I’m fairly blessed with good fortune when it comes to having people to play games with. My work in theater serves to introduce me to a constant procession of intelligent, creative, wonderful people. (This carries with it the associated curse that it can often be hard to actually find time to hang out with all these intelligent, creative, and wonderful people when you’re all on mutually incompatible show schedules. But as curses go, that one’s not so bad in the grand scheme of things.

Intelligent, creative, and wonderful people make for excellent gaming compatriots. And, as a result, I frequently find myself in the position of needing to introduce new people to the sort of games that aren’t Monopoly, Trivial Pursuit, or Pictionary. (Although I’ll often discover that a lot of these people were already dedicated gamers or used to be gamers and would love to be again; I just had no idea until I broached the subject. How many people do you know that you could be gaming with if you just talked to them about it?) Over years of experimentation, I have found that there are effective ways of doing this and less-than-effective ways of doing this.

PICKING A GAME

What I’m specifically going to be talking about today is introducing people to nontraditional, theme-rich boardgames. (Introducing new players to roleplaying games is a different, albeit similar process.) So which game should you use? In my opinion, there are three key factors to consider:

(1) Find a game with a theme that appeals to the new player.

This is pretty basic and should be fairly self-evident. If they like science fiction, introduce them a science fiction game. If they like Victorian London, introduce them to a Jack the Ripper game. And so forth.

(2) Know the game well and practice your introductory spiel.

Don’t try to learn a new game at the same time you’re teaching it to a new player. Study the game and know it well. You need to be completely comfortable with it so that you can quickly answer any questions they might have about game play without delaying to look it up in the rulebook. Your introductory spiel for the game, on the other hand, is the real lynchpin for successfully introducing people to the game. We’ll be delving into that in just a minute.

(3) Co-op games are generally a better way of introducing people to non-traditional gaming.

The advantage of a co-op game is that it’s not necessary for a new player to understand every tactical nuance of the rules: You can introduce the more nitpicky depths of the rules during play without prejudice. (In a competitive game, by contrast, a player needs to basically understand all the rules in all their variations because otherwise they can’t actually compete: It’s not fair for you to suddenly reveal that Queens can move in any direction half-way through a game of Chess. A lot of non-traditional competitive games also feature hidden components, which can make it more difficult or impossible for you to coach new players mid-game.)

All of this is only true, however, if you make sure the new players are included in the decision-making process of the co-op game. If you’ve got a table that defaults towards alpha-quarterbacking (in which the most experienced player makes all the decisions), then virtually all co-op games suck in general and completely suck for new players.

THE INTRODUCTORY SPIEL

For most of the co-op game sin my collection — Arkham Horror, Betrayal at House on the Hill, Knizia’s Lord of the Rings, Level 7: Escape, etc. — I’ve therefore perfected a presentation of the basic rules for the game which generally takes no more than 5 minutes. As an example of this, let’s consider Arkham Horror. (And I’m picking Arkham Horror specifically because I recognize most people would consider it impossibly complex for new players. Whereas, with this approach, I’ve actually found it ideal for introducing new players to theme-rich games.)

Here’s what my introductory spiel looks like. Some of this is visual or physical, so in this text-based format you might need to already be familiar with the game to really follow what I’m talking about. (Fortunately, I’m not actually trying to teach you Arkham Horror; I’m trying to demonstrate how you can break a game down and efficiently present its core components in a way that will easily make sense to new players.)

Welcome to 1920’s Arkham. (point to the board) These are locations and these are streets areas. You can move between these areas by following the lines.

This is your character sheet. At the bottom you’ll see your skills: You can see that each set of skills is paired (Fight and Sneak, Lore and Will, Speed and Luck). You’ll use these sliders to indicate your current level in each skill, trading one against the other. During play, you’ll be able to adjust these values but you can pick you initial value for each skill pair right now. I recommend values in the middle of each range because you don’t really know what you’ll be facing right off the bat.

Note: If you can, get them “hands on” with the game right away. Arkham Horror is great for this because the skill sliders are easy to contextualize and allow the new player to make a meaningful decision less than 30 seconds into your spiel.

You’ll use your skills to make checks. To make a check, you roll a number of dice equal to your skill. 5’s and 6’s are successes. So, for example (roll the dice) on this roll I’ve scored two successes. Generally you just need to score one success in order to succeed on the check, although some checks may be more difficult.

