RPGPundit Reviews: Legends of Anglerre

This is a review of the RPG book "Legends of Anglerre: Starblazer Fantasy Adventures", written by Sarah Newton and Chris Birch.  What Starblazer Adventures did with space opera, Legends of Anglerre does with fantasy; or at least that's the idea. Like with the SA game, Anglerre is inspired by the stories, in this case the fantasy stories, that appeared in the iconic British comic magazine in the 70s, 80s and early 90s.

Legends of Anglerre is a big beautiful hardcover book. Its graced with a very nice cover, featuring what looks like some kind of sorceress on a wyvern, an elven archer and a warrior with a holy sword of some kind, all ready for action.  The inside cover features beautiful maps on both the front and back.  The internal artwork is taken from the Starblazer magazine itself, and so is of a very high quality (for what is 80s-era sword&sorcery artwork from a comic magazine; if you're from North America or just unfamiliar with the magazine, think of it being kind of like Conan, but slightly more European). The book is 384 pages long.

OK, so to very briefly summarize, while Anglerre has no strict mission statement, upon reading the book it is clear that Anglerre is a toolkit game, and it very much intends it that way.  You have two sample settings; one far more traditional-fantasy the other far more swords-and-sorcery; you have a variety of different ways to handle things like magic.  Everything about Anglerre shouts "toolkit", even moreso perhaps than Starblazer itself; because starblazer stuck to one subgenre within sci fi (albeit a very large one with a vast range of possible interpretations: Space Opera).  Anglerre, on the other hand, seems to want to run just about the full gamut of Fantasy gaming.  Its one really weak point might be on the very gritty side of the scale, or where characters start out as a very low-powered, but that's just because of the limitations of the Fate System, which pretty much guarantee that starting characters (even at the lowest settings) will have a significant degree of competence.  Aside from that, it tries to do a bit of everything.

Some of you who bought Starblazer Adventures might be wondering just how compatible is Anglerre.  Well, if you want to visit a planet in your SA campaign that has a very fantasy vibe or something (or conversely, if you want to have your Anglerre adventurers encounter space knights with thermic lances),  the good news is that Anglerre and SA are basically completely compatible.  The big changes are only that Anglerre has no "mysteries" skill (having supplanted that with a more complete magical system), and the rules for creatures have been changed (mainly expanded, as have a few other rules).  But basically, if you've played SA, you've already played Anglerre.  What's different is all the special material added for the fantasy-focused play (and of course, the absence of things like starship rules).

For those who've played neither game, I should tell you that Anglerre (like SA) is based on the FATE system, itself a variant of the old Fudge system. The basic mechanic is of rolling two six-sided dice, subtracting the "negative" dice from the "positive" one, giving you a possible range of -5 to +5, with 0 being the average. To this you add your bonuses from skills or other modifiers, and you have to beat a difficulty number or opposed roll.  Characters have four very important mechanics to deal with.  The first are Aspects, which are descriptions of your character (for example, "swims like a fish", "old sea dog", "lost a hand at the battle of Mennoth", etc).  Aspects have no mechanical value in and of themselves (no bonus or number or anything like that).  Instead, they can be "invoked" by spending a fate point, which will be described below.

Skills are next, and these are pretty much what they sound like. You use the Fists skill to punch someone, for example, or the Stealth skill to sneak around.  Skills will range initially from a +1 (average) to a +4 (great) in value, but could theoretically be as high as a +8 (legendary).

Then there are stunts, which are kind of similar to what feats would be like in D20: they are special abilities or maneuvers you can undertake only if you've purchased the relevant stunt.  Stunts are generally tied to a specific skill.  Stunts can range in effect from giving you a fixed bonus to a specific element of a skill, or to letting you use the skill in some situation you normally couldn't (like say, a sneak attack stunt that lets you use your sneak roll as your attack roll when you take someone by surprise),  or to give you some greater bonus or letting you use some special power if you spend a fate point.

