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.

CLIMB INTO YOUR LABYRINTH AND FORGE YOUR LEGEND TODAY!

Legends & Labyrinths features 100% compatibility with the advanced version of the 3rd Edition rules. This means that any stat block or mechanic usable in 3rd Edition can be used in Legends & Labyrinths without conversion.

USING ADVANCED RULES IN LEGENDS & LABYRINTHS

Perhaps the most important question is the degree to which the vast supplement library of 3rd Edition can be used in your Legends & Labyrinths game.

Spells: Although the grimoire entries for advanced spells include extra information used by the more complicated rules, these spells can be used in Legends & Labyrinth without conversion. Simply ignore the extraneous information.

Monsters and NPCs: There are two ways to use monsters and NPCs. First, as with spells, you can use their stat blocks without conversion by simply ignoring the extraneous information they contain.

Alternatively, the Legends & Labyrinths rules allow for very quick conversion. For example, the stat block for a fighter in Legends & Labyrinths requires only level, hit point total, ability scores, and equipment. So if you see an 8th-level fighter in an advanced supplement, you can either use the full stat block provides or you can just pull the pertinent information (hit points, ability scores, equipment) and run the NPC as an 8th-level L&L fighter. (This also allows for quick conversion of classes not included in L&L: If you see a samurai, ranger, or witch, for example, and their stat blocks don’t include enough information to run them as-is, it’s a simple matter to convert them on-the-fly to an appropriate L&L class.)

Monsters can be handled in a similar fashion. If you don’t want to use the advanced stat block provided for a monster, you can either do a complete conversion (recreating the monster from scratch using the Monster Creation rules) or you can easily do a partial conversion (using the appropriate core stats for a monster of the given CR, but using the powers listed in the monster’s advanced stat block).

Running Adventures: As detailed above, all of the spells, monsters, and NPCs in adventure can be run without conversion. The same holds true for traps, skill DCs, and treasure. You can pick up any adventure designed for the advanced 3rd Edition rules and run it seamlessly in Legends & Labyrinths.

Supplementing the Rules: Because Legends & Labyrinths is 100% compatible with the advanced rules, you can incorporate any core mechanic from the advanced rules into your Legends & Labyrinths game on an ad hoc basis.

For example, Legends & Labyrinths features a stripped-down combat system. But what if you really like the detailed combat mechanics of the advanced rules? Well, all you have to do is use them. Similarly, if you really like all the character creation tools the advanced rules give you (allowing you to tweak your character just the way you like), you can create your PCs using the advanced rules and then simply play them using the Legends & Labyrinths rules.

Legends & Labyrinths functions as the streamlined foundation of the game: Advanced rules can be added to it in whatever combination you desire.

Creating New Classes: You can use the advanced character creation rules to create new classes for Legends & Labyrinths. Simply select an advanced character class and make appropriate selections for its feats and special abilities. Do not select a 1st level feat.

USING LEGENDS & LABYRINTHS WITH THE ADVANCED RULES

Since you can easily add any or all of the advanced rules into your Legends & Labyrinths campaign, it follows that you can also take rules from Legends & Labyrinths and plug them into a campaign run with the advanced rules.

Transferring Characters: PCs created in Legends & Labyrinths can be transferred to the advanced rules at any time. Simply select a single 1st level feat for the character. (All characters in Legends & Labyrinth are assumed to gain the benefits of the Leadership feats in place of their 1st level feat.)

Fast NPC Creation: Because the classes in Legends & Labyrinths are pre-built, creating an NPC is as simple as picking ability scores, race, class, level, and equipment. This makes it much easier to prepare NPCs or even create them on-the-fly during a session. And since the resulting stat blocks are 100% compatible with the advanced rules, they can be used seamlessly in a campaign using the advanced rules.

Hazards, Traps, and Monsters: Hazards, traps, and monsters created in Legends & Labyrinth can be used in an advanced campaign. As with NPC creation, these streamlined systems allow for rapid, on-the-fly improvisation during a game session.

Stunt System: The Legends & Labyrinths stunt system gives a unified mechanic for adjudicating ingenuity. It can be seamlessly integrated into a campaign using the advanced rules.

Other Original Elements: Legends & Labyrinths also includes rules for minions and potentates, a Fly skill, social ranks, training rules for advancing characters, and other innovations. Because the game is 100% compatible, all of these original elements can be easily used in the advanced game.

CLIMB INTO YOUR LABYRINTH AND FORGE YOUR LEGEND TODAY!

I’m continuing the story from yesterday regarding the long road which Legends & Labyrinths has journeyed from its earliest inception, through its many delays, and finally to its release a few days ago.

