Legacy WOA30AE EN:Introduction
Legacy: War Of Ages 30th Anniversary Edition
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Contents
Chapter One: Introduction
The apprentice dispatched the guard without effort or warning. He flowed quickly, softly through the partially lit corridors, past landscape wash paintings on cream stucco walls, up industrial grey back stairs. On the third floor he passed secured rooms, stopped at the double doors of a corner office. He opened the doors slowly, furtive, and stepped inside the darkness.
"She is one of them, of this you are sure." It was not a question, a hiss like broken glass. Dusky silver shadows from a dim computer screen were cast on the man behind the desk. The apprentice saw only a crest of shaggy white hair, a deeply scarred cheek on high bone, a thin arm in a black suit, no movement. The assassin moved closer.
Lord Knight Dardanais leaned into the ghostly glow, fixed his eyes on the apprentice. His eyes were freezing black stone, stopping the apprentice cold, constricting his muscles, his throat. The eyes bore into, through him, an intensity, a presence. Horrid ice electric fear channeled through sharpened obsidian.
"Good," whispered the Lord Knight of the Order of the Golden Light, the scarred Dardanais, master of assassins. "Very good. This is how you will begin," Dardanais said, summoning architectural plans to the computer screen.
Legacy: War of Ages is a role-playing game, a game of "let's pretend," where the players get to act out the characters of ancient powers engaged in an endless battle for supremacy. The object of the game, unlike a board game or a video game, is not to win the game, gain the most points, or kill the greatest number of non-human critters. The purpose of a role-playing game is to create a story.
Within these pages is the framework of a great epic, a sweeping drama of courage and passion, of loneliness and despair. All that is required to weave this great story is you and a few of your friends (a few "props" help, but we will get into that later). Through portraying the character of an "Immortal," you will fashion tales to rival those of Ovid or Shakespeare. Tales of tragedy and sacrifice. Sagas of heroism and triumph. Myths of love, loss, and revenge. And above all, a grand adventure.
Once you seize upon the idea of role-playing, it will consume your imagination. At its best, role-playing stirs the creative part of your soul like the finest literature. Even a mediocre game will shine compared to sitting passively in front of the television. In this role-playing game, the vehicle for your imagination is the Immortal. In Legacy: War of Ages, you portray an Immortal living in the United States of America in the early twenty-first century. This is not the only setting open to you: Immortals have been living among us since before the beginning of recorded history, and any epoch from the distant past or far future could as easily be the scene for the intense and poignant struggles of Immortals.
Immortals are like you and me, in that they are born of man and woman, eat, live, and grow. Immortals feel all that you feel, all the pleasure and pain that is the human experience. But Immortals cannot die. Whatever is it that gives us life, that makes us somehow separate from rocks, wind, and water, Immortals have it in great abundance. Immortals do not suffer from diseases, they do not grow old, and they cannot be killed through common means. But this gift of eternal life, the greatest gift of all, is also a curse. In a normal human lifetime there is pain aplenty, but eventually the end comes and we are granted rest. For an Immortal, there is no rest or reprieve from the pain of living. The Immortal is cursed to watch forever as all she loves withers and dies.
Playing Legacy: War of Ages is intended to be recreational and amusing, an enjoyable diversion for an afternoon with friends. Yet at the heart of the light there is the shadow of darkness, for to be an Immortal is to face the fleeting nature of life and laughter. To play Legacy is to realize that no love, no joy, no life will last forever, and that the end may be as near as the next heartbeat.
