Barbarians of Lemuria is my Day 22 entry in the 2024 #CharacterCreationChallenge. I was able to pick up a hardbound copy of this book at a gaming swap meet at SaltCON last year at a good price. So I thought I’d use it for a challenge entry.
The book appears to have been published in 2009. There is no copyright date, but the authors note at the front of the book have the 2009 dates on them. The book is 104 pages in length with and ISDN number of 5-800090-99678. It was written by Simon Washbourne and published by Beyond Belief Games. The character sheet is one page long and the character creation steps start on page 7. The core mechanic (explained on page 6) is to roll 2d6+attribute+combat ability or career skill+modifiers to exceed nine to succeed.
First step is to look over the careers and come up with a character concept. I see the standard class types, but then there are those like farmer, serving wench and beggar. I wonder if some of these were put in for the GM to create NPCs. With the name of the game being Barbarians of Lemuria, I think I’ll make a standard barbarian type character.
The four attributes are Strength, Agility, Mind and Appeal (aka Charisma). You start off with four points to spread between the attributes with no attribute being higher than 3 and you can buy down one attribute if you wanted to gain an extra point. An attribute with 0 represents an average rating. I made my selections.
Step three is to select your combat abilities. You once again have four points to spend between Brawl, Melee, Ranged or Defense (dodging, etc.). Same rules, max of 3 and can buy down if needed. Your Lifeblood (aka hit points) is 10+Str.
Next you choose four careers. I guess this may explain why there were some odd careers listed before. The character could have started out as a farmer then moved over to pirate (wink back at the Dread Pirate Roberts). Most of these don’t say anything about changes to the character stat wise, they just give some background and suggestions. So this guy was a Barbarian from the Valgardian Northlands. He also became a Hunter for his tribe until he was captured by slavers and turned into a Slave. The slavers sold him to be a Gladiator until he escaped.
Next you select your origin, or where you are from. Now you obtain boons an flaws for your character. As mentioned above, this guy is from the Valgardian Northlands, so I wrote down the boons and flaws obtained from his upbringing. He only gets one language, but thanks to one of his boons, he gets one more hero point than the standard five.
I don’t think the character creation process is done yet as the character isn’t equipped yet. The next chapter goes into combat and GMing.
Ah here it is on page 44. And it states “Give the players what they want”. Simple. The GM is advised on how to handle players who get greedy in this step.
Next it goes into spells. Not for this guy. Next. And, the book goes into descriptions of the game world and creatures. So I guess I’m done. I should write down a name. He random name generator come up with the name of a barbarian. Wow, there isn’t a good list on this one. After a few pages of choices came up I settled on Kruk. Here is the character sheet.
Afterthoughts:
The system seemed pretty simple and was explained before character creation (and expanded upon afterwards). I really wish that the book had a step-by-step guide as it suffered from next-chapteritis syndrome.
The system seems pretty straightforward and I liked the lightness of the book (especially after some of the doozies I’ve experienced recently). It’s too bad that I’ll probably never get a chance to play this at the table. There are a ton of fantasy RPGs and its hard to get excited about one that you’ll never get a chance to play.
Additional Notes:
After posting yesterday’s entry for Night’s Black Agents, I was able to locate the SRD for Gumshoe online. However I have not had a chance to look at it (I had already moved onto my next entry). I did get a response from a reader on Mastodon who talked a little about the system, but it was still a flavor that you’d have to get use to. It did lead to a discussion that I hadn’t considered with NBA. How the page layout and font size made the book a little hard for the person to read. Perhaps I hadn’t noticed it because I had the PDF set to display over 100%. A reader on the RPG.net forums mentioned that the mechanic was in the first two chapters, but admitted that the crunchiness in the text may have made it easier to overlook. He also informed me that the Trust, Drives and Sources of Stability were optional mechanics in the game. I was glad that he had pointed this out because I thought it had been a requirement.
Coming Up Next:
Starfinder
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