Note: In your spiel you want to drive quickly to the core mechanic and then build up the rest of the game around it. As much as possible you want to avoid saying “I’ll explain that in a minute”. Instead, you want to introduce all the concepts necessary to understand a mechanic before you need to describe that mechanic. This isn’t always possible, of course, but it’s a good goal to strive for because it makes it easier for the new player to build a coherent understanding of how the game works.

Your character also has a special ability, which is described right on your characters sheet.

Note: At this point, I’ll use those special abilities to discuss whatever rules are involved with them. For example, Charlie Kane has an ability related to drawing allies, so I’ll show them the ally cards and point to Ma’s Boarding House on the board. This is useful because it’s personalized and it gives them something concrete to focus on.

The game is broken down into turns. Each turn is broken down into five phases. During each phase, everyone will take their action for that phase in order starting with the first player. Once everyone has gone, we go onto the next phase. Once all the phases are done, the first player token will move to the next player and we’ll start the next turn.

This is our Ancient One: She’s trying to break through into this world and destroy everything. Our job is to stop her.

Note: At this point, I’ll sometimes grab a Call of Cthulhu manual and read the pertinent descriptive text for the Ancient One. It takes a little extra time, but it can help to draw players unfamiliar with Lovecraft into the Mythos.

During the game, gates will open between Arkham locations and the Other Worlds. We’ll need to jump through these gates, journey through the Other World, and then close the gates. When we do that, we’ll collect a gate trophy.

There are three ways to win: When we close a gate, we can spend five of these clue tokens to seal it. If we seal six gates, we win. That’s the easiest way to win. Alternatively, if we can close all the gates on the board and we collectively have a number of gate trophies equal to the number of players we win. Finally, if all else fail and the Ancient One awakens, we’ll have a chance to fight them in a final combat. But that’s painful and difficult, so what it really boils down to is that we want to seal gates.

SAMPLE TURN

At this point, the opening spiel is done: Short and simple. The introduction isn’t quite over yet, but at this point we can start actually playing the game while the explanations continue through a sample turn.

Note that the progression to the sample turn only works if the introductory spiel has conveyed enough of the game’s core structure that the players can understand exactly what’s happening during each turn (and why it’s happening). To put it another way, the new player has to be able to make meaningful decisions about the game.

For example, if you were teaching someone Chess and all you did was show them how each piece moves the new player would be able to select a piece on their turn and move it. But they would still lack the understanding necessary to make a meaningful decision about which piece to move and why to move it. (On the other hand, making a meaningful decision doesn’t necessarily mean understanding the deep strategies of the game. A new Chess player who knows that the goal is to put the opponent’s King in check has enough information to make meaningful decisions. They don’t need to know the difference between a King’s Gambit and a Queen’s Gambit.)

In Arkham Horror you can actually blend the transition between spiel and sample turn a little bit because the last phase of set-up is drawing and resolving a Mythos card (which also happens during play). So let’s draw a hypothetical card now and continue:

(1) Open a gate. We’ll draw a gate token and place it face-up at the location shown on the Mythos card. This gate leads to a specific Other World. (point to that Other World) Whenever a new gate opens, we add a doom token to the Ancient One’s doom track. The Ancient One will awaken when their doom track is full.

(2) Spawn monster. The other thing that happens when a gate opens is that a monster spawns and comes out through the gate. We draw a monster token from this bag over here and place it on the gate.

Note: At this point you might take the time to discuss how you fight monsters. But you can usually wait for that.

(3) Place clue. Next we place a clue token at the location given on the Mythos card. You can pick up all the clue tokens in a location by ending your movement phase on the location. Like we talked about before, you can use five clue tokens to seal a gate. You can also use a clue token to roll one additional die on a skill check.

Note: I use this opportunity to reinforce the basic goal and strategy of the game (“sealing gates”). I might also take the opportunity here to roll another sample check (“For example, if Laura were to make a Lore check she would roll three dice…”) and then demonstrate how a clue token could be used. Finding ways to reinforce/repeat key mechanics, goals, and basic strategies is useful.

(4) Move monsters. If a monster’s symbol appears on the Mythos card, it moves one space following the arrow with a matching color. (For example, on this card hexagon monsters would move along the white arrow.)

(5) Activate Mythos ability. Read the card text aloud. Do whatever it says.

WRAPPING IT UP

And now you’re in the home stretch: Simply walk through the first couple of turns step by step, breaking down each action for the new players. By the end of the second turn, the new players will basically be completely up to speed and fully engaged.