We left off in July 2007: The original release date of July 15th had been delayed due to a severe computer crash and the revised date of July 31st was delayed when I contracted Lyme disease. Although I publicly announced that it would be “done when it’s done”, privately I was anticipating a release date in early September.

In late August 2007, however, it all fell apart.

The cover art I had arranged for the original cover of Legends & Labyrinths had been painted by a Russian artist. I had discovered his work on DeviantArt, gone to his website, sent an e-mail, negotiated a contract, and then sent payment according to his instructions. It had been a done deal for months.

… or so I thought.

Because apparently the Russian artist’s website had been compromised by hackers. When I sent him an e-mail, that e-mail was intercepted by the hackers. It was with the hackers that I had negotiated a contract and it was to the hackers that I had sent payment.

The details of how this got resolved are… messy. The short version was this: I had no cover art and the budget I had established for art in general was gone.

It’s at this point that the development of Legends & Labyrinths essentially went into hibernation. In October 2008 I released Spells of Light and Darkness in a silent attempt to raise money for L&L’s art. But it didn’t sell well enough. (I was also attempting to save money from my personal finances, but during this time I was first buying a house and, after that, getting married.)

THE 2010 REVISION

In February 2009, I ran my first session of the 1974 ruleset. It was supposed to be a one-shot, but the game proved so successful that my players asked to play it again. And then again. And again. And again.

Over the course of that year, I rediscovered the open gaming table and my old school campaign expanded to include 20+ players and dozens of PCs. At some point in the near future I’m likely to discuss in more detail how these old school sessions influenced the design of Legends & Labyrinths, but for now let it suffice to say that they did: Over the course of 2010, I was slowly revising and reworking the L&L manuscript and material from L&L was being playtested at my old school tables.

By late 2010, several freelance editing projects were meeting with particular success and with major personal expenses now behind me I was able to start putting some serious money towards an art budget. By early 2011, I was ready to bring Legends & Labyrinths out of hibernation..

2011: THE FINAL LEG

Unfortunately, the long odyssey of Legends & Labyrinths was not yet complete. Just a few days before I was scheduled to start contacting artists, I was notified of a major legal impediment that someone was attempting to create which would threaten not only the release of the game, but all of the game supplements I’ve published and kept in print since 2007.

I am not yet at liberty to go into much detail regarding this matter (although it probably wouldn’t take much ingenuity to figure it out), but I was basically forced to take my newly re-established art budget and dump it into legal fees.

At this point I was near despair. Even with the legal issue resolved, I was right back at square zero as far as getting the book into print was concerned.

During 2010 I had considered the possibility of using Kickstarter to raise the art budget. But I hit the impediment that the book had already been vaporware for 2 years: Could I really expect people to put money towards a project that was already so late? Not really.

But now, in early 2011, I had the idea of creating the Black Book Beta rulebook: It would let me put something out there and say with authority, “No, really. This thing does exist. It’s real.”

So I spent the next 2-3 months revisiting the entire manuscript. In June 2011, I transitioned to layout. The layout took much longer than I anticipated: Partly because I was learning Adobe InDesign, partly because I had forgotten how time-consuming the SRS system is, and partly because those delays ended up carrying the whole thing into the middle of a major theatrical project.

But, at long last, it was done!

… and then Kickstarter rejected my project proposal.

So I swapped over to 8-Bit Funding, created the Legends & Labyrinths project (which is actually cooler than the Kickstarter project would have been), and then waited several days for it to be approved.

Which brings us to today.

FINAL THOUGHTS

There’s a large part of me that wished Legends & Labyrinths had been properly released way back in July 2008.

But, on the other hand, I honestly think it will have been worth the wait. I also think Legends & Labyrinths is a much better game because of the extra development it has received in the interim.

On the gripping hand, however, I’m glad to have this monkey off my back at long last. Not only because I’m excited to see what you’ll do with the game now that it’s in your hands, but also because it will free me up to pursue other RPG projects that have been long dormant while I’ve struggled with the project that would (seemingly) never end.

Many of the readers on this site have been waiting years for Legends & Labyrinths to arrive. Now that it has, at long last, done so, I wanted to talk a little bit about the long road it’s followed.

SIMPLY D20

The origins of the Legends & Labyrinths project actually go all the way back to 2003 when I began work on a project known as Simply D20. Simply D20 was a deconstruction of the 3rd Edition and Modern D20 rulesets into a basic, generic game system suitable for any genre. It stripped down the class list to a “generic core” of Expert, Fighter, Mystic, and Rogue. It would have included separate skill lists for Fantasy, Modern, Cyberpunk, and Space Opera settings. It would have included six “sample races” (Human, Dwarf, Elf, Saurian, Felines, and the Klingon-like Battaks). And so forth.

