This is a review of "Barbarians of Lemuria: A Sword and Sorcery Roleplaying Game", written by Simon Washbourne, mythic edition 2.7, published by Beyond Belief Games.

This is as always a review of the print edition, an attractive-looking hardcover featuring a full-color image of a Conan-esque barbarian with a half-nude girl draped at his side, fighting some kind of tentacle creature. The interior is also full-color featuring many attractive illustrations. The book is 211 pages long.






The rulebook gets right to business. You get a brief description of what Sword & Sorcery is about, which frankly is nothing special. I mean, honestly, is anyone going to buy this book who isn't already familiar with what S&S is about?!

But after that you get right into the base mechanic and other material. The basic mechanic of the game is based on a simple 2d6 mechanic in the style of Traveler: a roll of 9+ is a success, 8- is failure. A natural 2 is always failure, a natural 12 is always success. You can also get bonus dice, which means you roll 3d6 (or 4d6) and keep the best two, or flaw dice, where you roll 3d6 and keep the worst two.
It's also explained later on that a roll of 12 which would have been a success anyways is called a "mighty success" (a critical). If you spend a hero point on top of that, it become a "legendary success" with even more effect. Likewise, if you roll a 2, and take it to be a "calamitous failure", you gain a hero point. I hate that last part, it's just bad storygamey design. All kinds of things, starting with overall difficulty level, can modify the roll.

Character creation is also simple, and not random (unfortunately, in my opinion, but at least the simplicity helps with that). Characters have four main attributes (strength, agility, mind and appeal); you get 4 points to divide among these (you can't have more than 3 in an attribute at first), you can also reduce one ability score to -1, though it's not recommended. -1 is "feeble", while 5 would be "mythic".
Next you have four combat abilities, which also get 4 points between them; these are initiative, melee, ranged, and defense. "Lifeblood" are basically hitpoints and these are a derived stat (10+/- your strength attribute). Characters also get "hero points" which can be used to 'dig deep' and get to reroll a check, increase the effects of a success, or to recover quickly from damage.

Hero points can be used, as per the game rules, to allow the player to define 'some bit of information' about the environment around them that essentially alters reality; the example given is of a character being trapped in a cell spending a hero point for there to be a loose stone in the wall. This is utter storygaming bullshit of course, which destroys immersion in the sense of a living world that doesn't cater to one's own whims.
Hero points are renewed at the start of each session.

Instead of skills, the game has 'careers'. Characters will start with a number of ranks in four different careers. Careers can be things like 'thief', 'mercenary', 'alchemist', etc.

There's also backgrounds based on origins (regional), which give a character boons (which provide bonus dice), and optionally a character could also take a flaw (or give up a hero point) to gain extra boons. Flaws cause 'penalty dice', which work as the opposite of boons (you roll 3 dice and remove the highest number).
A number of regions are described (places like the Beshar Desert, the Fire Coast, the Klaar Plains, etc). Each region has a list of possible boons, flaws, and names for characters. Professions also have their own lists of boons and flaws.

The section on gear does not include price lists. Instead, the book advises to simply let players have anything reasonable that they think their character should have based on their career. Likewise, there are no rules for encumbrance, because heroes shouldn't have to bother with that. The author tersely claims that if you want resource-management you should go play another game.

This strikes me on the one hand as somewhat emulative of the kind of S&S stories the book wants to copy (Conan is cited as a specific example, stating that he or Red Sonja or Thongor "never went shopping"). On the other hand, this creates a potential nightmare of mother-may-I shopping and potential player-manipulation, and can damage immersion if you wonder where your barbarian is carrying a dozen torches and ten thousand gold pieces wearing nothing but a loincloth.
Armor is divided into broad categories (light, medium, heavy) and each category provides a different die of protection that reduces damage. It seems that contrary to the earlier bluster about emulating S&S, no explanation is given for why Conan wouldn't be going around in heavy armor.
Weapons are divided into broad categories as well: unarmed does d3+half one's strength, light weapons do the lesser result of two d6s (plus strength), medium do 1d6, heavy weapons do the better of two d6s. Characters with strength less than 0 can't wield heavy weapons.


