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[Legends of Anglerre] Preview online!

Started by The Butcher, May 01, 2010, 09:41:21 AM

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The Butcher

Here.

The awesome cover by Jon Hodgson, originally designed for the Companion, substitutes the previous, less inspired cover.

Also mentions (but sadly does not show) lifepath character generation. Excellent news! Can't wait to hack it for SbA. :D

There are also quite a few suggestions for "builds" (i.e. clusters of Aspects, Skills and Stunts appropriate for typical fantasy characters like "The Barbarian" or "The Monk" or my favorite, "The Phalanx Fighter").

The original comics art is really good, too -- I like it better than the SF art from the original SbA.

All in all, looks very promising.

GameDaddy

+1

Yup, Looks Interesting. Is there a campaign map in the book?
Blackmoor grew from a single Castle to include, first, several adjacent Castles (with the forces of Evil lying just off the edge of the world to an entire Northern Province of the Castle and Crusade Society's Great Kingdom.

~ Dave Arneson

Ghost Whistler

I never read the Anglerre comics, but that preview doesn't do much for me: i know what gaming is and I still know nothing about the setting other than it has elves drawrves and humans.
"Ghost Whistler" is rated PG-13 (Parents strongly cautioned). Parental death, alien battles and annihilated worlds.

The Butcher

Quote from: Ghost Whistler;377979I never read the Anglerre comics, but that preview doesn't do much for me: i know what gaming is and I still know nothing about the setting other than it has elves drawrves and humans.

Yeah, the preview focuses mostly on the fiddly bits, and has very little setting information. But this is not entirely unlike SbA, which has very disperse "fluff" and no cohesive setting to speak of, but oodles of FATE 3.0 SF mechanics, and means to be more of a toolkit for whatevcer SF game you want to run. I sort of expect LoA to be the same.

Regarding settings, though, Sarah Newton (one of the authors, who posts as Shaira here and on the Big Purple) has mentioned that the core book comes with two settings: Anglerre (the world of Grant Morrison's "Demon Sword" stories published in the old Starblazer Adventures comics, which is sword and sorcery influenced by Michael Moorcock's Elric, with some thinly-veiled Arthurian mythos thrown in for good measure) and Lords of the Hither Kingdoms (Tolkienesque high fantasy).

I'm looking forward to reading more about both. Anglerre feels like Stormbringer meets Pendragon with FATE 3.0*, while Hither Kingdoms' "Tolkienesque" has been hinted to involve more than "dwarves, elves and hobbits vs. Dark Lord" but also tries to hit on Middle Earth's sentimental and literary notes, i.e. the chronicles of a fading world.

I am eager to know more about both settings.

Ghost Whistler

Wish they'd put more setting info in the preview.
"Ghost Whistler" is rated PG-13 (Parents strongly cautioned). Parental death, alien battles and annihilated worlds.

Shaira

Quote from: Ghost Whistler;378083Wish they'd put more setting info in the preview.

Hi Ghost Whistler,

I'll see what we can do in the next few previews.  We've had requests for some info on the powers system, and on critters; we should be able to put some excerpts from the two sample settings too.

Bear in mind Legends of Anglerre isn't a setting-specific roleplaying game: it's a fantasy game in the same way as D&D, RuneQuest, et al, ie designed to be used with whatever fantasy setting you like.  We've included a Swords & Sorcery setting (Anglerre) and a Tolkienesque / D&Dish High Fantasy one (The Hither Kingdoms) in the book as examples, and we'll be publishing future adventures & articles, etc, set in those two (and maybe others), but the game is designed to make you feel immediately at home for playing in your favourite fantasy setting.  In that respect it's also the fantasy version of Starblazer Adventures - same basic concept. :)

Cheers,

Sarah

Ghost Whistler

Thanks. I thought it was a setting based game.
"Ghost Whistler" is rated PG-13 (Parents strongly cautioned). Parental death, alien battles and annihilated worlds.

GameDaddy

Quote from: Shaira;378091It's a fantasy game in the same way as D&D, RuneQuest, et al, ie designed to be used with whatever fantasy setting you like.

That's even better. I'm still a sucker for a game with a great map though...
Blackmoor grew from a single Castle to include, first, several adjacent Castles (with the forces of Evil lying just off the edge of the world to an entire Northern Province of the Castle and Crusade Society's Great Kingdom.

~ Dave Arneson

Peregrin

Love the cover.

So...tempting...

But I already own so many fantasy games...