The project began running into development problems, however, because its design goals ended up conflicting with each other. I wanted:

1. A very small rulebook (50 pages).
2. A generic set of rules to handle any genre.
3. Compatibility with 3rd Edition

But these could not all be achieved at the same time. Primarily, the additional options required for a fully functional and generic ruleset made the small rulebook unattainable and maintaining compatibility with 3rd Edition an ongoing struggle.

The release of 3.5 killed the Simply D20 project along with a lot of other projects I was working on and, ultimately, drove me out of the RPG freelance biz for a few years.

SIMPLY D20 FANTASY

In the spring of 2006, the project (sort of) rose from the ashes as Simply D20 Fantasy. Naturally revamped to use 3.5 as a base, the game’s main selling point was now “100% compatible with 3rd Edition!”. Its core design principles were now fundamentally identical to Legends & Labyrinths as it exists today.

Now, however, I let the project get out of control in a different way: I wanted to include mass combat, siege warfare, naval battles, chases, social duels, tourney, castle building, and realm management rules… all in 100 pages!

My problem was that I had been seduced by a false vision of the “good ol’ days”. I wanted a rulebook like my old BECMI Basic Set and so I said: “That was only a few dozen pages! I should be able to fit the full rule system into 50 pages or so and then use the rest of the space to include stripped down versions of all these other rulesets (just like I’m stripping down combat)!”

But, of course, the BECMI Basic Set only included rules for levels 1-3 — which allows it to conserve a lot of space when it comes to things like magic items and spell lists.

I’d later face a similar design problem in trying to recapture the simple glory of “roll attributes, pick a race, pick a class” as a method of character creation. It took me a ridiculous amount of time to realize that the reason I couldn’t capture that simplicity of character design is because it had never actually existed. (Legends & Labyrinths now features a character creation process which is pretty comparable to OD&D and BECMI in terms of the time and complexity involved.)

Problems like these bogged the project down and I laid it aside for awhile.

FINDING A NAME

When I returned to it in late 2006, I decided to abandon the name “Simply D20”. Instead I started chewing my way through alliterative titles trying to find one that worked: The game almost became Wizards & Warriors, but a succession of people had used the name and it had most recently been registered by a CRPG company in 2000 and I couldn’t determine whether the mark was still in use. Other possibilities included: Warriors & Warlocks, Mazes & Minotaurs, Magic & Monsters, Wyrms & Warriors, Spells & Swords, Swords & Sepulchers, Myths & Magic, Nymphs & Nightmares, Fable & Fantasy, Runes & Reliquaries, Chronicles & Catacombs, Sword & Saga, Princes & Perils, and Swords & Scrolls.

Some of these got rejected because they were already in use. Others because they sucked. Others because they didn’t feel as if they represented the totality of the game. Eventually I settled on Legends & Labyrinths (which had only been used previously in the early ’80s for a shareware Japanese CRPG that was long since defunct).

At this point, however, the project was still stuck in the same development trap it had been stuck in before. And I decided to add another bit of developmental stupidity by trying to go all-inclusive with my simple, stripped-down game. The race list now included: Humans, artathi, centaurs, dwarves, elves, gnomes, goliaths, half-elves, half-orcs, halflings, orcs, reptakkens, and siarrans. I was also trying to include not only every class from 3rd Edition, but also cavaliers, duelists, psions, psychic warriors, scouts, and spellsongs.

There was a method to this madness, but it wasn’t negating the fact that the project was still fighting with itself. After struggling with the project in this state for several months, it was collapsing under its own weight. In early 2007, however, I changed direction and began stripping everything back down to the simple core it was always supposed to be.

LEGENDS & LABYRINTHS

But then 4th Edition was announced at GenCon in August 2007.

The announcement prompted me to put Legends & Labyrinths on hold. Remember that this same project had been killed by the 3.0 to 3.5 transition, and I felt it didn’t make much sense to get burned again in the same way. At this point my plan was to wait for 4th Edition to be released and then release Legends & Labyrinths as a 4th Edition game.

This, of course, was predicated on the assumption that: (1) 4th Edition, like 3rd Edition before it, would be a continuation of the same game that had existed since 1974. (2) That WotC would continue supporting the OGL.

By the end of May 2008, it was clear that neither of these things were true. At this point I decided to put L&L back into development. By late June it looked like everything was falling into place: I had a draft that was 85% complete. I had lined up some beautiful cover art. I had put together a significant art budget that would allow me to purchase reprint rights for existing, high quality fantasy art.

Based on previous projects, I knew that I had roughly 2-3 weeks worth of work ahead of me. I also felt that, with 4th Edition coming, I needed to strike while the iron was hot and let people know that the game was coming. So I rebranded my existing OGL products, announced a July 15th release date, and got down to work.

