Prince Valiant is a very rare game: a roleplaying game
with an emphasis on storytelling aimed at novice GMs (and players, of
course - though any RPG can introduce novice players to the hobby if
the GM is experienced). Unlike other games which pretend to be aimed
at the novice GM, Prince Valiant really works.
Setting
The setting is, of course, taken from the long-running comic strip of
the same name. The excellent artwork is by Hal Foster, and adds much
to the book. Prince Valiant takes place in a
semi-historical world of Arthurian times, so the scenarios are
sufficiently common enough to be accessible to most modern Western
people. It's low magic, to say the least: there are magical
events in the setting, but they are rare. Most such manifestations are
pseudo-magic: fakery, psychological trickery, whatever. The same with
monsters: there are some dragons and trolls, but most creatures are
real-world animals. Still, there's enough otherworldliness about the
game to appeal to one's yearning for the fantastic, without being
drowned in it.
Character Creation
The actual game mechanics are deliberately simple, and work very well.
There are only two attributes: Brawn and Presence. These stats range
from 1 to 6, and PCs start with seven points to distribute between
Brawn and Presence as they see fit. Brawn covers all your physical
traits, and Presence your mental and psychic traits.
There are numerous skills in the game, but all are fairly broad
skills. These range from Arms (combat weapon skills) to Riding to
Healing to Fellowship to Glamourie (manipulative skills), etc. A PC
starts with nine points to allot to six beginning skills. As with
attributes, skills range from 1 to 6. Sometimes you add your attribute
and skills, other times you just use one or the other - the game gives
very good guidelines on when to combine them and when not to.
Action Resolution
The book goes into very good detail, using artwork from the comic strip
in very clear style, to illustrate just how the new GM should handle
action resolution.
And fortunately, it's simple: the GM sets a task difficulty from 1
to 5 with 1 being a very easy task, 3 being a normal difficulty task,
and 5 being a very difficult task. The GM then tells the player which
attribute/skill to use, and the player throws that many coins. Each head
result counts one, each tail result counts zero. (If you find tossing
six coins to be awkward, you could roll dice: each odd number equals one,
each even number equals zero.) If the player has enough heads showing,
his character succeeds at the task.
For example, if your Presence is 4 and your Oratory skill 2, you
would throw six coins to stir an audience to your cause. If you were
a fighter who had put all his points into Brawn and physical skills,
however, you might have a Presence of 1 and probably no Oratory skill
at all: throw 1 coin. You'd have a much tougher time swaying even a
sympathetic audience to your point of view. The number of heads needed
to succeed would be set by the GM, based on how friendly toward your
cause the audience is to begin with. A very easy audience to win over
would only require 1 head, while a very difficult audience would require
5 heads.
Conflict between two characters is handled by comparing results against
each other - who throws more heads - as opposed to a set difficulty level.
Hits in combat reduce your coins, so it gets harder and harder to win
the more wounded you are.
Fame
There is a big section on experience, which is called Fame in this game.
You get to add or raise a skill with a certain amount of Fame, but
there are other game effects: crowds gather when you come to town, if
you have enough Fame. Brigands run away from an area before you even
get to fight them. You get challenged to a joust by up-and-coming young
knights, eager to prove themselves, and so on. Very nicely done.
Game Mastering
Storytelling is emphasized, and there's a large section on how to
maintain a storytelling atmosphere. This is recommended reading for
all GMs no matter what game you run.
The book includes basic rules, advanced rules, optional rules, world
background, an extensive section for a new GM on running a game, lots
of illustrations including a castle plan, a map, sample characters,
blank character sheets, twenty sample adventures, and more.
Summing Up
Although out of print, you can still find Prince Valiant,
and I recommend you pick up a copy sometime. Young people are
constantly growing into the age to be introduced to the hobby, and this
is one of the best games I know for doing it. It allows them to be
heroes, avoiding the World of Darkness trap, and is so simple they
concentrate on playing the role, seeding good roleplaying habits that
should last them the rest of their lives. Recommended.
(Note: it would be a piece of cake to translate the attributes, skills,
and setting to Fudge.
The only reasons to do this would be if you prefer word descriptions
of trait levels to numbers [such as being "Good at Arms" instead
having "Arms 4"], and to use the Fudge 4d3 system,
which I feel is superior to the binary system of Prince
Valiant. But these are minor disputes with the system -
it's really fine the way it is, and is one of the few RPGs I
would run as is, without converting to Fudge!)
Prince Valiant the Storytelling Game is the Registered
Trademark of Chaosium Inc., and is used with their permission. Chaosium
Inc. is the Registered Trademark of Chaosium Inc.
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