Review: Warrior, Rogue and Mage

Welcome, new visitors!

You may just be aware that I am the least old school thing that exists on the RPG blogosphere. While other people have warmed up to those charming old schoolish things ever since their whole movement began, I was never interested in that play style or in the minimalistic rules systems which supported it. I play games like GURPS, Dark Heresy, and up until a while ago D&D 4th Edition. The only rules lite game I thoroughly enjoy  is Maid: RPG. That should tell you something about my O’ skool cred (when I think of rpg-esque fantasy anime I think of Utawarerumono and Tower of Druaga, not Slayers or Loddoss).

However, I was asked by my friend Stargazer to review his new game “Warrior, Rogue and Mage.” One thing I do very much love about the old school guys and gals is how much homebrew stuff they do. As seen by this site, I am very much pro-homebrew. And since Stargazer is like one of my rpg blog uncles (he’s the German uncle, Greywulf is the Brittish uncle, Chatty is the Canadian uncle, Highmoon is my latino uncle, Quinn Murphy, Danny Rupp and Dave Chalker are the American uncles…) I thought I’d look at it, and try to look at it from the perspective of someone who enjoys these sorts of games – hey I’m a roleplayer so I should be able to roleplay this. However, it turns out I didn’t really have to. It seems a pretty enjoyable little game even outside that niche.

This review started off kinda weird because I am starved for familial ties.

The Actual Review

Warrior, Rogue and Mage is a game by Michael Wolf of Stargazer Games. It is a free, 39 page pdf with a good two-column layout and decently readable fancy-text. I say this because I’ve met with a lot of fancy fonts that just plain hurt my eyes, and these don’t. There’s some artwork spread around that is suitable to the subject matter. It is placed rather well – you won’t see me complaining about broken layouts or interrupted reading.

The game’s rather charming attribute system ranks a character in three different “stats” – Warrior, Rogue and Mage. Rather than classes, each character is ranked according to how well they display the qualities of these archetypes. If your character is strong and tough, he or she has a high rating in Warrior, for example. You can assign your stats freely among the three attributes when you create your character – you have enough points to begin either well rounded in all of them, hyper-specialized in one and with the leftovers in the others, or a few other spreads. The game recommends beginners spread their stats around.

Characters also have HP, fate points and mana, which are boosted by the Warrior, Rogue and Mage attribute respectively. Characters with 0 Rogue have 1 fate point anyway. Characters in the game have skills and talents, skills working as they usually do and talents being static abilities. Actually having skills seems something that sets it apart from most old school games I’ve read, which eschew or outright consider them malign. The skills don’t have many rules attached – the game uses a simple roll of a d6, add modifiers, roll high resolution for everything, shaken up with opposed checks.

The magic system is pretty simple. You have your spells, and you have to roll against their difficulty level to cast them. If you’re armored, they cost more mana to cast, and you can spend more mana to cast stronger versions of the spell. The spells are all very brief and none devolve into much rules legalese about their functional range and whatnot. There are four “circles” or levels of spells, each circle being harder and more expensive to cast.

The game has a very brief equipment list that includes something called a Dragon Rifle that seems pretty cool. All the costs are in silver pieces.

Overall it seems like a decent, flexible little game. Everything is very simple, the rulebook is very short, and I like that it encourages “multiclassing” right off the bat. If I want to have a warrior that casts spells I just take 5 ranks in warrior and 4 in mage and maybe 1 in Rogue for good measure and there I go, and I buy a few spells, and I get a sword and armor and I’m off. You can have as much or as little of the classes as you want which can generate some decently flexible characters. The fact that the game actually has a skill list is great – the fact that the game encourages you to expand the skill list to your taste is even better. The skills are very flexible and the universal rules means it’s easy to remember how they all function, how to apply them and how to improvise with them as the situation demands.

Now, comes to the part where I have to level the same criticism I level to all of these games. It is very much a personal criticism, and it is something that can be easily remedied, but I still have to say it as it is part of my general gaming philosophy. The game itself takes the all too familiar position that mages get to have cool little blocks of rules text they can swing around and the warriors don’t, because weapon combat is something mundane. Now, in this particular game, this isn’t so bad. There are a few avenues you can turn to, and this is blunted by the fact that anyone can be a mage – in fact the game thinks everyone should be a mage since it recommends everyone take some of each attribute, including mage. You could easily model things like tripping and bull rushing through opposed checks, and there are some rules like berserking and dual wielding in the optional section. But I think with rules as minimalistic as this, you could have quite easily included something like “a character gets one [weapon stunt/martial maneuver/etc] for every 3 ranks of Warrior” and written up a few little things for them. Go through the 3.5 SRD and you have things like power attack or cleave, whirlwind attack, spring attack, manyshot, or even the good ol’ sneak attack, that are still functional to the grognardiest of grognards without swinging towards 4e powers. It would’ve been interesting to see.

Despite this it’s a good rules-light fantasy game that manages to stand out from the landscape of these relatively well, and I applaud Michael Wolf for it. For a free book, it has a great layout, a nice character sheet and ample artwork. While it won’t supplant any of the games I’d play for a long campaign, it is a nice alternative for a quick party game to tuck away when people vehemently don’t want to play Maid: RPG, and I still, for whatever reason, want to associate with them despite that.

Thanks for stopping by guys! Hope you something else in this blog suits you! I'll go back to my usual business now, doo dee doo dee doo~