Combat in the game is fairly simple: you roll 2d6+(agility or strength)+(melee or ranged)+any modifiers-target's defense. There are several combat options described, like two-weapon-fighting, defensive stance, full defense, offensive stance, all-out attack, or bypassing armor.
All in all, combat is very straightfoward and easy to grasp (as are most of the rules thus far).

There's a basic sort of mechanic for resolving mass-combat, on land and sea. It involves a process of determining army qualities and events on the battlefield, while PCs get to choose between doing special "heroic actions" during a battle turn.
Stats for sample ship types are included. There's even a section on flying boats.
All in all, the mass-combat is adequate. It's decent especially because it doesn't fall into the trap so many other mass-combat systems (other than the one in Dark Albion, of course) fall into, of being too complicated. But it may seem a bit too abstract for some people.

At this point we get into a gazetteer of Lemuria. It includes a lengthy background history of the setting (which like many S&S settings is a type of fantasy post-apocalypse), a description of the 'twenty gods' of Lemuria, and the dark gods (including Dark Lord Hadron). Then we learn about the many races of the setting (each with suggested boons, flaws, and names): Blue Giants, Grooth (beast men), Kalukan (asexual one-eyed headless giants), Morgal (vampires), Slorth (woman-headed serpents), the Sorcerer Kings, and the Winged Men.

About ten pages is dedicated to different areas in Lemuria, along with some partial maps, but no complete map of the setting is found in this section; instead, you get a little map of the setting way in the back, nearly 100 pages later. This strikes me as an odd (and impractical) choice.

The section on "Beasts of Lemuria" covers about 34 pages in all, detailing a variety of weird and unusual creatures, with some great and evocative illustrations. As well as the general monsters, there's a specific section for "the Bloodless" (who are basically Undead), and for "Demons", with a few examples.
Then there's also a brief section called the "Lemurian Lexicon" which details a number of names of people and things, important characters and magical objects. These are only described by very brief, one or two sentence, summaries. No stats or anything like that, but good for ideas regardless.

The "Mysteries of Lemuria" chapter begins with a set of mechanics and explanations of Alchemy. Alchemists make alchemical objects, and to do so they use a mechanic called "craft points". You have a number of these points equal to your skill rank in Alchemy, which are granted each adventure and accumulate. You spend these to make alchemical objects (some of these also may require more than one adventure session to construct). A roll is also required, which if you fail means all the points you invested into the construction are lost. Some examples of potions and devices are presented, but it's implied that other alchemical objects besides those listed could be created.

Priests and Druids practice devotions, which grant them "fate points", these points can then be spent on themselves or others as bonus dice to represent the favor of the gods, in areas relevant to the domain of the god they have chosen as their patron.

Magicians have Arcane Power points, with which they can cast cantrips or spells of 1st, 2nd, or 3rd level of magnitude. Magic in this game is quite difficult, particularly the higher-magnitude spells; the book also makes it clear that magicians are more often NPC villains rather than PCs. That said, a dedicated magician could certainly be effective. The magic section details general levels of possible spells, but there are also a few fully-detailed spells.

The chapter ends with a description of a few weird secret-societies in the setting.

Then we get a section on how to run campaigns, which are pretentiously called "sagas". Most of the advice is relatively cliched, to say nothing of when it's outright wrong (as in, saying that the game is "about telling a good story").

You also get the advice to make treasure utterly abstract. In fact, you're told to laugh at your players and call them 'accountants' if they ask just how much treasure they earned. This strikes me as beyond pretentiousness.

Advancement also depends on characters spending or wasting away all their treasure. I understand that this somewhat follows the path of some of the Sword & Sorcery genre, but it also creates a situation where you enforce one particular interpretation of the style.  A more creative game designer would have provided various options, certainly "blow all your money for advancement points" could be one of them. Advancement points can be used to improve abilities, combat abilities, career ranks, get more boons, buy off flaws, or gain followers.

