Does Mazes and Minotaurs get any love here?

Or does no-one know of what I speak?

It is super bomb! And check out Vikings and Valkyries while you are at it.

I don't know how many people play, but they should. It is one of those things that is lovingly made but perhaps has trouble catching on because it isn't advertised as a professional product tied to one of the recognized systems. It easily could be. M&M has its own system, but it isn't really that different from other forms of D&D. You could just as easily put out a book of classes, spells and monsters (9/10 of the meat of the M&M rules) re-tooled for some system people play and then just focus on publishing great adventures. Anyway, it is very worth while checking out.

I am a huge fan of the basic game. I've run 2 short campaigns and many convention events. It's been a blast. My favorite OSR-ish game.

And for the rest of you kids, check out the FREE PDFs for the game:

MAZES & MINOTAURS!!
http://mazesandminotaurs.free.fr/

I've run it and enjoyed it. It is a very neat, cleaned up and yet old-school system, with some very cool optional bells and whistles like Divine Boons and Champions.

I prefer it over many other OSR games for its hellenic setting, though I have to admit that the art style of the books puts me off.

I am in love with it. It's clean, lean, and well thought through. It has a wicked style of humour (which I notice James Maliszewski got quite sniffy about in his review on Grognardia), and it's genuinely a very good Greek myths game of the Age of Heroes.

Main issue is long-term play.

M&M only has 6 levels that are equally spread out, compared to the 20+ levels with escalating XP requirements of D&D and its clones. In the beginning, advancement is slow. In the mid- to long-term, everyone will reach their capstone of level 6 and not have anything to look forward to advancement-wise but magic items.

So far I have only run one-shots in it so that it never became an issue, but that would be my major peeve if I were to run an old-school style campaign in it.

It also has that free, massive (and bonkers) adventure that manages to cram every monster from the bestiary in.

Now that's a selling point for me.

Maybe next year at the club...

Quote from: One Horse Town;788557It also has that free, massive (and bonkers) adventure that manages to cram every monster from the bestiary in.

Truth!

I am not so worried about advancement, I play a lot of Traveller and that has no system advancement (ok ok there is a small paragraph on training).

If we could play it from level 1 to 6, and get one or even two Divine Agents then that'd easily fill a year or more of gaming.

But, back to finishing my RQ6 campaign.

Quote from: Skyrock;788554Main issue is long-term play.

M&M only has 6 levels that are equally spread out, compared to the 20+ levels with escalating XP requirements of D&D and its clones. In the beginning, advancement is slow. In the mid- to long-term, everyone will reach their capstone of level 6 and not have anything to look forward to advancement-wise but magic items.

So far I have only run one-shots in it so that it never became an issue, but that would be my major peeve if I were to run an old-school style campaign in it.

First edition had a supplement for playing demi-god characters beyond level 6 called Mythic Manual... I can't find it now, though...

Having now read every single M&M publication apart from the huge Tomb of the Bull King, it's clear this has a lot of play in it.

Although there are points for advancement (3 types and no it's not that bonkers) there is a good discussion of milestone based advancement in Minotaur issue (?) and that suggests a number of adventures per level equal to the next level for advancement. e.g. level 2 is reached when you have done 2 adventures, level 3 when you have done another 3, which is 5 in total.

So, to get to level 6, it's 2+3+4+5+6 = 20 adventures, and an adventure may be 2 game sessions or 1, so it's 20-40 sessions, assume 30.

That's easily a year of gaming for me. It's also not the end since you can become Divine Agents, and frankly, not all gaming is just about the progression, I have to say I am more comfortable with the smaller range of levels in many games.

Plus.. this is a game where PCs *will* die, so getting to the 6th aint guaranteed.

There is a lovely range of simplicity to complexity, from a simple game in the core that you can play forever, from the simple overview of the setting, or the wide vista of rules tweaks and additions in the Companion and journals, and the big Gazetteers for GMs who want to explore the whole setting further.

I commend it to the voters that this is a very playable and very imaginative neo clone..

If by campaign you just mean a 1 year campaign with some three dozen sessions, then go ahead and do it. In that time frame the small level range doesn't become much of an issue.

Quote from: One Horse Town;788557It also has that free, massive (and bonkers) adventure that manages to cram every monster from the bestiary in.

Of what adventure do you speak?! I have the M&M pdfs and would gladly play/run any adventure with suck bonkers ambition.