Ah yes, Fate points.  The system is named after these things.  They are basically like hero points, or determination points, or conviction points, etc.  You can spend a Fate point to give you a simple +1 to a roll. But if you spend a fate point to "invoke" an aspect, then you get a +2 instead.  So for example, you are trying to convince a guard captain to let you go; if you say "I spend a fate point", you get a +1 to your roll.  On the other hand, if you say "I spend a fate point to invoke my "lost a hand at the battle of Mennoth" aspect to try to convince him to cut a veteran a break", you get a +2 instead.  You can alternately spend a fate point and invoke an aspect in order to get a reroll of a roll that went poorly. You can also spend a Fate Point to "tag" an aspect of another character, or the environment, either to assist a companion, give you an edge on an enemy's known weakness, or to use some "aspect" in the environment (for example, a tannery might have a "horrible stench" aspect, or a tavern might have a "slippery patch of floor" aspect).

Finally, and here's where it gets tricky, in the FATE system you can theoretically use a Fate Point to make a "narrative declaration", inventing some element of your environment out of nothing.  This is an element of the FATE system having been originally influenced in its creation by Forge-style story-Swine, and in some games that use the FATE system, this element is very strongly emphasized, essentially turning the game into a kind of "storygame".  In Starblazer and Anglerre alike, this element of Fate Points is still present but hardly emphasized at all.  In Anglerre it is clearly stated that the GM has a veto over the use of Fate Points in this way, no big emphasis is placed on this rule, and it ends up being all but an optional rule.  Obviously, in my own Starblazer campaign I have forbidden this use of Fate Points altogether, and it in no way affects the game.

Fate Points have a "refresh" score, that is the number of Fate points you begin each session with, or are restored to if you have less than that number (if you somehow have more than that number, you're allowed to keep the extra points).  Aside from that, you can gain Fate points in the course of the game session itself if the GM chooses to give you some as an award for some particularly clever gaming; or through "Compels".  The GM can "Compel" any of your aspects (but particularly the negative ones), essentially presenting you with an ultimatum: accept his "compel" and you have a certain penalty or must do certain things because of your persona.  If you accept the compel, you gain a Fate Point.  On the other hand, if you wish to reject the "compel", you must spend a Fate Point.

The "health" mechanic is measured by two types of damage tracks: physical and composure stress.  Physical stress is damage taken from injury; composure damage is damage taken from mental strain (which can be used to reflect things like psychic attacks, or fear, or even social conflict if you're into that kind of stuff).  By default, you start with five points of each, but you can get more in either if you take certain skills or stunts.   If you should take damage that would fill your entire "stress track"; you would be "taken out" (what that means depends on the way you've been "taken out"; being taken out from sword blows would probably mean you're dead; being "taken out" from a terror effect would probably mean you're a wet-trousered babbling catatonic wreck). Whenever you take damage, you can opt to redirect some of your damage away from the stress track and into the form of "consequences", which represent injuries (again, physical, or mental).  Thus if you take a consequence you can keep fighting, but these injuries create penalties for you.  You can take a minor, major, severe and extreme consequence.  They represent penalties of -2, -4, -6, and -8 respectively.  Once you've taken all the possible consequences, any further injuries will leave you no choice than to be "taken out" (though in some cases you may prefer to be "taken out" before you've taken your fill of consequences, if you think the result of being "taken out" won't be particularly awful for you; because consequences generally take longer to heal then regular stress track damage).

All maneuvers, actions, and combat are based on the same mechanic.  Roll the D6-D6 resolution, add your bonuses, and compare that to either a difficulty or an opposed roll.  If you get the higher result, you "succeed".  How much you succeed depends on how much better you did than the opposition/difficulty.  A result of 3 points higher than the difficulty is called a Shift.  Generally, each shift represents some additional benefit to your success. In combat, the difference between your attack and your opponent's defense is generally the basic damage dealt (modified by the damage bonus of any weapon you may be using).

Character creation rules in Anglerre let you create characters at different levels of power: good characters (meant to be relatively inexperienced or gritty), great characters (meant to be experienced professionals), and superb characters (who are already likely to be quite famous or powerful from the get-go). Anglerre presents a step-by-step descriptive system of designing a character, or alternately a set of random lifepath tables.  Frequent readers need not be told which of the two I prefer (being quite the fan of random character creation).  The lifepath system of character creation was present in Starblazer as well but here it is far more fleshed-out and complete.  So on the whole, that's a big improvement.
Another interesting change is the introduction of the idea of "future aspects".  Future aspects represent not what the character already is, but what they are seeking to achieve.  In a way, this isn't so much an innovation as the clarification of something I think many people were doing; I know for example that in my own Starblazer game some characters had goals in the place of aspects ("seeking to find the Earth", for example).  But its good to quantify this and clarify that its a permissible way of expressing an aspect.