NPCs in the game are divided into three broad categories: Rabble, Toughs, and Villains. Rabble are easily-dispatched typical people; they only have 1-3 lifeblood points; a rabble magician only has 1 arcane point (enough to cast a cantrip, basically). Toughs are intermediate characters, well above Rabble but seriously inferior to PCs; some templates are provided for different sorts of Toughs (gladiators, guards, assassins, sergeants, barbarians, archers, etc).

Villains are considerably more powerful; they have Villain Points instead of hero points, which they can use in the same way plus a couple of other options (to make a "timely escape" or to use rabble as their 'meat shields'). Some 5 Villains are provided, fully fleshed-out, as examples. You also get some sample adventurers.

Some adventure-seeds are provided, and several short but fleshed-out adventures. You also get a number of tables for generating random adventure ideas, this part is actually quite clever. It includes some composite titles for adventures, random tasks, random careers for an important figure in the adventure, random locations, random objects of importance, random introductions to the adventure, random villains, random gods that might be involved, random complications, random twists, and random rewards.

The back end of the book includes three pages of handy reference tables, and character sheets.

So, what to conclude about Barbarians of Lemuria?  Well, I'm not going to pretend it doesn't have its good points. It's a very straightforward system, easy to use, and to get a clear understanding. The setting is very definitely sword & sorcery; if you wanted to be very nitpicky you could say it's somewhat cliched, but I would argue that a setting for a game like this SHOULD be full of cliches.

But there are also some bad points. Almost all of them are because of, or related to, the storygame influences on this product.  The immersion-breaking elements where Players are able to edit out details of the world. The pretentious assumption (extending to literal instructions to mock your players) that somehow resource-management is a bad aspect of play.

If there's a redeeming faculty, it's that a clever GM could fairly easily edit out the storygaming atrocities (and the pretentious tone of the author) from their game and run this as a much more 'straight' (if rules-light) RPG.

RPGPundit

Currently Smoking: Mastro de Paja Rhodesian + Image Virginia

I don't think I've ever been called pretentious before, so in a way I suppose being called it by the rpgpundit might be considered a badge of honour (however malicious it was intended to be despite the fact that rpgpundit doesn't even know me and I had nothing against him). It's also amazing that in 211 pages of content rpgpundit singles out about three small areas of the game as being "storygame pretentiousness" when in most quarters BoL is generally considered an OSR or Retro-style game (it was written about 30 years ago, and the system has only changed superficially in all that time). Most of my other output is OSR stuff - like Go Fer Yer Gun!, Return of the Woodland Warriors, Crimson Blades, Medieval Mysteries, Sabres & Witchery etc.) and even rpgs like Triumphant and Tales from the Wood are in the more traditional camp rather than being "storygamey". I don't really know any "storygames" to any degree - having only a passing knowledge of Fate (never played it), Apocalypse World (ditto) and a few others - not that (unlike rpgpundit) I have anything against them but they are just not my cup of tea. Where rpgpundit really doesn't get it is where he says the rules say to "mock your players" - this was intended as tongue-in-cheek and not an actual instruction and, if rpgpundit can't see that, then he needs to chill a bit. Incidentally, something rpgpundit missed is that he says there are "some adventure seeds" - there are actually over 50 adventure seeds in the book - amongst the many things rpgpundit seems to have missed in his single-minded quest to hunt down any vile "storygamey" elements in the book.