As a final note: You should never tell a new player in a co-op game what they should do. Instead, discuss the strategic situation in the game and present them with options. Let them make meaningful choices. Let them actually play the game.

For example, in Arkham Horror on their first turn might ask, “What should I do?” Don’t tell them something specific like, “Go get that clue token.” Instead discuss broad strategic considerations: “Well, at this point in the game we need to have one or two people collecting five clue tokens each so that they can jump through gates and close them. We also need somebody to fight the monsters to help us keep the board clear for movement. It can also be useful to get $5 and go shopping for an Elder Sign at the Curiositie Shop — that’s an item that will let us automatically seal a gate.” If they decide they want to collect clue tokens and still want more guidance, try to still present them with multiple tactical options: For example, you could show them three different locations that they could move to in order to pick up a clue token and then let them decide which one they want to go to.

For Arkham Horror, I’d also recommend the Arkham Companion app for Android devices. It’s compatible with all of the expansions and completely automates Arkham location and Other World location cards, which massively declutters the table and simplifies game flow. You can read all about it on the FFG forums and you can grab it from either Google Play or Dropbox.

To make a long story short: Legends & Labyrinths is simply the most blighted project I have ever worked on.

Over the last two months there are three major new woes to add to the pile: I had another artist pull a vanishing act. The printer I was going to use for the books went out of business and quotes I was getting from other companies made it clear that printing the books was going to cost a lot more than I’d originally budgeted. (Penalty for being 18 months overdue.) And then I had one of my previous artists crawl out of the woodwork and threaten to sue me because I didn’t pay him for art he never actually made or delivered. (Or I suppose maybe he did make it and just refuses to attach it to an e-mail so that he can get paid. I don’t know.)

You can’t really make that last one up. But you do have to deal with it.

Now that the “artist” has been dealt with, however, I can move forward. Unfortunately, the “forward” direction in question is not a particularly positive one: Taking a deep assessment of the product I promised in the 8-Bit Funding campaign and comparing it to the product I’m actually capable of delivering at this time, I’m not satisfied with the results. I could push forward and deliver something that would technically fulfill the promised rewards, but I wouldn’t feel comfortable standing behind its quality.

Which means that I’m officially cancelling the project as it currently exists.

That’s the bad news.

The good news, for backers at least, is that your money — as I’ve indicated in the past — was never in jeopardy. The only money that was ever withdrawn from the project fund was to pay for the art from Viktor Fetsch, Alex Drummond, Bonnie Tang, and others. I’ve restored those funds from my personal accounts and refunds will be going out.

Here’s how that’s going to break down:

Registered Adventurers: These backers have already received their full rewards, so they won’t be getting refunds.

Warriors, Prowlers, Conquerors, Lord of the Labyrinth: These backers will be getting full refunds.

Labyrinth Exemplars: Exemplars will be getting full refunds, but if the final version of the game ever appears their characters will still be used in the SRS sidebars as promised.

Legend in Your Own Time: These backers will receive full refunds, but they will also receive a digital copy of Alex Drummond’s art depicting their adventuring party. If the final version of the game ever appears, this art will also appear in the rulebook.

And, of course, backers will obviously get to keep all of the bonus PDFs and other digital rewards which have already been delivered to them.

As this suggests, I have not completely given up on the idea of L&L appearing at some point in the future. But it was time to, regrettably, declare the 8-Bit Funding project a failure.

If you were a backer of the project and you have not received an e-mail concerning your refund, please check your spam filters and then contact me ASAP at legendsandlabyrinths@gmail.com.

This is not a good movie.

It’s not necessarily a bad movie, either. But it’s definitely got mediocrity written all over it.

Chris Sims at Comics Alliance had the particularly keen insight that Superman in Man of Steel only does what other people tell him to do. This is problematic because the movie is ostensibly about Superman being a leader: People in the film keep saying that in different ways over and over and over again. But this contrast between what the movie wants to be and what the movie actually is reveals the fundamentally incoherent storytelling that ultimately renders Man of Steel into nothing but sound and fury.

(It’s very pretty sound and fury, mind you. It has arguably the best aerial superhero fight in film history. The actors give strong performances. There are a lot of really great moments. But it all signifies nothing. And none of it holds together.)

