Today we’re going to take our first peek inside the actual Legends & Labyrinths Black Book Beta. And we’re starting literally on page 1 with the full introduction, including the example of play.

(click for PDF)

This should give you some idea of what the final look of the book will be. A couple of things to note: First, in this section of the rulebook I’m using the SRS to introduce concepts to new players. There’s a slightly more informal, instructional quality to them. (You’ll see what I mean.) The SRS references in the rest of the book are crisper and primarily serve as reference tools (as shown in the examples earlier this week).

Second, you’ll probably notice a few dreaded “page XXX” references. For the moment, these are intentional. They’re pointing to material that either (a) doesn’t exist in the Black Book Beta or (b) will have a different page number in the final rulebook (pretty much anything in the Grimoire, Treasury, or Bestiary). By leaving these “XXX” references in the Black Book Beta instead of replacing them with temporary references, we’re significantly reducing the chance of these references not getting properly updated for the final rulebook. (Finding “XXX” is easy; noticing a page reference which is now pointing to the wrong place is harder.) This is a conscious decision on my part to sacrifice some degree of quality in the Black Book Beta in order to make the final rulebook the best it can be.

If you spot any other errors or typos, though, you should totally light up the comments here or my inbox.

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A little over a year ago I posted “Size Does Matter?“. This was, essentially, a response to James Maliszewski of Grognardia in which I looked at the size of each major edition of the game since 1974 excluding spells, monsters, magic items, classes, races, sample scenarios, and indices. (The theory being that adding more options within these categories is not necessarily adding bulk to the actual rules of the game.)

These are the numbers I came up with:

Original (LBBs only): 29 full pages (58 half-sheets)
Original (LBBs + 4 supplements): 64 full pages (128 half-sheets)
Holmes Edition: 19 full pages
Moldvay Edition (Basic + Expert): 64 full pages
BECM: 163 full pages
BECMI: 221 full pages
Rules Cyclopedia: 142 full pages
Advanced 1e (PHB, DMG, MM): 192 full pages
Advanced 2e (PHB, DMG, MM): 223 full pages
3e (PHB, DMG, MM): 257 full pages
3.5 (PHB, DMG, MM): 294 full pages

Where does Legends & Labyrinths land in this reckoning? 84 pages.

(The full rulebook will be somewhere between 180 and 200 pages, depending on exactly how much space the Grimoire and Bestiary entries take up.)

What does that tell us? Well, not much. It’s certainly not as “breezy” as Holmes (as Jeff Rients says), but for the most part this is just something to tuck away into the curiosity file.

The earliest design goal for Legends & Labyrinths was to reveal the slick, tight, elegant system at the heart of 3rd Edition.

Like most RPGs, I’ve found that the secret to mastering 3rd Edition lies in finding the core principles on which the system is built — the essential mechanics from which everything else is built. And some of the first material ever developed for the game (even before it was a game) was written for online messageboards where I was attempting to share this mastery by demonstrating the simple, flexible core of the game in concrete terms.

In other words, Legends & Labyrinths was born out of a simple methodology: If it’s not a core mechanic, it’s not in the game.

This methodology naturally led me to re-examine character creation. Although 3rd Edition had created a system which made it possible to customize your character in myriad ways, if I wanted to design a game that was specifically friendly to new players then I knew it was important for Legends & Labyrinths to feature a streamlined character creation system. (This is something I’ll talk about more in the future, but it’s a design goal which only grew in importance once I started running an open table.)

After many tribulations and the pursuit of more than a few false ideals, I eventually brought the classic trio of character creation to Legends & Labyrinths: (1) Roll ability scores. (2) Pick class and race. (3) Buy equipment.

Character creation, however, led me inexorably to monster creation. Just as the designers of 3rd Edition had given players unprecedented control over their characters, they also gave DMs an unprecedented suite of tools and rules for creating and modifying monsters. It’s an impressive and powerful system, but it can also be overwhelming and time-consuming.

My initial impulse, as with character creation, was to simply roll back the clock: Strip out all of the advanced guidelines 3rd Edition offers for monster creation, include a bestiary of a few hundred nasty creatures, and then just leave it up to the DM to eyeball whatever stats looked appropriate when creating new beasties. That’s basically the way it was handled back in my original Basic Set, after all.

After some initial playtesting, however, it became clear that some sort of system for monster creation was necessary. This system went through several iterations and design cycles (being completely scrapped and restarting from scratch on at least two occasions). The system as it exists today, however,  is heavily influenced from my experiences running the 1974 ruleset. What particularly struck me was that by simply setting a monster’s HD you immediately knew everything you needed to know about the monster’s stats. All you had to do was toss on a unique power or two and — blammo! — you had a monster. It was a process that took seconds, making it easy to spontaneously improvise entirely new creatures right at the game table without missing a beat.

It was out of this revelation that the Challenge Rating Table was born. (You can find it on page 123 of the Black Book Beta rulebook.) This table lies at the heart of the monster creation system in Legends & Labyrinths, and it led directly to the creation of what I came to think of as the “Three Pillars” of the game.

