by Malcadon » February 21st, 2015, 1:57 am
Do anyone have the rules to this game? All I can find is the Russian translation. I used Google Translate to convert it into English, but a translation-of-a-translation-by-a-dyslexic would only yield a mess of a document!
Form the looks if things, it plays like Mutant Chronicles: Siege of the Citadel. You get a few actions that maybe used to attack or move three steps. Colored boxes are used to note dice color and number of dice rolled. The dice only notes hits and misses (4 hits on the black, 3 on red, and 2 black). Armor adsorbs hits, and monsters take one hit to die, while the heroes can take more. As Knights kill more monsters, they get EXP to move up a rank (Squire -> Knight -> Hero -> Prince -> Master), and they can get money to buy better items.
Beyond that, the rules have some other added rules. Searching seems to be limited to looking around all 8 adjacent squares, and making a die roll (based on rank) to succeed. Opening a door requires only requires an extra point of movement, while locked doors require a search action to open. There are also simple rules for traps, but they are all subject to the adventure notes. Orcs are you basic grunts, while Trolls are heavy-hitters, and Dark Lords can make nasty attacks based on color, with Blue being the most powerful (it can mimic any of the other three Dark Lords on each turn). The players have an option to play as Thieves, Rangers and Wizards. It notes a fair amount of rules for an 8-page booklet. So far, not too bad!
The game feels like it to be a gateway drug into the world of RPGs, but the play style is still a HeroQuest-styled dungeon-crawler, where you fight and explore, but there are hardly any rules or notes to make one's character progress beyond "Generic Green Knight IV". I mean, I could run the game as a simple RPG with deep stories, lots of interactive elements, characters with rich back stories, simple added rules to motivate the character's goals and actions, but for most kids jumping into this game would play it like HeroQuest and nothing else, while experienced role-players would rather use a "real" RPG system to get them hooked.