Over the past few days quite a few people have sent me e-mails asking about Legends & Labyrinths, and it looks like my post from earlier today about working on a different project has prompted a fresh series of questions. I talked about this a little bit in the comments a few days ago, but I’ve decided to front page it for people to know what’s going on.

Here’s the situation:

The bulk of the rulebook is finished and is essentially functional. What isn’t done? Primarily the spell and monster lists. The monster creation system also needs to be tweaked some more. Also, final layout and (with layout) the SRS.

In other words, the game is in a completely playable state. (Since it’s 100% compatible with 3rd Edition, you can just use the spells and monsters from the SRD or existing core rulebooks.)

So why hasn’t the book been finished and published? Largely because the interior art portion of the project fell apart and I don’t have the budget to redo it properly. And I’m enough of a perfectionist that if I’m going to do it, then I’m going to do it right. Particularly if I’m expecting people to pay money for it.

Does this mean the project is dead? I hope not. I’ve got a couple of ideas about how to raise the funds for the interior art, and I’m hoping that I’ll be able to tell y’all something soon.

But the one resolution I’ve taken away from the clusterfuck that happened around L&L is that I’m not going to talk about a product until it is 100% done and ready to go. I do this work for love on a shoestring budget. And hearts and shoestrings both have a reputation for breaking.

So, once I have something concrete, you’ll be the first to know. And if I ever believe that L&L is never going to happen (which would depress me terribly), I’ll also let you know.

But beyond that, I hope you’ll all bear with me while I do my best to avoid doing a Harlan Ellison impression.

The Alexandrian is meant to be a place for sharing and promoting my creative work, reviews, and political thoughts, so I don’t generally do auto-biographical blogging. It’s not that I’m a necessarily private person — it’s just that this isn’t particularly the place for it.

But today I’m making an exception because, as life is often wont to do, I’m facing some hardships that are affecting my creative work.

To whit: I have Lyme disease.

I went symptomatic a couple of weeks ago and promptly went down to the local clinic. I’ve been getting dosed with amoxicillin (among other things) and I thought I would be able to kind of push my way through it.

But no such luck. My brain has been just slightly discombobulated enough to make writing difficult or impossible. Because I’ll have bad days and not-so-bad days, I’ve even had problems getting the Playtesting 4th Edition essays I had written before I went symptomatic posted on a consistent basis. (Although that’s at least partly because I’m still getting used to the new suite of software I’m using to update the website due to the computer crash I suffered near the beginning of the month.)

In short, July has been a pretty sucky month for me.

If I was a suspicious fellow, I’d say that Fate was punishing me for announcing a release date for Legends & Labyrinths. After having several products run into horrible development problems shortly after having release dates announced for them, when I started Dream Machine Productions I decided to never announce a project’s existence until it was completely finished and ready to be published.

I’ve broken that rule twice — once in a minor way and once in a major way (with L&L). Both times the project has ended up being delayed past the original release date (once because of factors completely external from myself and, now, because I haven’t finished the work).

Legends & Labyrinths will be released when it’s done (and done right). But I’m not going to make any promises about when that will be. Heck, until I’m actually feeling better I can’t even estimate when that will be.

Updates on the website are also likely to slow down once I get past the material I’ve already prepped. (Although I’m hoping fervently that I will actually be feeling better before that happens.)

Here’s the bad news:

The release of Legends & Labyrinths will be delayed until July 31st. As I mentioned at the end of June, I suffered a rather serious computer crash at the end of last month. Fortunately, all of our data was recovered. Unfortunately, after five days of trying to resurrect the machine, it remained stubbornly dead.

At this point, as July dawned, I was now facing a deadline for Legends & Labyrinths that had moved from “comfortable” to “barely possible”. So I stopped trying to get my main computer rebuilt and focused all my attention on getting another machine set up so that I could access the document files and continue working on the graphics and layout for the book.

… which is when I discovered that the versions of Adobe Acrobat and Quark that I own don’t work on Windows Vista.

Which was, of course, the operating system installed on the new machine I was trying to convert into a platform for production work.

All of which brings me to my current situation: I could probably, if I worked tirelessly between now and next Tuesday, crank out a presentable version of Legends & Labyrinths and have it released on July 15th. (Assuming that I can ever get Acrobat working.) But the question I’m left with is whether it’s better to do it quickly or to do it right.

In the final analysis, I’d rather do it right. Like all of the projects here at Dream Machine Productions, one of my primary motivations for developing and publishing Legends & Labyrinths is that it’s a book that I want to own and to use. (Plus, I figure that, if I want a product like this, there are probably other people out there who want it, too.)  And for me, personally, I’d rather wait the extra two weeks and do it right rather than trying to rush the process and end up with a book which isn’t as good as it could be.