THE THREE PILLARS

The Three Pillars of Legends & Labyrinth are the monster creation system, the hazard/trap creation system, and the stunt system.

Let’s start with the monster creation system. Creating a monster in Legends & Labyrinths is a four step process:

1. Pick a challenge rating.
2. Select powers.
3. Assign ability scores.
4. Pick skills.

The CR of the creature determines is hit dice, armor class, attack bonus, attack damage, save bonus, the save DC for its special abilities, and the number of power ranks it receives. Powers are purchased using the monster’s power ranks, but the intention is that you pick a handful of significant powers and then quickly dump the rest into generic adjustments.

It should be noted that ability scores don’t modify any of the core stats determined by the monster’s CR. They only become relevant for ability score checks and skill checks. Nor are there any particular rules for picking the skills a monster gets: It’s assumed that the DM will exercise their best judgment in what skills a monster should possess.

(Playtest Tip: You want a copy of the Challenge Ratings Table on your DM screen. Just like the old “To Hit” tables, the CR table lets you pick a monster’s CR and then have all of its stats at your fingertips.)

When this simple, streamlined system finally clicked into place it was a major revelation. And I realized that its basic structure could be used to solve the problem I was having with traps. Here we come to the Second Pillar, in which hazards and traps are designed in a four step process:

1. Pick a challenge rating.
2. Define area/targets.
3. Define effect.
4. Define defense.

(For traps you also need to define a trigger.)

As the monster creation system is based in the Challenge Ratings Table, the hazard/trap creation system is based around the Hazards table. This table is one-half old school and one-half 4th Edition’s page 42. It contains general check DCs, trained check DCs, save DCs, attack bonuses, attack damage, repeating damage, and one-shot damage for every challenge rating.

Finally, we have the stunt system. The Legends & Labyrinths stunt system is a flexible method for allowing characters to perform unusual maneuvers during combat. A stunt can allow a character to apply a bonus to another character (or themselves), apply a penalty to another character, boost their speed or the speed of an ally, force opponents to move, or apply a variety of conditions to opponents. Resolving a stunt is a three step process:

1. Define the effect of the stunt (which determines the DC).
2. Perform the stunt by making the appropriate action check (usually a skill check).
3. If successful, the target of the stunt may attempt a stunt save to negate its effect.

The DC of the stunt save is determined by the level or CR of the combatant performing the stunt, as shown on the Stunt Difficulty Class table.

USING THE THREE PILLARS

I started thinking of these systems — monster creation, hazard/trap creation, stunt creation — as the Three Pillars when I realized that the Challenge Ratings Table, the Hazards table, and the Stunt Difficulty Class table were all fundamentally joined. Not only do these tables share elements all cross-referenced by challenge rating (save DCs, attack bonuses, etc.), at a very real level they collectively form a single meta-table which defines the spine of the 3rd Edition ruleset.

(In fact, I actually considered unifying them all into one table for awhile. But I realized that although it can be useful to think of them as a single meta-table, from a utility standpoint they’re more effective as separate tables.)

What’s a reasonable save DC for a 9th level character? What’s a good target number for a skill check intended for a 15th level character? Whether you’re running Legends & Labyrinths or any 3rd Edition game, the meta-table of the Three Pillars gives you the answer (which you can then, of course, tweak to your heart’s content).

But more than that, I came to think of these systems as the Three Pillars because they form an important part of the foundation which makes up Legends & Labyrinths. One half of this game is “3rd Edition without the noise”; but the other half of the game is a suite of powerful new tools which can be used to revolutionize any 3rd Edition campaign.

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1. INTRODUCING NEW PLAYERS

Legends & Labyrinths is an ideal way to introduce new players to your existing 3rd Edition game: It gives them a simplified set of rules that are easier to learn and use. This is particularly true of character creation, which has been boiled back down to the classic trio (roll attributes, pick race and class, select equipment).

And because Legends & Labyrinths is 100% compatible with the advanced rules, you can just gradually add complexity until they’ve learned all the bells and whistle of your full 3rd Edition campaign.

2. MINIONS AND POTENTATES

These fast, easy templates can be applied to any 3rd Edition monster to create a horde of mooks or a powerful solo encounter. Actually, describing these as templates is probably misleading: Templates have traditionally involved a lot of fiddling math, but creating a minion or potentate is more like flipping a switch. Blink and you’re done!

3. ENCOUNTER BUDGETS

Ever get tired of trying to figure out what EL you’re dealing with when you’ve got an encounter featuring five CR 8 creatures, a CR 9 creature, a pair of CR 10 creatures, and a CR 14 boss just to round things out? Legends & Labyrinths includes a super-simple encounter budget system that makes prepping complex encounters a breeze.

4. FAST-AND-EASY NPC STATS

Remember the days when you could basically create a full-fledged NPC by just saying “he’s a level 9 fighter”? Legends & Labyrinths makes that a reality for your 3rd Edition gaming, stripping NPC creation back to the classic trio: Roll ability scores, pick race and class, select equipment.

5. TRAINING RULES

On-the-job training is great, but sometimes you just want a nice little training montage that ends with your character dancing on the stairs in front of the Cosmopolitan Museum for Magical Curiosities with their arms flung high in the air. You can do that with Legends & Labyrinths.