Role-Playing Defined
The Story
Today in the United States of America, television has become the great storyteller, bringing us a greater diversity of educational and entertaining stories than any civilization has ever known. Neither the epic cycles of ancient Greece nor the great Icelandic sagas can match a single U.S. television season for volume or variety. In the process, unfortunately, the experience of listening to a story has become passive, and very few of us tell stories to each other any more. We are instead content (most of us) to sit and be entertained with whatever comes our way over the air waves or from our satellite dishes. All too often, the quality and originality of our entertainment have been sacrificed for the higher goals of mass-marketing and advertising. One way of recapturing the spirit of creating a story and becoming involved in it is through "role-playing." Role-playing is the same thing most of us have done since we were children: Cowboys and Indians, Cops and Robbers, even "playing house." Adults have roles, too, although most people do not think about it that way. Doctor, Teacher, Boss, Wife, Husband, Parent. We choose our roles and interact with the roles others choose for themselves. In adult life, we often feel trapped by the roles we have chosen, because so much of our existence is dependent upon how others perceive us. In too many adult roles we are not rewarded for being imaginative or creative; we are expected to follow the crowd, and to conform. If we want to change our role in life, we fear we will be misunderstood, met with suspicion, or rejected. But in a role-playing game, unlike "real life," we are free to try new characters, then put them away when the game becomes dull, or when the roles become tiresome.
The Players
In a role-playing game, each player adopts a persona, or "Player Character" (also referred to as a "PC"). It's easy to get the players and the Player Characters confused, and sometimes the terms are used interchangeably. The players are the real people, the ones who have jobs and bought this game. The Player Characters are the imaginary people who only have an identity in the fictional world of Legacy: War of Ages. As obvious as this may seem, the border between character and player does occasionally get muddled.
The line between player and character tends to blur because the character has no life of its own without the player. The "mechanics" of making up a character in Legacy is kept purposely simple, but this assemblage of numbers and skills is only the tiniest part of creating a character. An ancient proverb says that we have many faces. Some we show others, some faces we reveal only to ourselves, and some faces we do not even show ourselves. A character is like one of these faces split apart and given its own life. Your character might be quite different from yourself, yet it must be a reflection of some fragment of your personality or you would not be able to play it effectively or enjoyably.
In many ways, the player is like an actor who chooses her own part and writes her own lines as the play progresses, like in improvisational theatre. What the player says is said by the Player Character, and what the player decides charts the course for the Player Character's life. The actual plot of the story is driven by the choices made by the players. The Game Moderator sets the stage and introduces the characters to their world, but it is the players who decide how their characters will make their fortunes in that world.
It is important to realize that, although the Player Characters are the axis around which the story revolves, the world does not exist solely for the characters' benefit. The world of Legacy has a depth and breadth as great as our own world, with all the light and darkness that entails. There are those who are at cross purposes with the PCs. Often these are other Immortals, but sometimes these are mortals who know and fear the Immortals' true nature. Acting in and reacting to this gritty near-future world, the players respond to the machinations of the Game Moderator.
The Game Moderator
Although it is much more difficult than being a player, the role of Game Moderator (usually abbreviated to "GM") is perhaps the most rewarding part of playing Legacy. The Game Moderator creates the storyline and portrays all of the Non-Player Characters (or "NPCs") that the Player Characters encounter during their adventures. The Player Characters explore and react to whatever fantastic adventures the Game Moderator concocts. But in reacting, the players help create the adventure, constantly responding in creative new ways to the challenges the GM presents. The GM must adapt and modify her plans to take into account the actions of the players, and this dynamic creative process creates a story which neither the Game Moderator nor the players could have created alone.
Most of what the GM does during a game is respond to the actions and decisions of the players. This can be a daunting task, because the players never do what you expect them to do. The GM has to adapt and adjust, and move on. This can sometimes be frustrating, and the Game Moderator must avoid the temptation of forcing or "railroading" the players into a set story-path. It is essential that the players' decisions are what guides the story, because without the players, there is no story.
The GM has a tremendous responsibility, because it is upon the GM's shoulders that the enjoyment of the players rides. The GM is charged with being both a judge and a storyteller, to balance the "rules" of the game with the greater good of creating an exciting adventure. The GM must constantly and fairly decide when to impose the written rules and when to ignore them. Not everyone has the temperament or skill to be the Game Moderator, nor do most players want the job. But there are few occasions as rewarding as moderating a successful game, where the Player Characters have laughed and cried, have loved and lost, where they have sacrificed everything for one small act of defiance against the consuming darkness that awaits us all.
