This is a review of Lion & Dragon: Medieval Authentic OSR Roleplaying. Written by the RPG Pundit published by DOM publishing. It's a soft cover black and white book of 130 pages or so.
This follow my review of Dark Albion, his campaign setting. Pundit tells us these rules are an outgrowth of his house rules for that campaign. Some of the material in this book was already covered (briefly) in Dark Albion. I read these books back to back and wrote the review just far enough apart for them to start to blur together. I will do my best to review Lion & Dragon as a seprate unit, please understand if I end up covering some material acutally in the other book.
As I have said before I enjoy Pundits writing style. I find him clear, consicise and easy to read. The book is also very well laid out with two columns per page - newspaper style. Again it is full of really cool black and white drawings, many of them from the public domain, but also some licensed. The book has an excellent table of contents but no index.
Pundit is setting out to do a specific thing with this system - he is trying to write a system (or adapt one since this is OSR) to play in what he calls a medieval authentic fantasy setting. Specifically, the Rose War from Dark Albion. I think he largely succeeds, or at least I am very clear on what kind of a game I am signing up for and how it differs from the standard fantasy game. (Whatever that means.) He starts by laying out and expaining his assumptions. I will just list them here, I think they are important for understanding the game and the review.
1. Social status is extremely important.
2. Monotheism
3. Life is cheap
4. Magic is rare.
5. Civilization is survival.
I will comment on the first one. As I said in my other review, enforcing the importance of social status is just asking for trouble at the table. I think to properly emphasize just how important social status is you need to have planning and preperation in charcter making, in choosing which player gets which status, as well as wide spread buy in from the players. We have a radically more egalitarian society than they did. High class characters who try to enforce the social hierarchy are the villains of movies, doing it in real life is called bullying. It's no fun to be on the recieving end of. Even pretend bullying will get old really quick. Even if all the players are of exactly the same social status so no one player is ever obligated to put another 'in their place' they are still going to run afoul of the wider social order of the NPCs. Of course they will, they're Player Charcters. In that case the NPCs are going to have to punish the PCs for flaunting the social order. I am strongly of the opinion that DMs don't get to punish players. Now there is a differnce between NPCs and the DM, but in practice it is a subtle one and a line that is easy to miss.
I said more than I meant to about that, but I think there is a potential pitfall here that needs thought and an explict understanding before hand. This is a time to be sure to have the conversation.
The chapter on making charcters starts with social status before selecting class, emphasing just how important it is. His default is to roll for it, I have explained why I don't think that is a good idea.
There are 6 classes, Fighters, Clerics, Magisters (mages) and thieves, as well as Cymri, kind of like a half elven fighter/mage/thief multi class, or maybe a bard, and Scotsmen the barbaians of the setting. One thing I really like is you randomly roll for your bonus when you level up. You can chose one, or you can randomly roll for 2. Each character class has a different table of improvments to roll on, for instance the thief can gain "+1 to any 2 thief skills" or "Increase your back stab multiplier (x2 becomes x3, x3 becomes times 4 etc.)" The fighter can gain an extra attack or "+1 to manuvers on horse back." Every class has +1 to hit on the table and gain hp (fighters d10 and Magisters d4,) as well every class gains a set number of hp per level in addition to rolling on the table fighters 2 per level and magisters only 1. I quite like this system. It will make every character different (once you gain a few levels and get a few rolls) with out crushing new players with choice or letting munchkins break the system by min/maxing.
Magic is very different in this game. There are no fire and forget spells. Instead they learn Miracles for clerics and Lores for Magi. If you have learned a Lore or Miracle, as determined by your level up rolls, you can try to use the magic. You simply roll against a target difficulty and add you modifiers, if you pass you cast the spell if you fail you don't and can't try again for the rest of the day. For instance, Clerics can learn Holy light, DC 13, if you pass you create sunlight from your holy symbol for 10 min and does damage to undead and deamons. If you are still in the dark after 10 minutes try again. No reason not to keep doing it. Migistars can learn the Lore battle magic, each time they learn that lore they roll for a new specific skill. In addition to making blasting wands and casting earth quake they can learn to bake magic bread. Anyone who eats it is protected, opponets have a -1 to hit them and they (the opponent) have their saving throw penalized. Effects are stronger against Fey, demons, undead and other magical creatures. The Maigstar can bake as much bread as he want's but needs to roll a skill check for each person that eats it.
I like this system, it makes more sense to me. It feels less video gamey to me. But it is a radical departure from the fire and forget spells I am used to. This is going to play very different form a standard D&D wizard. Diffenrent in ways I can't predict.
Demons and summoning is very important to Pundit in these two books. It's wierd and specific and idiosycratic. I don't much care for it, but it is well thought out detailed and consistent. I think it comes more from his personal knowledge of magic and the occult, rather than his role playing experience. I don't think it will work well in a game and certainly not for player charcters. But I haven't tried it, and I'm betting he has. Your milage may varey.
There is a chapter on money and gear, I always apreaciate those, I never have any idea how much things cost.
There is also a chapter for the DM. How to use moral, and how long it takes to travel. As well as advice on running combat. Rules for grappling, charging, aimed shots and defensive combat etc. I like them. They are clear simple, make sense and have intuitive results. I will think about how to stuff them into my 5th ed game.
The book ends with a chapter on treasure and a long list of magic items. Then a short beastiary.
Over all this is an enjoyble book to read (if you like reading roleplaying books). It's clear and well laid out. I have a good sense of the rules and would be able to quickly look something up if I needed to at the table. I would like to play in this setting. I would also like to run a game using this system and I think I could use this sytem to run one of the campaigns I have perculating in the back of my mind. If I was to run something it wouldn't be in the Rose War, or any Medieval Authentic setting. I would want to toss the first assumption, and I think I could easily do that. I might want to toss the second assumption as well, that would be harder to do, clerics as written don't make sense without Monothesim.
I would recomend. Recommend most highly for anyone playing Dark Albion, or any light fantasy version of real history. I would also recommed for anyone who wanted to try a new way of thinking about magic or didn't like the charts and charts of options and choices that are now involved in building a character. The random tables won't paralize a new player or let a munchkin break the game.