Quote from: Simon W;1024767I don't think I've ever been called pretentious before, so in a way I suppose being called it by the rpgpundit might be considered a badge of honour (however malicious it was intended to be despite the fact that rpgpundit doesn't even know me and I had nothing against him). It's also amazing that in 211 pages of content rpgpundit singles out about three small areas of the game as being "storygame pretentiousness" when in most quarters BoL is generally considered an OSR or Retro-style game (it was written about 30 years ago, and the system has only changed superficially in all that time). Most of my other output is OSR stuff - like Go Fer Yer Gun!, Return of the Woodland Warriors, Crimson Blades, Medieval Mysteries, Sabres & Witchery etc.) and even rpgs like Triumphant and Tales from the Wood are in the more traditional camp rather than being "storygamey". I don't really know any "storygames" to any degree - having only a passing knowledge of Fate (never played it), Apocalypse World (ditto) and a few others - not that (unlike rpgpundit) I have anything against them but they are just not my cup of tea. Where rpgpundit really doesn't get it is where he says the rules say to "mock your players" - this was intended as tongue-in-cheek and not an actual instruction and, if rpgpundit can't see that, then he needs to chill a bit. Incidentally, something rpgpundit missed is that he says there are "some adventure seeds" - there are actually over 50 adventure seeds in the book - amongst the many things rpgpundit seems to have missed in his single-minded quest to hunt down any vile "storygamey" elements in the book.

Did you read his entire review?

He missed that it's supposed to be tongue-in-check. Is it possible that others are going to miss it as well? HackMaster 4E had that issue due to the books having to be a "parody" that people didn't get that it was tongue-in-check.

Are players able to "edit" out details of the world? If so. Do you think that falls under the "traditional" end of the RPS spectrum or more on the modern end of the "storygame" spectrum?

We can shit on Pundit seeing storygamers everywhere. But, his reviews, by and large, are usually very fair. I read the entire review and it seemed pretty fair. It seems you're just nit picking instead of just having a conversation about his actual criticism. You know...you could have replied with your thought process behind the game in relation to things he didn't like. Your reply is very petty.

Quote from: Ulairi;1024791Your reply is very petty.

Thank you.

Interesting.

I don't see the Hero points to be that much different than Warhammer's Fate points. The "points players use to edit the world" have been around significantly pre-swine, and even that control could easily be put in the GM's hands. AKA, my barbarian is screwed, I spend a hero point and the GM describes some in genre coincidence that I can take advantage of. AKA, instead of finding a loose stone to get out of jail, the guards secretly bring a noblewoman to my cell who promises me freedom if I slay her husband tonight.

I have questions for either Simon or anyone who's read BoL.

1) What about the SYSTEM enforces / supports / promotes / (whatever word you like) the Sword & Sorcery genre of the game?
AKA, what MECHANICALLY makes it different than just using D&D in this setting?


2) How supported is the game? I'm "corebook only" mostly, but many gamers like game lines with lots of stuff to buy.


3) Could someone post an example of combat? Any links to more info?


4) Is the game on Amazon? Where can we see or download previews? Is there a free intro PDF?

Here goes...

Quote from: Spinachcat;1025190SNIP

1) What about the SYSTEM enforces / supports / promotes / (whatever word you like) the Sword & Sorcery genre of the game?
AKA, what MECHANICALLY makes it different than just using D&D in this setting?

The rules essentially give you the experience of a Gardner Fox Kothar novel. He actually wrote them to simulate Thongar of Lemuria but I haven't read those novels. While character advancement rules are included you basically start as a fully formed adventurer who has been through various careers. Instead of skills you have four careers (see the free version below) that you pull your skills from ("I know about knots because of my sailor career") and give you bonuses on rolls. There are boons (beast friend) and flaws (distrust of sorcery). There are mook rules and your characters tend to be the baddest things on the battlefield when facing mundane threats. There are mechanics to do mighty deeds with your hero points such as mighty success for extra damage or to take out a number of mooks or maybe to take an extra attack after your current one is resolved. The magic is dangerous, fairly free-form and honestly mainly designed for NPCs. The game plays very fast, it is not crunchy at all which helps the story continue at a pace that simulates those short stories.

During our last game we were in a tavern and a group of cultists were trying to flank my barbarian. He picked up the 6 foot long bench he had been sitting on at his table, swung it like a 2x4 and took out a number of them at once. That is very much in line with the fiction but I'm not sure how you recreate it in D&D RAW.

