What we have here is a hybrid game. It presents traditional skirmish gaming in a newish light, and combines it with ideas drawn from role playing games. More accurately, it offers personal development, by which your character is initially fleshed out and then gains experience, skills and reputation (both abstract and anecdotal) as he progresses through the game. This latter has been done before, by the Mike Blakes and Howard Whitehouses of this hobby, in GDW's En Garde, in countless computer games, and boardgames such as Squad Leader and Eric Goldberg's seminal Tales of the Arabian Nights. LoA shares much with these antecedents, but still delivers a fresh overall take with a heavy miniatures slant.

The problem with the hybrid is that it can sometimes inherit the negative characteristics of its parents, as well as the good. This hasn't happened in LoA, but the union has left some rough corners and small rules holes where RPG and miniatures concepts haven't quite meshed together. In play, these are aggravated by unusual situations and will need patching and, where they are nebulous, a ruling. The THW approach, nay philosophy, is that you can do whatever you like to resolve such queries as long as you are having fun. In fact, where a rule could work two ways, you are actively encouraged to choose, or even do both! This could be considered a cop out, akin to the catch all rules we often see, but here I can see that it might just work. If you are playing solo, as I did, then you just decide what rule interpretation you prefer and come up with a ruling. If you are on a team, you can discuss it or roll a die. And if you have an umpire, end of problem.

LoA strictly isn't a role playing game though. It thinks it is, and perhaps has aspirations in that direction, but it isn't. And my view is that it works precisely because it doesn't go very far along this route. What it does do is take some elements of the RPG genre – a controlling authority, character background, skills and 'level' advancement, task performance and reward, and proto-narrative. These it adds to its own original combat system, throws in reaction tests and challenges to spice, and off you go. In case you are wondering whether this review should really be in The Dragon, LoA has a firm bias towards combat. Specifically with miniatures and terrain. The role playing stuff adds value, but is low key, and can be largely ignored if you want to play stand alone scenarios, or if it just doesn't appeal. The emphasis here is 1:1 skirmish gaming, with each character having a set of negotiation skills, but fighting (or in some cases, magic) is always a prominent option. Players can control more than one figure (one of the main refutations of the RPG allusion), and I have heard of games with 30 figures a side working well. But if you like the idea of otherwise stand alone games being tied together by characters' life stories, and a coherent background where wounds, losses and reputations are meaningful, then LoA may ring your bell. It will also work if you like to be carried along by events. With the right attitude, LoA can lift you from the 'kill the opponent, stay alive' mentality to something altogether more chaotic, freeform, fast moving and interesting. And that from what is obviously a first pass design; subsequent enhancements should make for very interesting reading.

The actual systems are largely based on a neat, common mechanic. This covers morale, events, reactions, combat and tasks among others. Two d10s are rolled, and are compared to a skill rating, morale level or similar – effectively a target number. Two 'passes' (both dice lower) means a success, one pass gives an indeterminate outcome, and no passes is usually a failure – perhaps death if climbing a tower, or simply failing to pick a lock or reload in time. And because the mechanics are consistent, and the reaction driver is quite elegant, it all moves along quickly and 'cinematically'. To reinforce that metaphor, Mr Teixeira suggests that the game is played out like a film, with your characters as the stars and presumably you as director, making ad hoc calls to improve the plot. This I understand, and used to run loosely umpired (i.e. stage managed) skirmish games this way, with RPG rules, emphasising a decent storyline.

So far, so good. If any ruleset delivered the above features, I would consider it money well spent. But LoA goes a step further and provides a rudimentary but eminently useable campaign setting, useful for that 'film' continuity, and enough scenario themes to provide an awful lot of gaming. You will ultimately need to provide more material, but if you have exhausted that supplied you are probably going to be a convert and keen to design your own stuff. This approach is typical of the RPG format, where one buys rules and a couple of scenarios or a sourcebook might be included to get you going.

So why wouldn't one just take one of the many existing RPG systems out there, such as D&D, or perhaps GURPS, and use that to play? Indeed, THW flirted with delivering some of their games using the now ubiquitous, open licence 'd20' brand (where a twenty sided die is used to resolve most tasks). After all, a few of us probably own one or more of these systems already. One can even buy supplements and modules (the old TSR Al Qadim range, GURPS Arabian Nights and a couple of CCGs) specifically geared to the background, and thus a good source for more ideas. They might take more work if an umpire is used, they would be more expensive and one may have to adapt the core rules or accept a generic feel. Almost certainly, they are a sledgehammer to crack a nut. Otherwise, I guess it will come down to personal preference, and what you know. LoA scores because it is all there, it is not rules heavy, and it lets you dip your toe into RPG Lite to see if it works for you.

Where LoA also scores is in coming closer to pulling off the gaming holy grail – a uni-sided or solo game that feels like an umpired game. It does this through some clever smoke and mirrors. It works because of an encounter generation system based on non-player characters (NPCs), with whom, in a very limited fashion, one can interact. Boiled down, the real aim here is to create parameters and, importantly, rationalization for a tabletop scenario – an adventure 'seed' in hobby parlance. NPCs can display a number of reactions (largely dice and modifier driven), while number, type and quality of opponents all vary, and so many different outcomes are possible. These in turn may lead to secondary encounters such as a quest, a battle with slavers or monsters, or perhaps a mission to rescue a princess. Thus we get flavour with minimal overhead. The LoA encounters have been made to stand alone, having a title (so you know where to use it), with built in opponents or allies, terrain, events, situations and outcomes. And of course a random element increases the variety such that it should be some while before a situation triggers deja vu.