SPOILERS AHEAD

Let’s take a moment to further consider the whole “let’s completely screw up the character of Pa Kent” thing that the film has going on. Pa Kent is supposed to be the guy who teaches Clark Kent how to be Superman. But in this film Pa Kent is the guy who teaches Clark to not help people; to not become Superman. He literally tells him that it’s better to let people die because if he ever reveals himself humanity will turn on him.

Not only is this inherently unethical and immoral and banal; it also turns out that Pa Kent is a moron because that is the exact opposite of what happens.

Whether you like the traditional interpretation of Pa Kent is, of course, a matter of opinion. But on a basic, structural level the film objectively fails on this point: It continues to hold Pa Kent up as a paragon of wisdom and insight, despite the fact that every single action he takes in the film is shown to be the immoral cowardice of a mistaken fool.

(There’s also the fact that the entire first half of the movie seems to be structured around the idea of Clark making a choice to either reveal himself or keep himself hidden. But then, in an astonishing act of deprotagonization, that decision is taken away from him when Zod shows up and outs him to the planet. In fact, the last thing we see in that abandoned arc is Superman convincing Lois to not reveal his presence…. so I guess this is actually the story of how Clark Kent doesn’t become Superman?)

Here’s another deep structural problem with the movie: Massive human casualties with no emotional reaction from Superman. Then, at the end of the film, four people are threatened by Zod’s heat vision and Superman is abruptly forced to kill Zod. Snyder had an opportunity here to tell a coherent story about Superman as a character and as a human being. Instead he just tacked that story onto the end of the film. It’s lazy filmmaking. (And it’s further broken when the film cuts abruptly from the emotional aftermath of Superman’s decision to a cheerful set of mostly comedic interludes.)

I’ve seen some people attempt to defend the movie on this point by claiming that there wasn’t any time for Clark to have a reaction to the casualties. But they’re kidding themselves: There’s time after the battle in Smallville. During the battle with Zod they have a whole conversation. And it’s also a film, which means that you can choose to structure that final battle to show us Superman taking actions to help bystanders or pulling his punches because it would mean innocents getting hurt.

But the most telling moment in Snyder’s failure here is actually the scene immediately preceding the fight with Zod: Superman lands in the middle of horrific devastation…. and has absolutely no reaction to it whatsoever. Instead, he makes out with Lois while standing on the ashes of 10,000 dead.

There are a lot of other nits that could be picked. (You have an entire film built, albeit poorly, around the death of Pa Kent in a tornado. The special effects you use  for the erasure and second death of Jor-El resemble a tornado. But you structure your film so that Superman never gets to have a reaction to it? Bizarre. And why does the entire staff of the Daily Planet evacuate the building only to run directly towards the giant machine of death?) But when the entire backbone of the movie is broken in multiple places, the smaller problems are really inconsequential.

Comments have been restored.

I finally got the hosting company to update the PHP on my server so that  I could install the latest version of WordPress. That also let me update my plugins. I don’t know if this will solve the periodic problem of all the comments on the site turning off, but it does drastically reduce the odds of the site being hacked. (Which, sadly, just happened to a different site I run.)

On a purely positive note, I’ve got a full slate of material scheduled for July here at the Alexandrian. And I’m hoping there’ll be a couple more beefy essays wrapped up in the next couple of days to add even more.

On an almost purely negative note, there will be an update on Legends & Labyrinths tomorrow.

I’ll also be at GenCon this year, this time with a little more forewarning. Anybody running a game I should check out? Even with proper preregistration this year I managed to get into precisely zero of the events I signed up for, so I’ll be roughing it with generics again. Hopefully I won’t be literally cutting my phone in half this year.

Last year I played in a great Star Wars event called Lord of the Hives. Threat Detected is running the scenario again this year. I recommend checking it out.

 

Tagline: Larry Elmore, Margaret Weis, Tracy Hickman, Don Perrin, and Lester Smith. Need another reason to take a look? Sovereign Stone has all the makings of being the first major “generic” fantasy game in over a decade. Need more? You do? Jesus Christ, does nothing satisfy you?

Sovereign Stone is set in a world created by Larry Elmore, with a system designed by Don Perrin and Lester Smith, which will have fiction written about it by Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman.