GALLEY PROOF PREVIEW: SKILLS & ACTION CHECKS

Okay, so that’s the bad news.

Here’s the good news: We’re releasing the first of our Galley Proof Previews.

A Galley Proof Preview is literally an excerpt from our first galley proof of the manuscript. This means that what you’ll see in a Galley Proof Preview is something like a rough draft: Before seeing publication, our internal production process will take the text through three more complete proof-reading cycles. The Galley Proof Preview also notably lacks the SRS, which won’t be added until later in the process. So what does a Galley Proof Preview contain? A sneak peek at the actual content of the book.

Our first Galley Proof Preview is Legends & Labyrinths: Skills & Action Checks. This preview contains the entirety of Chapter 6: Skills and Chapter 13: Action Checks. This preview gives you a look right into the heart of the streamlining process that renders 3rd Edition down into the lean, mean, fighting machine that is Legends & Labyrinths.

If you’re already familiar with 3rd Edition, you may be struck by all the things that are “missing” from these streamlined rules. But that’s missing the forest for the trees: If the 3rd Edition tries to give you a complete building, Legends & Labyrinths gives you a foundation. If 3rd Edition tries to give you as much support as possible, Legends & Labyrinths lets you run free.

It’s a different way of rolling the dice. Whether it’s what you’re looking for or not is up to you.

3RD EDITION LIVES!^TM

A few days ago, I promised a large announcement regarding the future plans of Dream Machine Productions. I was waiting to receive a signed contract from a cover artist so that I could legally show the cover we had designed for that product. Now, with that contract in hand, I’m proud to announce Legends & Labyrinths.

3RD EDITION LIVES!^TM

COMING JULY 15th FROM DREAM MACHINE PRODUCTIONS!

FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS

Q1: WHAT IS LEGENDS & LABYRINTHS?

Legends & Labyrinths takes the most popular fantasy roleplaying game and strips it down to its most basic components. It removes everything non-essential, leaving behind a simple, fast-and-loose, easy-to-use system.

Legends & Labyrinths is based on a simple belief: Not only is 3rd Edition the most popular gaming system on the planet, it’s also one of the best. Its designers created a small, elegant set of core mechanics, resulting in an extremely flexible system. They then used those core mechanics to implement a wide array of carefully research and thoroughly playtested guidelines and supplementary rules. The result was possibly the most robust and detailed system ever created.

Legends & Labyrinths, on the other hand, was created with a simple methodology: If it’s not a core mechanic, it’s not in the game.

The result is a slick, tight, elegant system that doesn’t get bogged down in the details. Legends & Labyrinths jettisons the rules and guidelines which make 3rd Edition so robust, but it leaves behind the simple and flexible game which lies at the system’s core.

For experienced gamers, Legends & Labyrinths is a fast-and-easy game that jettisons the baggage of 3rd Edition. For new gamers, Legends & Labyrinths serves as the perfect introduction to roleplaying games — simple enough to learn in an afternoon, but also a complete game that can be played for years without ever needing another supplement or rulebook.

Q2: WHAT ABOUT 4th EDITION?

Legends & Labyrinths was actually one of the first products put into development by Dream Machine Production at the beginning of 2007. The original plan was to release it in the fall of that year. However, when Fourth Edition was announced in the summer of 2007, development of the game was put on hold (along with almost all development at Dream Machine Productions). We thought it prudent to wait and see how 4th Edition developed before making a decision about our future.

We have now come to believe that 4th Edition is a significantly different game from the series of games that culminated their development in 3rd Edition. The fundamental play and design of the game has been altered to a point where it no longer feels like the same game. As a result, we have a strong desire to continue playing 3rd Edition — and we feel that this desire is echoed widely in the gaming community.

As a result, the decision was made to put Legends & Labyrinths back into production as a game 100% compatible with 3rd Edition.

Later, in a separate decision driven primarily by the terms of the GSL, Dream Machine Productions determined that they would not be doing any development work for 4th Edition.

Q3: WHAT DOES “100% COMPATIBLE WITH 3RD EDITION” MEAN?

It means that any stat block or mechanic usable in 3rd Edition can be used in Legends & Labyrinths without conversion. It also means that any character created with Legends & Labyrinths can be used in a 3rd Edition game without conversion.

Got a 3rd Edition adventure? It can be used with Legends & Labyrinths. Got a book full of new monsters? It can be used with Legends & Labyrinths. Got a supplement of new spells? They can be cast in Legends & Labyrinths.

