Warrior, Rogue, And Mage.

In the past I used to love big heavy games. Gurps, Hero, and any number of big games. But a lot has changed in past years. Between time constraints and real life intruding my attitude has really changed. These days I really love rules lite games.

A little while back I stumbled across this game over on Stargazer's world. A blog that I visit almost if not daily. The game is called Warrior, Rogue, and Mage.

Its simple and light system, But modular enough to add to it as you see fit. One main concept of the game is no classes. Instead the classes Warrior, Rogue and Mage are your main attributes. The more you put into that attribute the better you are at doing things associated to that class. Warrior is your base attribute for combat and feats of strength. Rogue is your base attribute for subterfuge and feats of agility. Mage is your base attribute for Arcana and Feats of Intellect.

The customization you can put into your character using this system is great. If for example you wanted to make a ranger you could put points into Warrior and Rouge. A Cleric could be a mix of Warrior and Mage.
And an arcane assassin would be a mix of Rogue and Mage. This is a huge step ahead of most simple fantasy systems where picking a race and class combo is about as custom as it gets. There is a good number of examples of fantasy races.

Skills and talents round out the character creation process. (not looking at magic yet). Skills are simple you either are skilled or you are not. A skill gives a +2 bonus to rolls covered by that skill. You can only take a skill based on one of the core attributes if the character has at least one point in that attribute. So if you have no points in rogue, you cant take the thievery skill for example. This is elegant and simple.

The next thing about WR&M I really like is task resolution. Its a roll a D6 and add the appropriate attribute and skill bonus if you are skilled. The die can "explode" meaning if you roll a 6 you count and roll the die again and add it to the total. Adding any more rolls of 6 the same way and rolling again. You roll against a target number based on how complex the task is.

The magic system is a mana point system with difficulties to cast based on how high the circle (level) of the spell is. With armor subtracting from spell casting rolls. The spell list is small but surprisingly covers a lot of ground. Also simple and elegant.

Combat is Hit point based with rolls being made against the targets defense attribute. Combat rolls explode if the character has an appropriate skill and damage rolls always explode.

There is still more I could cover but I'll have to leave it at that for now.

This is a GREAT rules light system. Well worth checking out. A 5 out of 5. To me this is the perfect kind of rules light game. Its light enough for a quick 1 shot, maybe on a night the normal group cant get together. With enough meat on its bones to give it re-playability. And its modular enough to custom to taste for your own setting.