Legends of Anglerre includes rules for non-human races, of course, in a much more central way than the loose building rules of Starblazer.  You get basic builds for Elves, Dwarves, "little people" (meant to be halflings of course, not midgets); and dragons, centaurs, and fauns are written up as examples of "unusual races".   Guidelines are provided for creating your own races, and of course the choice of which races are permissible is up to the GM depending on the type of campaign he's running (most Sword-and-sorcery games tend to be humanocentric, if not human-exclusive).
Builds are also provided for sample "occupations", detailing which would be the key skills, typical stunts, equipment, and aspects for each occupation.  Sample occupations include fighters like the "sword and shield fighter", the "large weapon warrior", the swashbuckler, the archer, the phalanx fighter, barbarian warrior, or martial artist.  Magic user builds include wizard, summoner, necromancer, alchemist, elementalist; or Priests like the cleric, druid or holy warrior.  Rogues include builds like the thief, ranger, pirate, explorer, scavenger, or bard. Professionals also have builds, like the artificer, merchant, diplomat, or noble.  Each of the broad types, and some of the specific occupations, have examples of specific stunts that they could take.  Essentially, the toolkit nature is emphasized here; you can create your own occupations for your game, or not use occupations at all.

The chapter on Equipment is pretty complete; and fairly typical for the most part.  Armor gives you penalties to magic skills or some physical activities, but can absorb their own consequences giving you some extra buffering in combat.  Magical armour can reduce the penalty of the armour or increase the number of consequences it can take.  Weapons provide a bonus to damage, and some have specific qualities (usually aspects you can invoke). The weapons section includes black powder weapons and explosives, in case you want to use those in your campaign.

The chapter on "skills and stunts" covers nearly 60 pages of the book, but here it also represents a significant practicality improvement over the Starblazer book; in the latter the skills chapter and the stunts chapter were two different sections, requiring in actual play that a GM often have to page through the book to see what you can do with a skill in general, or a stunt related to that skill in particular.  Here, the description of the skill and its basic uses are in the same section as the special stunts related to that skill, which is really just common sense.

The chapter on "Powers" is next, and it details both special abilities and magic. Special abilities are basically taken in the form of stunts, usually requiring an explanation for how one might have these abilities, and usually an aspect to cover this explanation.  For example, a character who has "Trained with the Elven seers" as an aspect might then get the "astral sight" stunt.
Magic, on the other hand, requires that one take special "power skills".  There is a list of key power skills, which are meant to cover the typical magic spectrum  (some examples include Alchemy, Elements, Warding, Life, Divination, or Telekinesis; there are 18 core power skills in all).  Thus, the system theoretically allows you to create characters who are everything from dabblers to guys totally dedicated to magic, depending on what restrictions the GM wants to put on the purchasing of magic.   Like any other skill, a magical power skill will have certain basic "trappings" (ie. what you can do with the skill by itself) and certain stunts you can take related to the skill.  So with the "Domination" power skill, for example, you have the basic trapping uses of hypnosis, charm, read mind, change emotion, bewilder, speak to mind, and mind shield.  You can additionally take the stunts of Control Emotion, Sooth, Probe Mind, Command, Enslave, Feed off Emotion, Control, Mind Blast, or Possess.  Like most other stunts, many of the more powerful stunts for the skill have weaker stunts as their pre-requisite.

Magic can be further defined for the specific campaign world by imposing particular rules on how powers operate. The rules provide a variety of possible rules for power use (how long it takes to cast a spell or what it requires, for example) and for possible power limitations.  For example, you can define that in your game world, magic has potential backlash, meaning that you take the difference from failed magic skill checks in composure damage; or you can require memorization, meaning that spells must be memorized previously to use.  Or you can put restrictions on powers that make the wearing or wielding of metal impossible for magic users of certain types (or of all types).  Basically, the system provides the guidelines for making magic as easy or as hard as you might like, depending on whether you impose no restrictions, or a few, or a lot.