It also means that you can incorporate any core mechanic from 3rd Edition into your Legends & Labyrinths games without any difficulty. For example, Legends & Labyrinths features a stripped-down combat system. But what if you really like the detailed combat rules of 3rd Edition? Well, all you have to do is use them. Legends & Labyrinths is 100% compatible with 3rd Edition.

On the other hand, what if you really like all the different character creation tools 3rd Edition gives you (allowing you to tweak your character just the way you like), but you feel that the complexity of the rest of the system chokes the life out of your roleplaying? Well, all you have to do is use the full character creation rules to create your PCs and then play them using Legends & Labyrinths. The game is 100% compatible with 3rd Edition.

In other words, you can think of Legends & Labyrinths as being the streamlined foundation of the game: It’s a complete game all by itself, but you can also add whatever additional functionality you want whenever you want to.

This is one of the reasons Legends & Labyrinths can be an ideal way of introducing new players to your existing 3rd Edition game: It gives them a simplified set of rules to learn and use, and then you can gradually add complexity to that foundation until they’ve learned all the bells and whistles of your full 3rd Edition campaign.

Q4: WHAT IF I LIKE MY CORE RULEBOOKS THE WAY THEY ARE? WHY SHOULD I BUY LEGENDS & LABYRINTHS?

Actually, if you like having all the bells and whistles of the existing core rulebooks, there’s no reason for you to buy Legends & Labyrinths. A streamlined, fast-and-loose, easy-to-use system is not what everyone is looking for in a roleplaying game. The robust and detailed nature of the existing core rulebooks may be exactly what you’re looking for.

If that level of robust detail is what you’re looking for, however, you might be interested in Dream Machine Production’s line of Rule Supplements, each of which expands the depth and detail of your game.

Q5: WHAT ABOUT PAIZO’S PATHFINDER?

Paizo’s Pathfinder RPG is being designed to replace the void left by the original 3rd Edition rulebooks going out of print.

Dream Machine Productions feels strongly that this is a void that needs to be filled, and we champion Paizo’s efforts. In the fall of 2007, when it became apparent that 4th Edition was going to be radically divergent from the design traditions of 3rd Edition, we began exploring the idea of re-tasking Legends & Labyrinths as a replacement core rulebook to fill that void.

In March 2008, however, when Paizo announced their plans for Pathfinder, we scrapped those plans. We feel strongly that 3rd Edition gaming should continue to be supported, and we feel equally strongly that this can’t be accomplished if our collective efforts are diluted through unnecessary competition.

However, Legends & Labyrinths was not originally designed to compete with the 3rd Edition core rulebooks, nor do we feel that it competes with Paizo’s Pathfinder. Rather, Legends & Labyrinths complements those products and serves a unique niche in the market. Think of it as the red box Basic Set for 3rd Edition.

Q6: WHAT TYPE OF SUPPORT WILL THERE BE FOR LEGENDS & LABYRINTHS?

Because Legends & Labyrinths is 100% compatible with 3rd Edition, when the game is published it will already be the best-supported roleplaying game in print. Dream Machine Productions will also be continuing its development of Adventure Supplements and City Supplements, compatible with Legends & Labyrinths and all 3rd Edition games.

We tend to think of mechanical support for a roleplaying game in terms of depth and breadth. Depth support increases the complexity and detail of the game. Breadth support, on the other hand, increases the number of options (without increasing the complexity of any given option).

If you want to add depth to your Legends & Labyrinth game, you will immediately be able to tap into the 3rd Edition core rulebooks and hundreds of supplements to provide that depth.

Legends & Labyrinths: Expert Expansion, on the other hand, will expand the game’s breadth. It will feature additional classes and races, alternative magic systems (and psionics), chases, social duels, vehicles, and warfare. All of these options, however, will be designed with the same streamlined design ethos as Legends & Labyrinths itself.

Q7: WHAT IS THE SRS?

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, page 8 of Rule Supplement 1: Mounted Combat deals with the rules for mounted movement. The rules on that page reference the rules for jumping; prone characters; mounted reach modifiers; kneeling and sitting; penalties for squeezing; and tumbling. Some of these rules are located in the PHB, while others are found elsewhere in the same book.

In most rulebooks, you would have to start flipping pages to find all the relevant information. But with SRS, the relevant rules are printed right in the sidebar on the same page. And even when a rule is too lengthy to include, a specific page reference is given — not only making it easier to reference the rule you need (since you’re being told exactly where to look for it), but also keeping those page references and other unwieldy repetition out of the actual body of the text (which makes the explanation of the immediate rule being discussed smoother and easier to use).

You can see a sample, here.

It’s a fairly basic concept, but in practice it makes for the easiest rulebooks you’ll ever use.