If you’ve ever been a fan of AD&D or TSR during the past twenty years those names should look fairly familiar to you – Larry Elmore is renowned in the industry for his fantasy and humor artwork; Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman wrote the Dragonlance Trilogy (and its sequel, Legends — some of the only gaming-related fiction to be taken seriously); Don Perrin and Lester Smith are well known for their system and supplement design. It’s one of the most impressive development teams of proven talent to ever coalesce in this industry. The excitement with which I’ve looked forward to this project can be favorably compared to my reaction when I learned that Robin D. Laws would be developing Hero Wars or when I got a chance to playtest Tribe 8.

The Quickstart Rules I am reviewing here for the game are, I believe, no longer available. So why am I offering this review? Because Sovereign Stone is scheduled to be released at GenCon this year, and this review should appear just a week or two before GenCon hits – it’ll give you something to look forward to.

And you’ll definitely be looking forward to it. These Quickstart Rules have only whetted my appetite and added to my excitement. Few people can design a piece of cover artwork as well as Larry Elmore can, so from the very moment when I first slid these out of the plain white envelope they arrived in I knew I had something special in my hands. Elmore’s art continues inside this well-designed and edited package, along with Stephen Daniele and Joy Marie Ledet. Although these latter two are not at Elmore’s level of artistic talent, their work is in a very complementary style – lending a book an artistic cohesion which is sometimes lacking even in graphically well-developed works in the industry. This is kind of unsurprising considering that this is an RPG based on the vision of an artist.

So what do you get in the Quickstart Rules? An overview of the basic resolution mechanic of the game, pregenerated characters, a short adventure, and a short story which is a sort of prelude to the short adventure. Plus you get a gorgeous, two page, rough pencil map of the world of Loerem.

THE STORY

The book opens with a short story by Margaret Weis entitled “Envoys of Shadamehr”. I consider Weis to be a talented author. Perhaps not exceptional, but definitely someone who notice should be taken note of. That being said, this story stinks.

Essentially Envoys of Shadamehr suffers from every type of flaw which this type of story can possibly suffer from (found in the front of far too many RPGs since White Wolf initiated the trend). The exposition is not only heavy-handed, it is poorly handled; you aren’t allowed to connect to any of the characters; and you can practically hear the game session from which this was ripped (right down to the “NPC briefing” which informs you of what you have to do next).

The story suffers even further due to the fact that it is acting as a lead-in to the short adventure found at the end of the book. Basically you’ve got eight or nine pages of a typical fantasy party wandering around through what appears to be a typical fantasy world in a fairly typical set of fantasy situations.

That being said, the story does set out what it accomplishes to do (introducing you to the world) – but it’s a badly chosen form of doing so. A basic intro to the world would not only provide me with more information, it also would have done so in a way which was not immensely frustrating.

THE WORLD

Sovereign Stone is set in the world of Loerem. Most of the information we get regarding this world comes from either the back cover or the blatant exposition of the short story.

This is how I would characterize Loerem in a single sentence: Tolkien by way of D&D by way of DragonLance by way of Robert Jordan.

This isn’t exactly fair to Robert Jordan, since it implies he’s drawing inspiration from D&D, but it still fits. First you have the primary races: Orks, Elves, Humans, and Dwarves. Second, you have the “dark evil which has just come back into the world”. Third, the “dark evil” is using Void magic-wielding Taan – which are large lizard-men.

Remember I said this was a game worth looking forward to? That still holds. None of this is a serious death sentence. The only time it becomes a serious issue is when the bones begin to show through – for example, a lengthy section of the story is an exposition of the Waygates. The Waygates allow you to travel distances which would normally take you months in a matter of hours. Further, the magic which formed the Waygates is decaying and becoming corrupt – making them dangerous to use.

Oh wait, I’m sorry. “Waygates” is the term Robert Jordan uses. Sovereign Stone calls them “Portals”. And, yes, there are some various other cosmetic differences. The biggest mistake made here, I think, is having quickie-transports whose only distinguishing feature you note is that they are magically decaying (thus inviting the immediate Jordan comparison, rather than thinking of the dozens of other extant examples – such as Ultima moongates) and then having that be the very first thing of major note about the world which is discussed in your Quickstart Rules.

In any case, I digress. The world of Loerem has several interesting things going for it:

The Orks are a sea-faring race, advantaged in water magic, and (based on clues in the Weis exposition story) possessed of an interestingly intricate culture based on that fact. The Elves are “a medieval Japanese-like race”, while the Dwarves become “nomadic” and “Mongol-like”. Humans are your standard European fantasy shtick. The Taan are your generic bad guys.

