Barbarians of Lemuria: Sword & Sorcery Role-playing Game, Legendary Edition

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I miss the illustration of the Worker career that was in Legendary edition. Ha hmmm...The notebook version was the first edition. The free online version was the second. Legendary was the third. Mythic is the Fourth. I think that was the development cycle. Instead of skills, the game has 'careers'. Characters will start with a number of ranks in four different careers. Careers can be things like 'thief', 'mercenary', 'alchemist', etc. Attribute raises cost current level + new level... Same for combat abilities. Note that 3 is maximum starting, but 5's are reasonably attainable, for both, without supernatural explanations.

But after that you get right into the base mechanic and other material. The basic mechanic of the game is based on a simple 2d6 mechanic in the style of Traveler: a roll of 9+ is a success, 8- is failure. A natural 2 is always failure, a natural 12 is always success. You can also get bonus dice, which means you roll 3d6 (or 4d6) and keep the best two, or flaw dice, where you roll 3d6 and keep the worst two. If we slay the Lord Mayor’s prized Boorm Cat,” the little man whispered, “he’ll have us killed immediately. He thinks of that damned thing as his own flesh and blood.”Or, more reasonably, he could spend them to raise assassin and soldier both to 5: 4+5+2+3+4+5=23 points, plus another to level 2 (1+1+2) for the same 27 points. Advancement Points is a lot... it's 10 novella's worth of growth... be stingy with that third point if shooting for 20 stories. BoL splits the skulls of all other fantasy games to the teeth with a single, savage blow. A simple system that effortless recreates a specific genre leading to swift, exciting play. Magnus came to Galiana from the far northern land of Arunbjørn to seek his fortune using the only tool he truly possesses – his great strength. After one too many “excessive” incidents as doorman of the Reine d’Émeraude tavern he found himself working for less and less respectable employers. Magnus takes more pleasure in violence than even most of the criminals in Yllons.

In the end it's a very cool system that really works well at the table, you really feel like you're going on a sword & sorcery adventure (and not a random fantasy game). Years later my group still has fond memories of our campaign. It's a breeze to run as a GM and if your players are not adverse to light rules you should have a short yet pretty darn good time. I originally thought the careers were great, but they kind of fall apart in play. Basically, a player almost always has a career relevant to a roll if they want it. I would probably make someone tie it to an attribute In the future. It's an easier fix if you instead of something like theif, you get them to make it more specific, so like con man or burglar. RPGs are horrible at "telling stories". If you don't try to somehow 'force' RPGs to tell stories, then the only stories you end up making out of them are COINCIDENTAL. They are for 'telling stories' only in the same sense that golf or fishing is for 'telling stories', that's not really the goal, and golfing stories or fishing stories are just something that happens but no one goes golfing or goes fishing to try to 'make a story' from those activities; and 9 times out of 10, the 'story' of any random Golfing, Fishing, or RPG session are going to be pretty rambling and pointless, if not outright boring.If you want a low fantasy priest it's Probably the best one I've seen. It makes the gods feel very distant. BoL has enough structure for new players to grasp it immediately, and simple mechanics that allow GMs to improvise in novel situations.