But it's fantasy with FATE...
"In a way, the Lands of Dream are far more brutal than the worlds of most mainstream games. All of the games set there have a bittersweetness that I find much harder to take than the ridiculous adolescent posturing of so-called \'grittily realistic\' games. So maybe one reason I like them as a setting is because they are far more like the real world: colourful, crazy, full of strange creatures and people, eternal and yet changing, deeply beautiful and sometimes profoundly bitter."

Insufficient Metal


RPGPundit

It looks very nice but at the same time I'm not entirely convinced that the same setup for sci-fi with starblazers will translate well into fantasy with this... I guess we'll have to see.

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Insufficient Metal

Quote from: RPGPundit;378402It looks very nice but at the same time I'm not entirely convinced that the same setup for sci-fi with starblazers will translate well into fantasy with this... I guess we'll have to see.

I find it a bit curious that you seemed to really dislike Spirit of the Century, but liked Starblazers, and are dubious about Anglerre. I wasn't a big fan of SotC's fluff, but it didn't really seem that much more substantial than Starblazer's (although Starblazer had much better art thanks to the comic).

It seems Anglerre will probably see some spellcasting hacks like those found on the Evil Hat wiki... I've tried them out and they seem fun.

RPGPundit

Quote from: Insufficient Metal;378430I find it a bit curious that you seemed to really dislike Spirit of the Century, but liked Starblazers, and are dubious about Anglerre. I wasn't a big fan of SotC's fluff, but it didn't really seem that much more substantial than Starblazer's (although Starblazer had much better art thanks to the comic).

It seems Anglerre will probably see some spellcasting hacks like those found on the Evil Hat wiki... I've tried them out and they seem fun.

Starblazer said "Space opera is about a, b, and c" and they were absolutely totally right, and motivated by fun.

Spirit of the Century said "Pulp is about x, y, and z" and they were wrong on all counts, due to being motivated by personal ideological reasons.

They each also tweaked the FATE system and the language used to present options of how to play it, in slightly different ways, and SoTC does so for the worse, again on account of ideology.

RPGPundit
LION & DRAGON: Medieval-Authentic OSR Roleplaying is available now! You only THINK you\'ve played \'medieval fantasy\' until you play L&D.


My Blog:  http://therpgpundit.blogspot.com/
The most famous uruguayan gaming blog on the planet!

NEW!
Check out my short OSR supplements series; The RPGPundit Presents!


Dark Albion: The Rose War! The OSR fantasy setting of the history that inspired Shakespeare and Martin alike.
Also available in Variant Cover form!
Also, now with the CULTS OF CHAOS cult-generation sourcebook

ARROWS OF INDRA
Arrows of Indra: The Old-School Epic Indian RPG!
NOW AVAILABLE: AoI in print form

LORDS OF OLYMPUS
The new Diceless RPG of multiversal power, adventure and intrigue, now available.

ChrisBirch

Quote from: Ghost Whistler;377979I never read the Anglerre comics, but that preview doesn't do much for me: i know what gaming is and I still know nothing about the setting other than it has elves drawrves and humans.

You actually don't need to know anything about the comics to 'get' the setting. Sarah created the Hither kingdom's setting to be your archetypal fantasy races setting and to show how you customise character types, and choice of powers to suit the setting, whilst the Anglerre setting that we've derived from the handful of Starblazer comics is an awesome high fantasy, low magic, high wow factor setting with truly ancient powerful swords and demons, bizarre dimensions and other cool stuff you might not expect. It's a pretty cool setting with very strong characters, epic timelines and mysteries and daunting challenges from ancient malevolent foes.

Again it's used to show how you would then tailor the available powers etc for a different setting.

I actually think Anglerre is going to do much better than Starblazer - firstly it's so much better written (thanks to Sarah editing it to within an inch of it's life! It's perfectly compatible, yet it's been ultra fine tuned to get rid of any extraneous content - hence we've got more than starblazer had in just over half the space!

Plus it's fantasy and proper rockin' fantasy, i mean i can have a group where one guy is this weedy 1st level type who just happens to know the true name of the faerie queen, then we've got this downtrodden mythic hero who is totally kick ass but suffering from some big issues stopping him from being his trueself, then you've got this dragon who is a character and has a series of riders who are her 'companion's' who can climb off and explore small places for her but often come to sticky ends....it's so much more flexible in allowing you to do every single kind of fantasy story you've ever wanted to. It's not about levels and modifiers it's about stories and characters.
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samurai007

Just wanted to chime in and say my name is on the cover too, and I'm excited it's finally out (in pdf at least)!  I helped out a bit with the powers system, magic item rules, and races.