Tell Me What Is Good And Bad About "Legends of Excalibur," Please.

FCWesel

First Post
Title says it all.

I recently got a free copy of "Legends of Excalibur" at a game day and I was just getting around to looking at it and I thought I would hit all you fellow gamers for the skinny on this book.

Got any thoughts or comments, praise or condemnation on "Legends of Excalibur?"

How does it rank next to the "iconic" Arthurian game, "Pendragon?"
 

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Good: It's designed by Charles Rice. He knows the rules...he knows them well...and comes across as the type of designer who will help a GM apply the rules without allowing those same rules to stifle the creativity the GM has on his own. I think Charles is a designer who is strong on giving you quality options. He's going to be around the game design scene for a long, long time. See you at the gmaeday, FC! :)
 
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It was written to run the Authurian legends. It doesn't have as much use to steal things form like other gaming products, but it does the main job very well.
 

Vigilance said:
I wrote the book so it's probably not appropriate for me to reply to this.

Wow. Not often I post a thread on a game and the author is the first to reply.

Actually, I would very much like to hear your thoughts on the game. What's good about it? What's maybe not so good about it? What did you accomplish with it? What did you wantto do but didn't accomplish, do you feel?

How do YOU compare it to PENDRAGON? (I ask, because I know Pendragon a bit from the "old days.")
 


FCWesel said:
Wow. Not often I post a thread on a game and the author is the first to reply.

Actually, I would very much like to hear your thoughts on the game. What's good about it? What's maybe not so good about it? What did you accomplish with it? What did you wantto do but didn't accomplish, do you feel?

How do YOU compare it to PENDRAGON? (I ask, because I know Pendragon a bit from the "old days.")

Excalibur is one of my favorite designs (did I mention it was nominated for an Ennie or two? no? how silly of me).

One thing I wanted was to make a game as true to the legends as I could. This meant getting rid of a few sacred cows (alignment, the spell slot system) and coming up with some new mechanics.

It was also the first fantasy work I had ever done professionally, so that also gets it a gold star.

I really wanted to make a book that made me feel the way I felt when I looked through the original Deities and Demigods and saw the stats for the Arthurian Legends NPCs and that's a big reason why the book is loaded with NPCs detailing some of those characters.

Id have to say my main regret is no module support (yet!). Time and money arent just Floyd songs, so this goal has taken longer to realize than I hoped. Someday soon though, a PDF module for game will appear (he said confidently).

About Pendragon- well that was certainly an influence. Its real hard for me to compare this book to that (which I consider a legendary game and one of the best of all time).

I certainly tried to bring a little bit of that magic to d20, as I have tried to capture a bit of the spark of Bushido on Legends of the Samurai.

Chuck
 

Vigilance said:
Id have to say my main regret is no module support (yet!). Time and money arent just Floyd songs, so this goal has taken longer to realize than I hoped.

Huh, funny you mentioned that. The "F" in FCWesel stands for Floyd. Seriously.
 

If you want to see an example of it in play, you could peek at my story hour

http://www.enworld.org/showthread.php?t=105660&page=1&pp=40

My players like it a lot. Some things I noticed. At first, all my players wanted to be knights. Rather hard to arrange healing with no healer in the party. :) This can be worked around (go to town to get healed at a priest's church).

Because "heroic single combat" is a big deal (you lose nobility points if you gang up on the BBEG), you cannot rely upon monster/NPC CR's as written. Note that Giants and Dragons are rather souped up.

While Hedge Mages don't have the blaster spells of Wizards/Sorcerors, Druids still retain their spell lists. You might want to trim the druid spell list somewhat. I also banned bards, since the minstral class was so close in tone. If you have bards, you might want to ban or modify some of the bard spells, including the shadow evocation/conjuration spells.

The spell point system is cool. There is a slight complication with different classes regaining spell points at different rates under different conditions, but you adjust quickly. Same with nobility gains/losses being tied to specific deeds (note that the deeds are "knight" oriented, and there isn't much there for ladies (unless they are knights as well)).

You probably will need to be firm and restrictive on certain things (like equipment - no repeating crossbows!) in order to keep the Arthurian theme going.

Fate and Destiny are fun, although I am more loose with both than the book says to be.

Of course, you have to rely upon your players not to metagame. Most people know the King Arthur story. And there is also the "in the shadow of BETTER knights" problem. I get around it a bit by setting the campaign at a slight distance from Camelot, in Ireland.
 

Thanks, that's helpful hearing from someone who runs/plays it.

This is going to sound crazy, but I had thought to run it as a setting in and of itself...meaning "no Earth or Arthur" if that makes sense. Basically use the themes and the mechanics to do a Arthurian game without Arthur or those legends persay.
 

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