Gaming, adventure, trolls and heroes. What's not to like?
Heroic fantasy role playing with a simple system, this book is the core of the rules and covers character creation, combat and skills, plus foundational rules for things like fatigue, memory and movement. Additional books include an expanded combat system, more detailed character races, religion, more types of magic than you can shake a wand at, and a fully realized spirit world.
The Troll & Hero system uses both skills and classes so that you can use level based character classes to get started, yet smoothly transition to completely skill based play when comfortable with the rules and desiring the extra freedom. Moreover, the two approaches can be freely intermingled as they are only two faces of the same coin. Both are first-class citizens with classes having the advantage of simplicity and completely skill based being more flexible.
The alignment system used is innovative with four alignment axes (Natural/Creative and Positive/Negative in addition to the traditional Good/Evil and Lawful/Chaotic) and uses the concept of traits to determine an alignment score. Discover your character’s alignment by working through his personality using a bottom-up approach rather than trying to interpret a general alignment to specific traits or behaviors.
The combat rules are simple and intuitive, but provide a flexible approach that permits both realism and fantastic elements. The magic rules provide a basic framework for magic that is seen, heard and smelled without locking it down to a specific approach. The spirit rules follow in a similar vein by providing the core definitions and rules for including spirits in game play.
These core systems can be fleshed out by the aspiring game master, or the official expanded rules can be used which provide for martial arts, additional skills and classes, more hazards, and so on. There are also additional rules to expand the scope of magic to include many different approaches including a variety of religions.
As if that weren’t enough, here’s what people are saying about it:
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