The system fan in me immediately spotted a modular system that could be adapted and expanded by both the designer and players. You only need to hear about the projects THW and fans have underway to see how this 'cookie cutter' approach might work – the structure remains essentially static, while settings, ratings, weapons and NPCs change. So we can look forward to 1920's daredevils, high (or low) fantasy, science fiction, adventure and perhaps even carefully chosen historical topics. One can see these settings being produced as fast as Mr Teixeira can write them, and that turns out to be quite quickly (he says, on his third draft of the review). In theory, these encounters can be grouped together in a themed adventure or campaign, providing a consistent stream of gaming, while many will be reusable elsewhere. Some of them might be applied in both campaign and tactical timescales, and you will doubtless think of other uses. I also wonder if the concept could be scalable, so that encounter modules (or at least the idea) could be adapted for battles, or even army level campaign games. It may well be that THW's other games have already covered this.

The main drawbacks are twofold; firstly as varied as the system appears to be, this is largely illusory, and ultimately it may become repetitive. This is because a) the encounter structure/terminology is of necessity fixed, and b) in the manner of a Liz Hurley dress, there is actually little holding the encounters together apart from the common characters (you), the milieu and your imagination. True, we have some triggers into secondary encounters, and the quest sub-game is quite strong, but there is usually no true thematic linkage between the scenarios – so things happen, but they don't always happen in logical order, or for reasons relating to 'the plot'. If LoA were a movie, it would be Mulholland Drive. Indeed, a cohesive plot doesn't exist beyond what you build in your mind, mentally filling in the gaps between unrelated encounters. But then I had a lot of fun doing that, and there were few anomalies, so the result is acceptable. And it undoubtedly shows potential. After all, this is not a scripted computer game, and the rulebook is 70 pages long, not 700; we are looking at a realistic compromise.

In time, despite the random factor, you will get to know what type of encounters you can expect, which core situations are used repeatedly, who appears, and what happens when you chat up the princess – a similar outcome to playing a paragraph game book several times. And compounding this, the words used in the gambits, reactions and encounters are limited, and will therefore become over familiar. Arguably though, by that stage you will have had more than your money's worth. This is essentially what sets it apart from an umpired role playing game, where actions are theoretically unrestricted and the gamemaster should ensure that the plot is consistent, that the pace and interest are maintained, and that repetition is rare. In turn, player responses in LoA are limited as well. However many options one may seem to have, the answer is often really combat. Much of the game's long term appeal will be down to how much of that you can take, and whether you relate to the combat system. I liked it, but you can have too much of a good thing.

Secondly, the system itself is rather chart and dice heavy, sometimes a sure sign that a computer game has emerged on paper. This is a price for the increased narrative depth the game attempts. Again, this could be offset by a human umpire, which would actually be very interesting to try. Another driver in the game is the reaction check, which gives characters and units some of their 'independent' feel, and some required twists to the storyline. Again, showing its design roots, there are quite a lot of these. Granted, with more figures per side, you can abstract them up a level (so the whole unit tests rather than individuals), or perhaps even sometimes ignore them on a considered basis, which should speed the game up.

Overall then, LoA packs an awful lot into one booklet. It works as an unusual, 'crossover' rule set, with bolt-on elegant 'role play' ideas to offer a semblance of a continuous saga. It gives you ready made scenarios and wide scope for many more, with free expansion and variant support on the web. It also provides a sound rules structure to exploit, interpret, tweak or add to as you see fit. And if either the miniatures or the RPG aspect appeals or annoys, you can balance to suit. I don't think for a minute this hybrid mixture, or even the subject matter, will appeal to everyone, but for those who value innovation, narrative and atmosphere, and some meaning to those otherwise groundless scenarios, it is worth making the effort.

So, unlike so many designers, Ed Teixeira delivers most of what he has promised. And unlike many games Legends of Araby reads well, breaks rules, and has plenty of interest – I found it a useful spark for ideas. It also requires you to do quite a bit of work in the imagination department, partly to help smooth out those grey areas. Perhaps for this reason alone its fantasy setting is apposite; we shall see if the historical settings work as well. Personally, I am looking forward to reading and trying the other games in the series, and seeing the planned iterations of the LoA approach. As these are being developed at a formidable rate of knots, it should be quite a ride. Recommended.

    "Well, you sold me. Quite the writeup. As I select the 5 gg award setting I hope to myself you're not the author of the game."

    That's what I wrote when I modded this, but as usual, any long review clears geekmod before I get a chance to read it and accept or decline, and then my screen hangs. A bit frustrating.

    Well written, well reasoned, and has exactly the level of technical depth that I look for in a review -- not too deep into the weeds.

             Sag.

Thanks. I try not to do the weed thing!