QuoteRunning: Shadows Over Bogenhafen, WFRP

Off topic. Ha, that was the very first campaign I played in. Good times.

I had a 14 page character sheet. Admittedly most of that was spells.

You play a 7th Son, Elf thing who is a full practitioner Priest/Mage.


I still remember that character--rolled up randomly and thinking, man I'm a priest I hope this is fun like D&D priests..

When I made the character, I didn't realize how  few of his spells were pretty dramatically powerful. I'd been looking at the "non-combat" spells and making things cool around those.

I think random roll in DJ can be a bit unbalanced, I know the other players were a warrior and an alchemist--and it was sort of low magic ish with them, and then "Elf is blasty!" came through. Fortunately the GM reigned me in by making sure Heka for a priest could only be regenerated at temple to my deity and that was far enough a way to not happen easily. (She was similar enough that a local deity counted as her local incarnation, so I could be recharged there but only very slowly.)

Still I had fun. I don't think I'd want to play now--I no longer have the books and that's just a lot of detail I don't need to get the same "Wow!" effect of play.


Still I had a lot of fun.


\

I had the book for a while and thought it was nice. Complex, but nice. The Dangerous Journeys game line would have been a multi-genres legacy, had the game been popular enough. Next one was horror, if I recall correctly...

Source information was pretty good, but like everything else Gygax wrote, it was needlessly complicated, inconsistent, and just a plain mess.

Quote from: Soylent Green;414282I played in a short DJ campaign when it frist came out. All I remember is that my character sheet spanned several pages and was totally incomprehensible. I think one guy had a full page just for his armour.

Several pages means "3 in the actual game." Plus various notes you'd make on your character. The full page you remember for your buddy's armor kind of baffles me. There's basically a table on the character sheet that cross-references types of attacks and hit locations. It doesn't take half a page, and the type-face is big.

Quote from: DKChannelBoredom;414287ok. You've explained why it's not shit and/or as complicated as a lot of people say. But why is it good? What puts it apart from other fantasy rpgs from that period? Explain the awesome!

It's good for several reasons:

• It's extremely detailed, with a base version of the game that is broken down to its simplest bits, which means you can take and leave what you want to create your own game play.
• The feel of Aerth is amazing. It's a pulp fantasy version of Ancient, Medieval up to Renaissance Earth, all eras and legends blended together to create a setting of its own, basically. Quite reminiscent of the original inspirations for D&D, like Three Hearts and Three Lions, for instance.
  
• The inspiration that went into Magic is simply mind-boggling. Let's imagine you hate the system for a reason or another, you'd still get well above and beyond your money's worth just in spell inspirations for your D&D game.
• It is a Gygaxian game. It basically incorporates some of the ideas Gary had about a 2nd edition of AD&D that never came to be, because of the shenanigans we all know about in TSR c. 1985. T. Foster talked about this at length: base DJ characters are basically similar to 6th-ish level AD&D characters. The actual game play can be quite reminiscent of AD&D, with a shitload of ideas taking the game in a different direction.

My advice is to start with Mythus Prime (first chapter of the main book), which is dead simple (and reminiscent of the later Lejendary Adventures, btw). You get of feel of the game and add stuff from the main Mythus game (the rest of the book) as you play your campaign. You basically select the elements you and your players like, and create your Mythus from there. Taken in this way, the game isn't nearly as complicated as it seems when you read through it. By the time you get to create new characters, if you really like the game on some level, you'll be more familiar with the game's mechanics, the jargon, etc.

I have a fondness for the game, but I don't think it's awesome. I think there are worse games out there, but I think playing it is an expression of love.

Seanchai

Given the frequency of people saying the system was shite but the (Egyptian) setting was awesome, may I point out that Necromancer Games re-released Necropolis under the d20 system (still available as PDF). I love that hard back. Tons of setting information. Should be valuable even to guys who wouldn't touch d20 with a 10 foot pole, and in any case a much easier base to convert stuff from to the system of your choice.

I think you're out of your mind, Benoist. I used to own the Mythus books, I actually made characters and try to run the thing.  Its EXTREMELY complex and messy. Have you actually tried making a character? I don't remember much of the experience, thank god, but I wouldn't want to do it again.

The Epic of Aerth, setting, on the other hand, was magnificent I agree.  It so deserved a far better system than that.

RPGPundit

Quote from: RPGPundit;414724I think you're out of your mind, Benoist. I used to own the Mythus books, I actually made characters and try to run the thing.  Its EXTREMELY complex and messy. Have you actually tried making a character? I don't remember much of the experience, thank god, but I wouldn't want to do it again.

Well yeah, if you try to go for the full system right away, then chances are, you're going to choke on the new jargon, the detail, and so on. If you start on Mythus Prime and develop your game progressively from there, the learning curve won't be so steep (ah-ha! ).

Quote from: RPGPundit;414724The Epic of Aerth, setting, on the other hand, was magnificent I agree.  It so deserved a far better system than that.

RPGPundit

It is awesome.

I'm with Benoist here. We started with Mythus Prime and then progressed our way into main game. We had a ton of fun playing the game mind you I never got my hands on the Epic of Aerth but we had crazy amounts of fun with the system.

I had a hedge mage that managed to go far, it was awesome. Your blasty elf sounds fun though Silverlion.

I'd rather schedule a comprehensive colon exam than create a character for Dangerous Journeys. It was that bad.

Quote from: PaladinCA;415697I'd rather schedule a comprehensive colon exam than create a character for Dangerous Journeys. It was that bad.

I couldn't even get past one of the steps. Nor could a friend of mine. We both independently got stuck making characters.

Quote from: brettmb;415709I couldn't even get past one of the steps. Nor could a friend of mine. We both independently got stuck making characters.

Strange. I didn't find it that hard. Alpha-Omega? Sure. Mythus? Not so much. (These days admittedly I'd pass, but I like simpler games.)

If i can't fit a character on an index card with room to spare- I'm not so interested in playing, really.