When you look through the PDF below you'll see plenty of options for non-barbarians as well.

2) How supported is the game? I'm "corebook only" mostly, but many gamers like game lines with lots of stuff to buy.

Corebook is all you need. That said 36 products came up when I searched Barbarians of Lemuria on OSB, they include conversions to other settings (post apocalypse, 30's pulp, more standard fantasy, Three Musketeers style swashbuckling, and Mack Bolan style men's adventure!) and some adventure modules.

3) Could someone post an example of combat? Any links to more info?

The basic rule is you have a target number of 9 on 2d6. There are a couple modifiers (some boons act like advantage, roll 3d6 and keep the highest 2) but that is the main mechanic of the game.

There are examples in the linked free rules and here is a link to the company website: http://barbariansoflemuria.webs.com/
You'll find Google Plus communities, forums, and plenty of info by just searching online. If you like podcasts there are two I'd especially recommend. (I listed to the actual play on 1.5x speed, your mileage my vary but it is about 2 hours, lucky I have a daily 120 mile round trip commute to work)
The first is an interview with Mr. Washbourn here: http://www.therpghaven.com/podcast/?p=191
and the second is an actual play of the game here: http://mtmjetpack.com/2014/03/monkeys-took-my-jetpack-44-barbarians-of-lemuria/
It may be beneficial to listen to the actual play first. One neat thing I found out in the interview is that Mr. Washbourn was, still is, an old wargamer who moved to D&D when it came out in the mid '70's, he has been around RPGs since the beginning.

4) Is the game on Amazon? Where can we see or download previews? Is there a free intro PDF?

The game was initially free and that version is still available here:
http://barbariansoflemuria.webs.com/earlier-editions
the newest edition, Mythic, has changed the combat system a little but it is very close. Basically they rolled the unarmed and armed combat into one skill and added an initiative skill. You can find support for both versions and conversions between them are incredibly easy. The Mythic edition introduces large scale combat, sea combat, expands on the magic section with examples, and adds a lot of world building.

Interesting to read Pundit about Lemuria.  Knew you wouldn't care for some of the language and Hero (fate type) points.  Simon really increased the recovery rate for them in the Mythic edition from the Legendary edition prior to Mythic, but that arose from altering the description of Saga and Adventure.  In Legendary they recovered after each Saga, which for me would be quite a few sessions, perhaps 12-16. It ends up they are recovered every session in Mythic, which isn't the way I would handle them.  Still not sure if I like them at all, since they are often used to make up for deficiencies in a game, rather than provide creative license or spontaneity, as they are often described.

I prefer the Legendary edition that came before the one you reviewed.  It's still over at Lulu.  I didn't care for the combat changes and some of the tightening of the game.  

I always find it puzzling that others that like the game always say it's perfect for this type of campaign setting or other.  I tend to find opinions of that sort expressed about a lot of games odd, though.  While I like the game well enough, I don't see how it is ideal for sword & sorcery.  Some of the other setting focused third party items are pretty good efforts.

I thought you wouldn't care for how magic, arcane power, is treated, but you didn't find much wrong with it.  It's a very role-play focused way of doing it.  I have  a friend that doesn't normally like spell research rules that liked this sort of in session spell creation.  So, perhaps an option for referees that have players that want that in a game, but the ref doesn't usually like that sort of thing.

Simon, I know you must be cool and fun with the games you like in person, but you always react like that online.  Pundit actually liked quite a few of the game's main elements.  At one point back when you were working on the drafts for the Mythic edition, I thought about sending you a proof read copy, since the grammar in  Legendary needed so..so much help, but I knew you wouldn't have even looked at it, let alone consider some of the technical suggestions covering grammar and paragraph construction.  It was just such an up hill battle to offer help.

I miss the illustration of the Worker career that was in Legendary edition.  Ha  hmmm...The notebook version was the first edition.  The free online version was the second.  Legendary was the third.  Mythic is the Fourth.  I think that was the development cycle.

