Lords of Chaos Rules

[randy]

I've mentioned my game rules a few times in posts and have the new updates added (a new magic system and some tweaking). The melee/ranged combat is stable (it's been used extensively and works well), the magic system will need to be tweaked and tested during the campaign. There are still a few areas that need fleshing out but it's good enough to start the campaign in March (having patient players helps!)

This system is more complicated than many would probably like, and I run the encounters using conditionally formated spreadsheets and VBA programming to do all calculations for the monsters with a push of a button. Feel free to provide feedback or use anything that strikes your fancy in your own systems.

I deleted the last two magic categories (Base Spells by Point Cost and by Sphere) to stay under the posting limit size. They are just different ways of looking at the base spells. I have the Base Spells in an Excel format for anyone who wants to play with them.

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[anarkeith]

Thanks for sharing, Randy! I can testify that the system is very playable at different levels of player engagement. I suspect it is complicated to GM (I know you use custom-built spreadsheets to track combat), but I'm using software to track 4e combats now, so it's really not that different.

[randy]

One of the ironic things about this is that my system is designed for more elaborate (i.e. tactical) combat. When I first developed it I warned potential players about this, and how the combat took longer than D&D combat. Of course the advantage of those simple D&D combats is that they played fast, not a lot of complications, and left time for lots of other things- combat was deliberately distilled down for simplicity's sake. D&D combats now take just as long as mine do, but with combat still "simplified" and represented in ways that in my opinion don't balance well. If I'm going to have complicated combat encounters I want a higher degree of "realism". Otherwise give me a simple system that lets me focus on exploring the non-combat aspects of the story between combat encounters.

[anarkeith]

Good point about the bloat in D&D combat. Combats in LoC, while admittedly long, are almost always interesting. And given the vulnerability of the PCs, the situation can be volatile. That makes for a good sense of tension. Something modern D&D lacks, in my opinion.

Other systems, like Savage Worlds and Dragon Age have stunts and exploding dice mechanics that mimic the volatility of LoC, and thus have that tension as well. While I haven't played them, I suspect they'd fall into your "preferred" category of games that has simple, but exciting combat, leaving room for more involved role-playing and exploration.