Despite my negative comments above, the world as a whole strikes me as an impressive variant in the Tolkienesque vein – Elmore has taken on the standard tropes and racial types, and then played games with them.

RESOLUTION MECHANIC

As mentioned before, the Quickstart Rules do not include character generation – only resolution mechanics. Attributes and skills are quantified as dice types (for example “Strength: d8”). To make an action check you roll your attribute die and your skill die together and total them. If the total is higher than the target number set by the GM (which is a fixed number) you succeed; if not, you fail. You’ve seen similar mechanical methodology used in slightly different manners by Deadlands and Alternity.

COMBAT

Here’s where I became really excited by the system. Combat maintains a nice clean line – very much being an “AD&D that works well”. I was deeply impressed at how the entire system resonated with that same basic, elemental, easy-to-learn atmosphere which AD&D has; yet improved immensely on it not by adding even more needless junk to the system but by trimming away the needless and contradictory fat which plagues the system.

First, the designers seem to have found a nice compromise between the easy bookkeeping of traditional Hit Points and the slight edge in verisimilitude of Wound systems. Your character has a pool of Life Points (which is shown as a strip of boxes on the character sheet) and can take two types of damage: Stun and Wound. If you take Stun damage you mark off from top down; if you take Wound damage you mark off from the bottom up (with Wounds superseding Stun if the two meet). If all of your Life Point boxes are marked off you fall unconscious. If all your Life Point boxes are marked off as wounds you die. Nice and simple.

[ That’s the way its described in the rulebook. If you want a more mathematical, rather than visual, approach to this record-keeping: You have a pool of Life Points. You can take Stun Damage and you can take Wound Damage. If your Stun Damage + Wound Damage total is higher than your Life Point pool you fall unconscious. If your Wound Damage total is higher than your Life Point pool you die. ]

Battles are divided into turns (lasting approximately six seconds) in which each character gets to take one action (which is declared at the beginning of the turn). Before anything is resolved everyone rolls the dice for their declared action (this is important) – the highest resulting roll goes first, the second highest next, and so on down to the lowest roll.

Now, if you are attacked before taking your action for that turn you have two options: You can attempt to defend, or you can “take the attack” and attack back. If you decide to defend you roll your dice again. If your new total is higher than the attacker’s then the attack is unsuccessful. If it is lower then the attack is successful and damage is determined by Attacker’s Total – Defender’s Total + Weapon Damage Bonus – Armor; which is then divided evenly between Stun and Wound damage (round in favor of stun) unless the bonus states otherwise.

If you “take the attack” you will not be actively defending, but you will still attempt to dodge the blow, rolling Agility Attribute only. Damage is determined in the same way.

Here’s the catch though, if you’ve already taken your attack (i.e., you went first in the turn) and someone attacks you, then you can actively defend without losing your attack for that turn.

Example. You and a taan both want to beat on each other with swords for awhile. You both declare your intention (“I wanna beat up on the other guy”) and then roll your initial dice (Strength Attribute + Sword Skill). You get 14 and the taan gets 11, therefore you get to go first (since you have the higher total). The taan decides to take the attack, so he rolls his Agility Attribute and gets a 7. You subtract 7 from 14, add your sword’s damage bonus (let’s say it’s 3). The total damage would therefore be 10, making for five points of Stun damage and five points of Wound damage (evenly divided).

Because the taan took the attack, the taan now gets to attack back – using his original total of 11 (because this was his declared action). You still get to defend, because you went first – roll your Strength Attribute + Sword Skill and get 12. Because your total was higher than his, his attack is unsuccessful.

In the case of a tie in your initial roll (for the declared actions) the decision to defend (and lose your attack) or take the attack (and roll Agility for your defense) and then attack is left in the hands of the PC. Unfortunately, this doesn’t help you much if its a PC vs. PC combat. Hopefully this oversight will be corrected in the full rules.

Archery is handled slightly differently: The attacker rolls Agility + Bow Skill to determine attack total and the defender rolls Agility + Dodge if actively defending. (There are also some modifiers based on the target taking cover, which implies that in the full rules there will be a more comprehensive look at various combat modifiers.)

MAGIC

Magic, like combat, is “AD&D done right”. Once again, I’m impressed.

In order to cast a spell a mage must know the spell and have it written in their spell book. Although the rules say a “mage may not cast a spell which he has not previously studied” this should not be confused with AD&D’s badly conceived memorization mechanic – rather that line merely means that a mage can’t look at a scroll, copy the spell down, and expect to cast it five minutes later.

