If there's a redeeming faculty, it's that a clever GM could fairly easily edit out the storygaming atrocities (and the pretentious tone of the author) from their game and run this as a much more 'straight' (if rules-light) RPG. Wherein your humble scribe presents a couple of pulpy characters and a deadly foe done up in Barbarians of Lemuria/ Dicey Tales style. In the Mythic Edition, at the start of combat each player rolls 2d6 + Mind + Initiative - the highest Initiative among the NPCs. The basic rule is you have a target number of 9 on 2d6. There are a couple modifiers (some boons act like advantage, roll 3d6 and keep the highest 2) but that is the main mechanic of the game. Barbarians of Lemuria is a heroic role-playing game set firmly in the sword-and-sorcery genre. Lemuria is a post-apocalyptic world thousands of years in the future and unrecognizable to anyone from today. The continent has returned to an almost prehistoric state – a land of steaming jungles, vast untamed wildernesses, horror-filled swamplands, and sunbaked deserts. Massive man-eating beasts roam the unexplored regions of Lemuria and beyond, from island-sized sea serpents capable of sinking wargalleys, to the huge jungle-dwelling dinosaurs that can swallow a man whole.

run it like Traveller with a roll/ rolls to survive without mishap/ thrive/ remain in a career from term to termIt was an age of warriors, when brave men and beautiful women, savages and savants, wizards and champions struggled to carve a red path that led to the Throne of the World. It was an age of legends and heroic sagas too. Still, depending on the kind of game you are after, that might not matter. Careers don't have much direct effect on combat, if I recall. Maybe JoT works in BoL? I don't know the game well enough. Armor is divided into broad categories (light, medium, heavy) and each category provides a different die of protection that reduces damage. It seems that contrary to the earlier bluster about emulating S&S, no explanation is given for why Conan wouldn't be going around in heavy armor. Then we get a section on how to run campaigns, which are pretentiously called "sagas". Most of the advice is relatively cliched, to say nothing of when it's outright wrong (as in, saying that the game is "about telling a good story").

It turned out that I did not have this issue at my table because my players bought into the concept. But it was something I seriously thought about before I ran the game. Below I’ll describe the system as briefly as I can (so not very) and conclude with why on the whole I like it. Assuming Joe goes the supernatural defense route, he could, if the GM lets him, abuse it by spending 7 points on defense 4, then 9 more on defense 5, and maybe 11 more for defense 6... for 27 of those 60 absolute peak for a 20 session game. And he'll be HARD to hit. You also get the advice to make treasure utterly abstract. In fact, you're told to laugh at your players and call them 'accountants' if they ask just how much treasure they earned. This strikes me as beyond pretentiousness.Being pursued by a murderous war-party of grooth, the Heroes are two days into the chase. They have only slept in snatches, tasted few scraps of food, and are cold, tired, and thirsty. Always, it seems, the grooth war-party is close on their heels. Feral eyes glinting in the near-distance. The PCs are just breaking a hasty camp, when a scouting party of grooth come upon them. BoL has character advancement options, and sufficient flexibility, to be able to sustain a 10-20 session campaign. Update: I’ve dropped the Saturday night BoL game in favor of running an improvised/emergent adventure with Troika!– more on that in another post.

It's also explained later on that a roll of 12 which would have been a success anyways is called a "mighty success" (a critical). If you spend a hero point on top of that, it become a "legendary success" with even more effect. Likewise, if you roll a 2, and take it to be a "calamitous failure", you gain a hero point. I hate that last part, it's just bad storygamey design. All kinds of things, starting with overall difficulty level, can modify the roll.First on my geeky agenda for the day was sitting down to take part in a playtest/demo/whatever of Merle Rasmussen’s forthcoming new 21st Century espionage game, currently operating under the codename Acrid Herald. I played in a game of Top Secret with The Administrator (who’d rather be called the Spymaster, by the way) so I was already a little familiar with his style. He’s a very nice man who delights in bad puns and having fun at the table. Weapons are divided into broad categories as well: unarmed does d3+half one's strength, light weapons do the lesser result of two d6s (plus strength), medium do 1d6, heavy weapons do the better of two d6s. Characters with strength less than 0 can't wield heavy weapons. Careers are cheaper... new level, minimum cost 1, to max of career level 5. A new career costs 1, remember? After all the fiddling around with 2d6 and 3d6 systems, it’s ironic that I found something pretty close to what I was trying to cook up on my own bookshelf. Travel-stained and weary the heroes arrive before the gates of the bustling city. However the usual routine of the metropolis has been shattered by the arrival of a floating castle, hovering like a storm cloud over the palace. At night, "winged demons" swoop down from caves located on the underside of the castle and snatch unwary nobles away for ransom.

Again, I won’t go into great detail regarding the game itself at this point. But I can say that BoL Mythic ran like a charm and many great fights happened along with some very solid roleplaying by the assembled strangers. Play was so fast, in fact, that I had to invent some things on the spot to make sure we didn’t blitz to the end. But that was really no problem – I think on my feet reasonably well and the booze hadn’t dulled my faculties too much. We hit the climax of the adventure at just about the right time and everyone was suitably creeped out and challenged by what to do in the face of what was happening at the Abbey of St. Giles the Green.Skill systems like those in Traveller, Fate, various d100 systems, and D&D 3.5 group probabilities of success by type of action or knowledge. That may be true. But it also may not. The Vanth aren’t generally known for their truthfulness. And wouldn’t it be better to live long enough to find out?” Earlier editions expressed weapon damage as d6 +/- some constant, which means smaller weapons might do 0 damage and larger weapons might always do a minimum damage. Timandra hails from Thaxos, where her greed earned her a reputation she couldn’t shake. She now makes her way in the world by taking anything that isn’t nailed down. Though hardly much of a mariner herself, she still calls on Rasos, the Thaxian god of the sea, in times of trouble.