6. THE STUNT SYSTEM

Legends & Labyrinths simplifies the 3^rd Edition combat system down to a lean, mean, fighting machine… And then makes it more dynamic than ever with a super-simple, super-flexible stunt system. Shove your enemies around, help your friends, and just generally do awesome stuff on the field of battle.

7. HAZARDS AND TRAPS

3^rd Edition may have traps, but it doesn’t have Legends & Labyrinths’ slick hazard and trap creation system. This thing is so streamlined that you can create new hazards on the fly. The players want to drop a chandelier on your doppelganger? Your ogre wants to chop through the balcony’s supports and make it collapse? Bam. Legends & Labyrinths has you covered.

8. MONSTER CREATION RULES

Are you tired of turgidly building monster stat blocks instead of whipping them up? Creating slavering monstrosities doesn’t have to be an exercise in advanced calculus. The monster creation system in Legends & Labyrinths is going to cure all your woes. Combined with the encounter budgets and hazard creation system, creating complex, dynamic, and flexible encounters has never been this easy.

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Legends & Labyrinths will be using the Sidebar Reference System originally developed for Dream Machine Production’s line of Rule Supplements. Using this format, rules are presented exactly when and where you need them.

For example, consider the description of the entangle spell from the advanced version of the 3rd Edition rules:

Grasses, weeds, bushes, and even trees wrap, twist, and entwine about creatures in the area or those that enter the area, holding them fast and causing them to become entangled. The creature can break free and move half its normal speed by using a full-round action to make a DC 20 Strength check or a DC 20 Escape Artist check. A creature that succeeds on a Reflex save is not entangled but can still move at only half speed through the area. Each round on your turn, the plants once again attempt to entangle all creatures that have avoided or escaped entanglement.

There is key information missing from this spell description which will leave players flipping through their rulebooks: What are the effects of being “entangled”? How do you make a Strength check or an Escape Artist check? One could add this information to the description, of course:

Grasses, weeds, bushes, and even trees wrap, twist, and entwine about creatures in the area or those that enter the area, holding them fast and causing them to become entangled (they move at half speed, cannot run or charge, suffer a -2 penalty on attack rolls, a -4 penalty on Dexterity checks, and casting a spell requires a Concentration check). The creature can break free and move half its normal speed by using a full-round action to make a Strength check (1d20 + Strength modifier vs. DC 20) or an Escape Artist check (1d20 + Escape Artist modifer vs. DC 20). A creature that succeeds on a Reflex save is not entangled but can still move at only half speed through the area. Each round on your turn, the plants once again attempt to entangle all creatures that have avoided or escaped entanglement.

But this only makes the spell description even more difficult to parse and adjudicate.

Using the SRS system, on the other hand, we can simplify the presentation of this spell so that it looks something like this:

Grasses, weeds, bushes, and even trees wrap, twist, and entwine about creatures in the area or those that enter the area. The area is treated as difficult terrain and creatures that fail their Reflex saves are stuck and entangled. A creature can break free by making a Strength check (DC 20) or Escape Artist check (DC 20) as a full action. Each round on your turn, the plants once again attempt to entangle all creatures that have avoided or escaped entanglement.

In the sidebar, the red-highlighted keywords are given references like this:

difficult terrain, page 52: Movement through difficult terrain is made at half speed.

stuck, page 58: Cannot move away from the object or location.

entangled, page 56: Move at half speed, cannot run or charge, -2 on attacks, -4 to Dex, casting spells requires Concentration check (DC 15 + spell’s level).

Strength check, page 65: 1d20 + Strength modifier vs. DC

Escape Artist check, page 43: 1d20 + Escape Artist modifier vs. DC

The SRS puts all the information you need right at you fingertips. And, if you need more details, it gives you a page reference so that you can quickly find the full citation. Some of this information you may already be familiar with as a player, but it’s great for beginning players. (And I can’t be the only guy who, even after years of playing a game, will still need to double-check a reference.)

But the SRS also makes the text itself easier to parse. Partly because it removes all extraneous detail to the sidebar, but also because the references almost unintentionally provide a mechanism for quick comprehension. Look at the words highlighted in the entangle spell again: Difficult terrain. Stuck and entangled. Strength check or Escape Artist check. That tells you 90% of what you need to know about the spell at first glance, right?

More than that, the SRS both rewards system mastery and simulates system mastery.

For one who has mastered the system, for example, the term “difficult terrain” is a very quick, clear, and compact way of saying “characters can only move at half speed through the area”. Because the SRS  lets us just put the keyword in the text (with the full reference pushed to the sidebar), system mastery is rewarded by streamlining the main text. A system master can see the keyword “difficult terrain” and immediately understand the effect of the spell without wading their way through additional verbiage.

But the system also simulates system mastery. The system master sees the keyword “difficult terrain” and immediately knows what it means. With the SRS, however, the beginner can simulate that mastery by simply flicking their eye two inches to the left.

In many ways, the SRS is also teaching system mastery. Over time, the player will probably find themselves relying on it less and less. But when you need it, it will prove itself an invaluable time saver every single time.

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