The following, somewhat related chapter is on the subject of devices, artifacts, and magical items.  Rules are provided for creating non-magical devices that improve on standard quality items, as well as traps, magic items, magical allies, bound creatures, and magical items.  Since certain skills (or power skills) relate to the creation of items and magic items, there is the risk that a savvy manipulator of these rules could end up becoming an item-factory, overpowering the game. To create an item you need to roll your artificer skill versus the "cost value" of the object, and have tools of a level of value equal to the item you are trying to create.  So to make a crossbow (a +4 cost item), you need to have tools of at least +4 value. Items (or their component parts) can be restricted by rarity or even by law, making the process more difficult. The time it takes to build an item is also based on its cost, though you can take more time to make it in order to get a bonus to your construction check, or take less time in exchange for a penalty. Making magic items is essentially a similar process but requires the appropriate magical skills.  The system is created to try to make some kind of balance, but it is all very dependent on either the strictness of the GM or the goodwill of the player.  Item creation rules are always a minefield. A list of sample magic items are provided at the end of this chapter.
If I were to be comparing Anglerre to the experience of playing D&D, this is probably the chapter thus far where the result would be least favorable to Anglerre by comparison.  People used to D&D's huge list of straightforward magic items will find the slim pickings of the sample items, and the relative complexity of the creation rules to be a little disappointing.   Of course, if making stuff from scratch is your thing, you'll like this better than D&D, as when I said "relative complexity", what I meant was really the relative complexity of creating items vs. having a bit list of magic items to choose from; in fact, as far as item creation itself is concerned, the rules in Anglerre are at least as straightforward if not moreso than in any edition of D&D I've ever seen.
Ditto for the Creatures chapter, which gives you guidelines for creating your own fantasy creatures. This chapter includes the great "Argh! Its multiplying" random table, to determine the random effect that different kinds of attacks may or may not have on magical extraplanar creatures.  Unlike the magic items, there is a very complete bestiary (about 50 pages worth) at the back of the book, detailing all your standard fantasy monsters plus a few unusual ones, like the psychovores who feed on psychic energy, or the strange and powerful velanke'en, interdimensional guardians of extraplanar fortresses.

Like in Starblazer, Anglerre includes a chapter on creating large-scale organizations (the chapter is aptly titled "gods, guilds and empires"). These rules are basically entirely optional; I don't use these particular rules' equivalent in my own Starblazer campaign.  But basically the idea is that you can make stats for any large-scale organization as if it was a kind of player character, with its own skills, stunts, aspects and resources.  These organizations can also thus enter into conflict with each other and do or take stress and consequences on a massive scale (anything from literal harm, ie. from attack or invasion, to loss of power or prestige).  These kind of rules could be very useful in creating a "birthrite"-style game of warring political factions or empires.

As Starblazer had rules for the creations of vehicles and starships, Anglerre has rules for the creation of "Sailing ships and war machines".  Again, the concept is that these large objects have their own statblocks, aspects, stunts or skills. Rules are also provided for large-scale combat.

The GMing section of the book puts a lot of emphasis on how to fine-tune these toolkit rules, picking and choosing what you want for the type of campaign you want to create.  Guidelines are provided for running the standard game, the epic game, the mythic game, etc; and for creating your own campaign world (like Starblazer, while default setting material is provided, the system is set up with the assumption that many GMs will want to run Anglerre with a setting of their own creation).  Rules are provided for optional "plot stress" as ways to keep track of events in the game; these add a level of mechanical crunch to campaign events (in the same way that organizational or national statblocks do) that aren't very much to my own fast-and-loose taste, but could be valuable to the type of GM that wants a system to quantify just what is going on in the bigger campaign scale.

Chapter 22 has random tables for creating your own campaign world, though the title of the chapter, "other worlds, other realities" more accurately reflects the value of these tables; this is an excellent set of tables for playing a multi-planar campaign.  Some of the random tables end up potentially creating very unusual worlds; awesome for visiting, not necessarily so awesome for long-term campaigning.