Being the GM is a great deal of work, and it is always a work in progress. The old mansion on the corner, the strange man in the crowd, the woman with the emerald eyes who delivers the cryptic note: these are all fabrications of the GM. Every place the PCs go, every person they talk to, every ally and every enemy is the GM's creation and alter ego. The sun, moon, and sky are all under the GM's control. This book will try to make the GM's job as easy as possible, but the best way to become a good GM is by doing it. You may even find it leading to other creative things, like writing your own role-playing game.
Real Life
Of course role-playing and role-playing games are no substitute for "real life." Real relationships with real people have a satisfaction no game can match. But perhaps by exploring how we might react if the world was a bit different, and by feeling vicariously the thrill of doing great deeds for noble (or ignoble) causes, we may learn a bit about ourselves. We may even learn to empathize with others whose motivations or ethics differ from our own. At the very least, we are actively creating something: a story, an adventure, a myth about what it might be like, or what we might be like, if the courage of a brave, bold few could turn back the tides of Chaos and save the day (or die trying). And in creating something, no matter how small, we are enriched.
How To Use This Book
Philosophy
This book is organized so that you can read it and make up a character as you go along. Feel free to skip parts that look less interesting and come back to them later. The mechanics are left deliberately simple, in the belief that the mechanics of a role-playing game serve as the frame, while the game, the unfolding story, is the art. Too many well-meaning folks get so wrapped up in the instructions, in coloring "inside the lines," that they forget that the canvas is just there to give form to the painting. The rules of a role-playing game serve as a necessary boundary, as well, but only so that the players and the GM may have a common frame of reference. The frame should never diminish or become more important than the beauty of the art.
With this in mind, if there is a rule or a section of the rules that you and your friends do not like, feel free to ignore it. This book is not Holy Writ: it was written by a human being not too unlike yourself. There are no "official" rules. If a rule doesn't make sense to you or the folks with which you are playing the game, then vote on it, or make up your own rules. Use the ideas in this book with another game system, if you are already familiar with another game and enjoy playing it. Or ignore the rules completely if you like, as long as everyone playing can agree on what is and is not allowed in the game. Above all, do what makes sense to you, be creative, and have fun.
Set-Up
Ideally, the game should be played in a fairly quiet place with a nice stereo system (for that all-important mood music). Everyone should be seated comfortably around a table or some other flat surface so that each person has plenty of room for her character sheet, dice, paper for various notes and sketches, and vital drinks and goodies. There should be enough light to read by, and the music should not be so loud that the players have to shout to be heard. Obviously, your group needs at least one copy of this book, but it's a great deal more convenient if each player has her own copy.
If someone is shy or just naturally reserved, she should sit somewhere close to the Game Moderator so that she gets as much attention as the other players. It's easy for boisterous players to become carried away in the thrill of the moment, unintentionally ignoring a quiet player's input, but it's more fun if everyone feels like a part of the action. If a player ever seems to be drowned out or intimidated by the other players, either because she is new to "gaming" or simply because she is timid, the GM should make a point of politely interrupting the other players and asking the shy player what she would like to do.
Although not absolutely necessary, a hex map (usually a large vinyl sheet printed with a honeycomb pattern) can be useful for keeping track of the characters during confusing scenes like crowded brawls. The characters' locations on the map may be represented with anything from cunningly crafted pewter figures to little scraps of paper with the characters' names on them. If the GM has lots of dice, these are handy for representing bad guys, allies, innocent bystanders, or moveable objects like cars and trash cans. Felt-tip markers used for overhead projectors (not dry-erase markers — they will not wash off the porous vinyl used for most hex maps) can write on the vinyl to show streets, craters, trees, and the like, and can be wiped off the map with water after the game.
Other props can make the game more fun, as well. If the characters are at a bar, boozing it up (Immortals are highly resistant to the many detrimental effects of alcohol), perhaps the players could be drinking their beverages from pewter mugs. Candles add atmosphere to nearly any role-playing game, and dressing up like your character can be a fun and different thing to do once in a while. While swords are a central device used by the characters in the game, it's an extremely bad idea for the players to use any kind of weaponry while role-playing. It can add spice and atmosphere to the game if you happen to have a replica sword hanging over the fireplace, as long as it stays there.