have everything on my thumb drive, and I can search, a little bit faster (never fast enough). Any other ideas? You know, I’m still willing to learn new things.

Legend Quest- Full Rules

In hopes of getting more people involved at a better price, we’ve bundled Legend Quest (Gold Edition) with Book of Wishes, and added Optional Weaponry, The Amberrose Incident, and Empty Crypt. That’s more than $ 25 worth of stuff for $ 15. Yep, everything you need to learn the rules and start your game for $ 15! Check it out at RPG Now! (e23 doesn’t bundle, but we’re working on them.)

Is there anybody out there?

Many of you know that we are working on Legend Quest Modern. This is actually a series of four books, and we will not be releasing them until at least three are ready for publication. The four are: Legend Quest Modern - a rule book for playing the Legend Quest game in a modern era with machine guns, cars and grenades; The Forgotten Hunt - now a campaign book to go along with LQ Modern in which dinosaurs are alive and well in the modern era (TFH was released back in the ‘90s as a rule book and campaign unto itself); Convergence - An Alien Armageddon - a campaign world where aliens are coming to Earth and wars are erupting; and Dark Hour - an LQ Modern campaign world where magic works. One rule book - Three campaign worlds, each with their own additional rules. In working so diligently on C-AA, all sorts of alien questions have been arising. We want to establish our take on UFOs before the book comes out, so here it is: (that was a trick) - We would rather establish doubt in the minds of believers and non-believers than actually state (as though it were a fact) whether there really are UFOs or not. Look, some of the research and explanations are very compelling. They would lead a sane, thinking person to believe in UFOs. Then again, the debunkers out there have incredibly compelling arguments too, and so far they have been able to generally explain or even recreate the UFO phenomena, though admittedly, the “faith” in the agreement typically comes from the previous beliefs of the listener. Does it matter? Well, Jethro Tull (the group, not the inventor) said: “I may make you feel, but I can’t make you think.” It would be fun to make them think though. Now, a game about aliens attacking Earth would be pretty boring if there were no aliens and no UFOs. But the issue of whether or not UFOs were real or not in real life can still be questioned. Here’s what we mean: Take a real life event or reported UFO encounter. Use as much of the real life information about it in the mission as you can. In the end explain what happened and how it happened in what would be a completely believable pattern of events, even if they conflict with the people’s reports of events. I always thought Tom Clancy did a great job of this - taking events that we think we know about or understand and then playing on our distrust of the government to “reveal” the truth behind what “really” happened. (Lots of “quotes” in that sentence.) So why should a GM waste his/her time even thinking about this junk? First - role-playing real or semi-real life events is fun. It makes it a little spookier. Second - it provokes discussion at the table. Pen and paper games are social events - players interact. Even if they interact (that means talk not text) about unrelated stuff, it still serves to bond the players together and make them want to come back the next time. If you didn’t realize that we see the main goal or a role-playing game as keeping the players coming back, then you just haven’t been reading this blog!

No post ths week

Our apologies. Minor family emergency - no post this week

Constructive Criticism of Legend Quest

Years ago, we had a very good customer who came and saw us every year at the cons and bought whatever we had published. We love people like that! One year he had his two sons with him, and we confidently asked him if his sons played. He told us that they were just starting, D&D. We were of course offended. Here was one of our biggest fans and he was teaching his kids that out of date game. Here was his reasoning, and unfortunately, he was right: D&D’s class system was easy for the boys to learn. They were only like 6 and 8. They wanted to be “fighter”, “thief” or “mage”. Easy - You can do this; you can’t do that. In LQ, with our character building process, you can build anything. He told us that his boys didn’t know what they wanted for their characters, so he wanted them to have it nice and simple. Sure, he loved running stealthy elven archers who were great runners and climbers, and his adult players loved having useful skills that made sense, at least to them. (I think there was a massively powerful warrior who was a gem and jewelry expert.)
Why am I pointing out this seeming flaw in our game? Because we want to stress that LQ is not for eight year olds. It’s not that is any more violent than other games, in fact it is the opposite. But young kids haven’t learned enough to strategize how much of their skill they should be applying to defense/parrying vs. offense. Or how much of their skill they need for their spell’s accuracy vs. area of effect. This spell does X damage to one guy! That they can wrap their brains around. You can do a lot more damage now, but it might make you pass out from the effort, or you can coast now so you can cast more later - not something for little kids!
Now, if you are an adult (even a younger one), and you want a game with a huge amount of dynamic opportunity - try Legend Quest!. No classes! No alignments! You craft the character to be what you want it to be, trading off this for that. Best of luck, and enjoy!