EVERYTHING FALLS APART

What follows may sound like a litany of excuses. They’re not meant as such. It’s meant to be simply a description of what happened. I hope it can be taken in that sense.

In early July 2008, my computer crashed. This turned into a nightmare: I had all my data backed up, but I couldn’t recover the machine. So I spent money like a drunken sailor to buy a new computer… only to discover that the versions of Quark and Acrobat I owned wouldn’t run on Windows Vista. So then I tried to install Windows 2000 on the new computer, but necessary device drivers didn’t exist for Windows 2000. So then I spent more money to get my old computer reconstituted. (If I recall correctly, it turned out that both the motherboard and the auxiliary hard drive controller had burned out.)

By this point, I had lost 10 days of work. After describing the situation, I rescheduled the release date for Legends & Labyrinths to July 31st and continued work.

… which is when I contracted Lyme disease. (I was apparently bit by an infected tick while working at an outdoor Shakespeare company.) The Lyme disease turned into its own little odyssey: The first doctor I saw prescribed 10 days of antibiotics. I took them… and then, a few days later, I started getting sick again. So I went back to the clinic. This time I saw a different doctor, who promptly opened a medical reference book, looked up Lyme disease, and read: “Prescribe 14-21 days of antibiotics.” The first doctor had under-prescribed and the antibiotics hadn’t actually wiped out the disease. Since I had been off the antibiotics for several days at this point, I needed to start the regime over from scratch. And since the remaining disease was probably more resistant to antibiotics (having survived the under-prescribed round of treatment), I’d need to take a full 21 says worth of pills. (I did do and fully recovered; but by the end of it my kidneys weren’t too happy with me.)

By this point the deadline had slipped again. This time I simply announced that it would be “done when it’s done”. I also decided to take advantage of the extra time to retrench, rewrite some problematic sections of the book, and tweak the layout.

In late August 2008, however, it all fell apart.

Continued tomorrow…

Answering a few questions about Legends & Labyrinths. If you’ve got more questions about the game or funding project, post ’em as a comment and I’ll answer them ASAP.

Q. WHY 8-BIT FUNDING?

At this time, I felt it was the best fit for the project.

Q. DO I NEED A PAYPAL ACCOUNT TO CONTRIBUTE?

No. Although 8-Bit Funding uses Paypal to fulfill payments, you can just use a credit card.

Q. WHEN DO I GET MY COPY OF THE BLACK BOOK BETA?

When the project reaches its funding deadline, 8-Bit Funding sends me a spreadsheet with the contact information for all donors. This will allow me to send and/or arrange all of your perks. However, after talking things over with 8-Bit Funding I’ve found something of a work-around. It’s a bit time-consuming for me, but it’ll give me a way to distribute the Black Book Beta rulebooks early.

On the 8-Bit Funding website, I can post updates to the project. This includes updates which are visible only to contributors. When the project hits $1500 (getting halfway to my goal), I will post an update with information on how current sponsors can claim their copy of the Black Book Beta. (I’m doing it this way so that I can fulfill them all at once, which will make things considerably easier on my end.)

Q. CAN I UPGRADE MY SPONSORSHIP LEVEL LATER?

8-Bit Funding’s infrastructure doesn’t support this. (There’s information on their website about why, but I don’t think it’s really important.) But, once again, there is a work-around.

If you want to upgrade your perk at a later date: When you make a contribution at 8-Bit Funding you have the option to contribute without requesting a perk. Select that option and pay the difference between your current perk and the perk you want. (For example, if you were a Beta Warrior at $12 and want to upgrade to a Labyrinth Exemplar at $50, you’d make a contribution of $38.) When I get the final report of contributors, I’ll see the un-perked contribution and be able to contact you to confirm your intentions.

You can follow a similar procedure if you want to purchase multiple iterations of the same perk. Select the perk you want but then simply multiply the contribution amount by the appropriate amount. (For example, if you want to purchase copies of the rulebook for your whole gaming group — nudge, nudge, hint, hint — you can select the $30 Labyrinth Prowler perk, but then enter $$120 as the contribution amount to get 4 copies of the rulebook.)

Q. HOW LONG WILL IT TAKE FOR THE FINAL VERSION OF THE RULEBOOK TO BE PRINTED?

This depends pretty much entirely on how long it takes for the artists to complete their work. Based on previous projects, I would estimate roughly 3 months. Possibly slightly longer; possibly quicker.

My intention is to anticipate the end of the funding drive and begin contacting artists as soon as I know that I can afford them, which should speed things up on the back end. This is also another reason for the Black Book Beta rulebook: It’ll give you a fully playable version of the rules ASAP to tide you over until the final edition is completed.

CLIMB INTO YOUR LABYRINTH AND FORGE YOUR LEGEND TODAY!

LEGENDS & LABYRINTHS