[RPG]: Legends of Alyria, reviewed by C.W.Richeson (2/2)

http://www.rpg.net/reviews/archive/13/13148.phtml

Christopher W. Richeson's Summary:

Post apocalyptic science fantasy on a distant world where the dead work in smog spewing factories, the faithful worship a grand computer, and evil dragons live in a sea of mists. Sound intriguing? Read on!

Go to the full review for more information.

[Hafwit]

Thanks for the review. As always very thorough, and I feel that I got answers to pretty much all the things I've wondered about, re:Legends of Alyria.

[Thalaxis]

Agreed, nice review. It pretty much mirrors my opinion as well; gorgeous setting, blah mechanics, and I wasn't keen on the Multiverser stuff either.

Way back, early in the project, Seth posted a set of mechanics that I quite liked, but he wanted something more evocative of the settnig, and IMO was not an improvement.

I'd have been much more interested in conversion notes for something like Sorcerer, but if ever I get a chance to run Alyria, I'd most likely use the Hero Quest system or Reign without the companies. Not that I don't like the company stuff in Reign, just that I don't think it fits Alyria.

I picked up a copy when I realized it was available in print because I was pretty sure I'd love the setting, and I was right about that.

[Seth Ben-Ezra]

Hey, thanks for the review! It was a fair overview of the game, and I appreciate it.

I just wanted to offer one correction on the rules. You said, "Players then select up to 5 Traits of any clock face." Actually, you have five points to purchase Traits. The cost for a Trait is based on your Virtue. A Trait matching your Virtue costs 1 point. Otherwise, a Trait costs 1 point plus an additional point for each Clock face removed from your Virtue.

So, Dove's Traits actually cost 7 points: 2 for each Sext Trait and 3 for the Lauds Trait. I'd probably decrease both Sext Traits to Terce to make the points balance out.

[C.W.Richeson]

Ahh, that makes more sense.

Thanks, Seth!

[Dan Davenport]

What th-?

Wow... Just reading that jargon made my head hurt. I can't imagine running a game using it.

Thanks for the review, Chris! Another great one!

[Seth Ben-Ezra]

Originally Posted by Dan Davenport

Wow... Just reading that jargon made my head hurt. I can't imagine running a game using it.

I thought that I'd address this for a moment.

Yes, if you are thinking about the terminology, it could be confusing. However, the game stats are supposed to be visual.

Take a look at these Clock pictures:

Sext
Terce/None
Prime/Vespers
Lauds/Compline
Matins

Notice how the sweep hand shades a certain portion of the clock face.

Now, take a look at the Character Sheet. (PDF) Notice the circles on the Character sheet. You record your stats by shading a portion of the circle. So, if your Determination was Sext, you would leave the entire circle bright. If your Determination were Prime, then you would shade half the circle.

In the same way, when you roll your Clock Die, just see if the brightness of the clock face that you rolled is more than the brightness of the clock face that you're rolling against.

In play, it's actually quite intuitive. In the text...less so, I admit.

[M. J. Young]

Seth has been very gracious in response to the review, and it was certainly fair and informative. I wanted to raise a few points perhaps in his defense.

There actually is extensive design information on the Web in the form of Seth's Dreaming Out Loud column originally published at Gaming Outpost and later also at his own site. Anyone looking for a detailed understanding of the game can find it there. However, there is a school of thought among Indie designers that you will be better able to understand how to tweak my game for your use if you also understand why I made the design decisions I did. Thus for many referees, design notes are quite valuable. Others don't see the use, and for them it is wasted pages--but then, I don't see the use of "color text", and for me these are wasted pages, but some players find them particularly enlightening as guides to how the game "feels" in play.

I feel some small responsibility for the clock face design, as I suggested using the clock faces. This has nothing to do with any contribution to the resolution mechanic itself, I hasten to add, which I think is quite brilliant and something for which I wish I could take credit. However, initially when Seth was looking for a resolution system for the game, someone approached him with a system based on moon phases, which Seth particularly liked because the moon played a significant part in the mood of the game. The game nearly went to print with this--I have a copy of a playtest version containing the moon phase instructions, and somewhere a set of moon dice. However, just as Seth was approaching publication, this outside party requested that he not use that dice system after all (I believe that the individual was hoping to use it for his own game, but I've not heard anything on that since). Seth honored the request (which he did not have to do) and was scrambling for some other way to use the balance of light and dark on the die faces to achieve the same outcome. I suggested that the face of the clock tower would do the job (the devil's hour replacing the blood moon), and that was the idea Seth embraced. He also remembered that monks had prayer calls every three hours, and named the faces for the names of those times of prayer, which while perhaps a bit confusing before you are familiar with them (but not more so than crescent and gibbous, honestly) certainly is better flavor than saying that you have this "at three o'clock". Personally I liked the moon phases better, but Seth has done quite well with the prayer times and even improved the system a bit with the change.

I might also be blamed for the presence of the Multiverser conversion in the back. After all, that's my game, and I worked with Seth to create the conversion. I think, though, that the criticism here is too harsh.

Seth's intention was to have several conversions in the back of the book. He had started working on this probably around 1998, in the wake of the SRD/OGL and the recognition that gamers did not really want to learn a new engine for every game they played. His plan was to have several conversions in the back of the book, so that people could use GURPS (this was specifically listed, and a blank GURPS conversion page appears in my playtest copy) or any of several other popular games to play Alyria.

From our end, we had designed Multiverser originally for exactly this kind of play. Incorporated into the Multiverser text are instructions for how to convert Multiverser characters, skills, and equipment into other game systems, and convert the characters, skills, and equipment of other game systems into Multiverser. The idea is that a verser ought to be able to verse into any universe, including a game universe in whicht the rules are dictated by some other game system, without ceasing to be a verser, and that whatever he learns or gets while in that world, including followers, should be able to go with him into other universes. The Referee's Rules included general instructions for how to do this yourself, but we had always hoped and intended to publish "interfacing rules" to facilitate the use of specific game systems. When Seth mentioned that he wished to include rules for using the game with other systems, we approached him, and Legends of Alyria became our first such interface (we have others working their way through development, with the agreement of the designers). It was particularly challenging, because Legends of Alyria is so well designed for supporting story creation, to the point that "skill success" is an almost meaningless term (successes and failures are about confrontations; skills are used for narrative color), while Multiverser is very strongly a skill-driven system. Thus we were very pleased with the opportunity to show the game's flexibility.

Overall it was a good marriage. I think Seth and I would both have preferred for it to have been one of several "alternate rules sets" in the back of the book, but between licensing difficulties and interfacing problems we were the only company to meet his request.

Oh, and the page count on the interface is inflated by some of that "color text" I previously mentioned. If memory serves, Seth specifically suggested that such a story would be valuable within the context of the section, so I gave it a shot. Although the story snippet is specifically intended to illustrate the sort of adventure a verser might have in Alyria, it is not strictly speaking limited to that and is illustrative of the possibilities for play without the Multiverser connection. Further, although there is no artwork within the book itself, it is an entirely creator-owned work. The color text is illustrative, and serves much the same function as artwork would have done. For a game designer who is not an artist and has a limited budget, it was a good choice.

I hope this answers the questions raised about the game. I've seen few games as capable of creating compelling stories as this one, and I would recommend it despite whatever flaws it may have.

--M. J. Young

[C.W.Richeson]

Originally Posted by M. J. Young

Seth has been very gracious in response to the review

No doubt about that, Seth's definitely a cool person in my book.