Lemuria is one of the games that a player found interesting enough that I gave him my table copy, which I'm wont to do.  So, it certainly has an appeal.

FWIW I enjoy Barbarians of Lemuria a lot and so did my players. I did not allow the use of Hero points for scene-editing by the players but they had loads of fun coming up with creative ways to spend all their loot at the end of the session.

Way to miss humor, Pundit:D!
Next time, in order to avoid putting your own foot in your mouth, focus less on the dreaded story games, and more on whether it's a "rulings, not rules" game.
Which BoL definitely is;).

Also, I did allow players to use scene editing. Nobody bothered, which IME is how it usually goes with such mechanics. Your fear of those is unfounded, I find.

Quote from: sharps54;1025718Here goes...

THANK YOU SHARPS54!!

Also, welcome to theRPGsite!

Love to hear more about your BoL campaigns!

Looking forward to Pundit's discussion of the 'storygamer atrocities' in Amber Diceless, where Wujcik has an entire chapter on 'Story-telling Composition' on pages 122-124 and 'Tricks of the Story-Telling Trade' on pages 233-234. He discusses the importance of having foreshadowing, a begining, middle, end and closure.

Or the suggestion of 'Dumping the Games Master' on page 234 in a game Pundit desperately insists needs, nay requires an all-powerful GM.

Or the suggestion on page 79 'Building on Amber' that GM's allow players to create their own NPCs, complete with backgrounds and motivations. And yet in the OP he freaks over a bennie system.

Pundit has only got away with his hypocrisy because more people pretend to have read Amber Diceless than have actually sat down and read the thing. Including, apparently, Pundit himself. I'll leave you all with this quote from Mr. Wujcik from page 122:

As Game Masters we're all trying to do the same thing, provide our players with some fun. We want to give them a few hours, or a few hundred hours, of enjoyable entertainment.

Some of that fun will come automatically. Get any bunch of role-players together for a few hours and, chances are, they'll have fun. Give them some really interesting characters and that'll provide even more laughs and excitement.

Get together with your role-players, throw their characters in with a batch of hapless monsters, a couple of villains and a puzzle or two, and, bingo, the result is role-playing.

It's not a role-playing campaign. It's just role-playing.

To turn role-playing into something more intense, the Games Master has to do some hard work.

The hard part is creating the story.

According to the dictionary, a story is a narrative. In other words, the telling of some series of events. For the purposes of building a campaign let's talk about the pieces that make up a story. (My bold, although the first use of story is italicized in the original!)

SWINE indeed. LOL

:rolleyes:

Simon, I know you wrote the game a long time ago, but in 2017, calling a scene-editing mechanic "storygamey" is a fair cop.
I really like the system though, and have all the different versions of BoL.

Pundit, I will take you to task though over one aspect of your review.  You're a big fan of certain versions of Fate, like Starblazer Adventures.  Well, BoL has far less "Storygamey" aspects than SBA and it's even easier to remove them.  Also, you were way off on the pretentiousness part - somehow your Forge Detector got tripped and you weren't in the best frame of mind.

I agree with Voros.

To me, Amber seems like it should be the poster child for "storygames".

And as always, I utterly hate that word. Every RPG is a story game, but the story what you tell after the game.

I'm not big on pretentiousness in games and BoL is actually among the least pretentious games I ever read. But that's just, like, my opinion.

Quote from: Spinachcat;1026182I agree with Voros.

To me, Amber seems like it should be the poster child for "storygames".

And as always, I utterly hate that word. Every RPG is a story game, but the story what you tell after the game.

We can be reductive and I agree with you. I think Amber gets a slide because it was created by the late great Erik Wujcik and he didn't have the attitude that a lot of 'modern' storytelling gamers have about 'traditional' games.

I think Pundits attitudes about these games have to do with his social media and forum wars and less to do with what is actually in the games.

For me, personally, I'm just not a fan of the "scene-editing mechanics.

I own a signed copy of Amber and have read it (a long time ago) but have never played it. I just got it for my collection.