There's just a ton of useful material of all different stripes for the GM in the later chapters of the gamebook, too many to really fairly describe.  You get things like lists of common aspects for different environments, a framework for standard fantasy adventure creation (a couple of different frameworks, really), and plenty of other stuff of that sort.  Nothing that will necessarily blow the socks off an experienced GM, but absolutely invaluable to someone who hasn't had much experience, particularly with the kind of game Anglerre is (compared to say, D&D).

There are two complete settings included in the book.  The first is Anglerre itself, which is a Swords and Sorcery world.  The other is the Hither Lands, which is more typical "high fantasy".
Details are given for the races or nations of each world, how magic works, and gazetteer of the world.  The chapter on Anglerre covers 15 pages, the chapter on the Hither Lands covers 11 pages; so when I say "complete", what I really mean is a complete overview with lots and lots of room for one to fill in one's own details.

To sum up, I have to say that I was for some reason skeptical about the value of a "Fantasy Starblazer"; I loved Starblazer Adventures and I felt it was just perfect for the type of genre it was emulating (Space Opera high adventure), but I felt it would be much more difficult to use the same rules to create a really good fantasy game.   In general, Anglerre leaves me pleasantly surprised; it is certainly one of the best general fantasy toolkit games I've seen.   Unlike SA, though, I'm not sure if I will ever personally play it; it does everything basically right, but games like Rules Cyclopedia does it simpler.
The key is really whether you are satisfied with a pre-existing set of rules that create a certain type of play.  If what you really want is to craft your own personalized set of parameters of exactly how you want your fantasy game to function; what races you want to have, how you want magic to work, what you want monsters to be like, etc., then Anglerre does the job incredibly well. It allows you much more freedom to optimize the system to the setting than more codified fantasy games like D&D, while being more genre-specific than generic games like GURPS.  In that sense, it hits a very sweet spot indeed; as long as there isn't already a set of rules that basically does just what you want them to do.  For me, for Space Opera, there really wasn't, and thus Starblazer gave me the freedom to create the exact set of parameters for the exact kind of setting I wanted to play in.  For fantasy, though, I already have old-school D&D.  Even so, I'll probably end up making use of at least some of the material in Anglerre (the "Argh! Its multiplying", random planar/world tables, and maybe the lifepath tables all spring to mind).

RPGPundit

Currently Smoking: Masonic Meerschaum + C&D's Star of the East

Thanks for the review Pundit, thorough and edifying as usual. I've got to get this book now.

About races : you mentioned the "builds" provided for classical and less classical fantasy races. As far as I understand players are completely free to design their dwarf/elf/whatever characters without following the guideline of the "builds" right? I mean it's up to the GM to decide how close to the builds the players must stay or something?

Basically, that's right.  The race builds are more along the lines of recommendations than rules.  

RPGPundit

So you've completely banned fate points in your SBA game? Could you go into some detail about that?

Quote from: Aos;439424So you've completely banned fate points in your SBA game? Could you go into some detail about that?

No, I haven't banned them completely; I've only banned the one use of them to "rewrite details" as it were.

In my campaign, you can use a fate point to get a +1 to a roll (or a +2 if you tag an aspect relevant to what you're trying to do).  You can also use a fate point with an aspect in order to get a reroll, or to justify rolling a different skill.

My players use fate points like crazy, in fact.  

RPGPundit

Quote from: RPGPundit;439427No, I haven't banned them completely; I've only banned the one use of them to "rewrite details" as it were.

In my campaign, you can use a fate point to get a +1 to a roll (or a +2 if you tag an aspect relevant to what you're trying to do).  You can also use a fate point with an aspect in order to get a reroll, or to justify rolling a different skill.

My players use fate points like crazy, in fact.  

RPGPundit

Okay. Cool. thanks for the clarification. I did the same thing with the retcon rule in Icons- unless its something like, "I want to spend a determination point to have a pair of binoculars" or some really low level shit like that.

I like the idea of banning the more powerful uses of Fate points. It makes the game more usable.

Also, the book is trying really hard to be a bullet-stopper.

Quote from: danbuter;439535I like the idea of banning the more powerful uses of Fate points. It makes the game more usable.

Also, the book is trying really hard to be a bullet-stopper.

Starblazer Adventures is considerably bigger.

RPGPundit