I’ve long enjoyed the tub thumping thrills of Barbarians of Lemuria (BoL). This sword & sorcery game flows off the page and onto quick pick up play without breaking its stride. The simple 2D6, get a 9+ and add a couple of modifiers depending on the situation, wears a Travelleresque task simplicity with style. Characters are a combination of four attributes, four combat abilities and a flexible number of careers (that cunningly replace skills), all in the 0-5 range. Your careers tell the foundations of a story for you to embelish, as your sketched potential quickly strides onto a many hued canvas, perhaps with a sword in hand or a terrible curse twitching to be released from your lips. Round off with some hero point fate flexing, never enough Lifepoints, and some defining boons and flaws and you have a flavoursome character, simply drawn and ready to go.
The elegant Barbarians of Lemuria game engine has been opened up for others to develop, which has given me a big fun recent swashbuckle as a musketeer in Basic Action Games’ ‘Honor+Intrigue’, layering on a tactical fencing system to give a martial focus to the 17th Century adventures. I also have their ‘Tome of Intriguing Options’ to further broaden the scope of the game to other heroic landscapes, which cycles me round to Everywhen:
Everywhen is a set of roleplaying rules that builds upon the system created by Simon Washbourne in Barbarians of Lemuria to provide a rich but flexible and adaptable game to support action and adventure in your favourite setting!
I suppose this pulpy game occupies similar space to Savage Worlds. Overall, I think I prefer the way Everywhen goes about things, whilst achieving a similar game zone effect. At this time, the game has been substantially taken up by Garnett Elliott, producing juicy genre books and lots of free one shot adventures to help you spread the word.
With the Sword+Sorcery Codex I returned to similar BoL ground. Much as with the 2D6 SF system and BRP, all these resources are interchangeable, giving you quick blend options around a short and solid rule base. Were I to return to Hyborea, utilising the Modiphius Conan 2D20 sourcebooks, then Everywhen/Barbarians of Lemuria would make a very strong case to be the basis of the rules. In similar vein, a return to the Young Kingdoms would happily feel at home with this game. That’s tempting.
The sword and sorcery vibe occupies a glutted gaming field, with plenty of solid options out there. Perhaps I’m just looking for a lighter end game as a palate cleanser from the more fiddly Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay that I’m currently enjoying? Maybe.
However, I also think it is a mistake to see Everywhen as super lightweight without a good range of player facing options. Playing without the options certainly gives you a solid stripped down game for quick heroic high jinks. Yet, being me, I rather appreciate all the options to give the game some depths beyond the surface level of the temple.
- Resolve – a partner to the physical Lifeblood if you want to track the fear, corruption and panic of work a day blasphemous horrors.
- Advantage and Penalty dice to sweeten and bitter the core task roll.
- Characters aiding each other to keep you in touch with the action of the scene.
- Group task rolls – to get everyone sharing the mechanical load and the ensuing outcomes.
- Mighty and Legendary successes for those extras that force the pace and make the spotlight shine all the more brightly.
- Opposed rolls for direct conflict.
- Longer term ‘projects’ that are effectively extended tasks.
- Scale – modeling larger things and how that influces combat, damage and protection.
- Combat options, providing you with a host of possibilities when the hack and slash isn’t enough.
- Dramatic challenge dice, which provide flexible advantage in scenes, or to the group as a whole. I like some dramatic currencies.
- A damage level track that slides about depending on advantage and scale.
I could keep going. These game layers give me the levers that I’m looking for, at least some of the time. The super cool and simple task system carries most of the game weight, most of the time.
With character advancement deeply entrenched in expected RPG game play, the relatively small ability range for BoL inspired games is seen as a problem for longer form play. Insofar as you may wish to pander to the advancement appetite of players, there are lots of ways of addressing this in the game. My approach is to keep the tempo of reward currencies while slowing progress by making everything more expensive to buy. Traveller RPG manages fine. The game also suggests more fine grained numbers by swapping out the 2d6 for 2d10, 2d12 or 3d6, and upping the 9+ accordingly.
I have a good number of options in the digital archive. I could take to the sea under Wyrd Sails for Vikings vs Cthuloid horrors. Or perhaps ‘Pulse Pounding Pulp’ of the 20s and 30s? Space opera with Space Pulp? Or, head back to the lands of Conan to fight for. and then squander, various hidden treasures?
Plenty to go at. It’s been good for me to rekindle some love for the BoL family. Perhaps this will translate into some actual play? Now there is the challenge!