Magical spells have difficulty numbers. He rolls his Psyche Attribute + Magic Skill and totals the dice – if the total is higher than the difficulty number he succeeds immediately; if not he may try again on the next turn, adding the new total to the old total until he gets a total higher than the difficulty number. The complex the spell the higher the difficulty number, the higher the difficulty number the more turns it will take before the mage is successful.

Now that’s a nice system all by itself, then they add a couple of extra touches which give it the potential of being an excellent magic system. First, a mage can hold a spell for up to three turns after casting it so long as he does nothing else (so you can hold a spell ready). Second, balance is given to the system by a potential risk – if, at any point while resolving the spell, the mage rolls a “1” on any die, then he loses control of the magic and it goes wild. He can either let the magic fail or take 3 points of Stun damage in order to hold the magic under control. If he ever rolls two 1’s in the same roll, the spell-casting automatically fails and the mage takes stun damage equal to the remaining number of points required to complete the spell.

This is a strong, sturdy base for the spell system (it needs to be complemented with some additional options, a research system, and a system for magical item creation). My one regret is that the resolution mechanic used for it (multiple roles to achieve a target number) was not generalized to other resolution tasks (where appropriate by the GM’s judgment) – hopefully this will be done in the main rulebook, because I do like having a toolkit full of resolution mechanics which can be applied to different situations.

THE MODULE

The adventure picks up where the short story left off, with the players picking up pregenerated characters who were introduced in the story. I’m not going to comment extensively on this (since the purpose of this review is not to sell you on these Quickstart Rules, but rather to provide you a taste of what will be coming in August when the game is released properly), but will point out that it is nothing particularly special in terms of modules as whole. On the other hand, it does admirably fulfill its purpose of guiding you through the basic mechanics, setting, and premises of the game.

CONCLUSION

As I said at the beginning of the review, I am really looking forward to Sovereign Stone. First, the world Larry Elmore has created (at first glance, anyway) is intriguing. I know that there are many who disparage Tolkienesque fantasy with its “generic” elves and dwarves and orcs, but I actually think that – done right – this is an extremely lucrative place for development. Those “generic” elves and dwarves are so familiar to us that it is possible to twist them in the most interesting ways (Dark Sun and Planescape were excellent examples of this).

Second, the system really has me interested. Although its central resolution mechanic appears to lean more heavily towards Deadlands than Dungeons and Dragons, the rest of the system is the first bold attempt to challenge AD&D on its home turf in the past decade. Based on what I have seen here, this system deserves to succeed brilliantly as it gives you every strength AD&D possesses while (seemingly) with none of the weaknesses.

Finally, the creative team assembled here is – as I’ve mentioned before – amazing. With Larry Elmore, Margaret Weis, Tracy Hickman, and the others all under the same roof you’re looking for magic to happen. All you’ve got to do is successfully catch the lightning in the bottle.

I heartily suggest all of you to give Sovereign Stone a good hard look come August.

Style: 5
Substance: 4

Author: Larry Elmore, Margaret Weis, Don Perrin, Lester Smith
Company/Publisher: Sovereign Press, Inc. and Corsair Publishing
Cost: $5.00
Page count: 25
ISBN: 0-9658422-1-5

Originally Posted: 1999/07/22

This review actually serves as a mere prelude for the shit-storm that would erupt one month later when I reviewed the full rulebook for Sovereign Stone and discovered that it absolutely sucked. But that’s a story that will have to wait for another day…

This review was written three years before Ron Edwards’ coined the phrase “fantasy heartbreaker”, but the application to Sovereign Stone is obvious. With that being said, when this review was written I honestly thought Sovereign Stone had the potential to become the next Earthdawn or Palladium Fantasy Role-Playing Game. Obviously, that didn’t happen. If nothing else, history was against it: No generic fantasy RPG released in 1999-2000 had a prayer.

On a purely personal level, though, I often wonder about an alternate reality in which (a) the Sovereign Stone rulebook actually capitalized on the potential I saw in the Quickstart Rules and (b) I didn’t receive a playtest copy of the 3rd Edition of D&D just a few weeks later. In that alternate reality, I think there’s a pretty good chance that Sovereign Stone would have become my go-to fantasy RPG of choice.

For an explanation of where these reviews came from and why you can no longer find them at RPGNet, click here.