Mazes and Minotaurs

Mazes & Minotaurs is an indie role-playing game by Olivier Legrand. It aims to create a game which is what "Dungeons and Dragons" would have been, "if its authors had taken their inspiration from Jason & the Argonauts (yes, the 1963 movie with all the cool Ray Harryhausen monsters) and Homer’s Odyssey rather than from Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings or Poul Anderson’s Three Hearts & Three Lions." [http://storygame.free.fr/MM1.html]

The materials purport to be reprints of publications from the 70s and 80s; they are available in the '1972 original rules' and the '1987 revised rules'. In reality, the '1972' rules were released in 2006 [http://index.rpg.net/display-entry.phtml?mainid=115] and the '1987' rules in 2007. The '1987' rules parallel 1st edition Advanced Dungeons and Dragons, with a 'Players Manual', 'Maze Masters Guide', and 'Creature Compendium', instead of a Players Handbook, Dungeon Masters Guide and Monster Manual. The '1972' rules parallel earlier Dungeons and Dragons publications.

Both versions contain fictional material about Mazes and Minotaur's influence on role-playing. This material often parallels the real history of role-playing; for example it mentions 'Griffin' magazine, which parallels Dragon magazine, and 'GlyphQuest', which parallels RuneQuest.

However the game is intended to be a properly playable game rather than just a satire and tribute. A review on rpg.net stated that "I can only tell that he achieved [this aim] and did it very well" [http://www.rpg.net/reviews/archive/12/12092.phtml]

Rules

The most important mechanism of the game is basically the same as in Dungeons and Dragons: roll a 20-sided dice, add a modifier based on an attribute, and compare the resulting score to a target difficulty. However the game uses its own set of rules, rather than the d20 system. It is considerably more 'rules-light' than Dungeons and Dragons [http://games.groups.yahoo.com/group/mazesandminotaurs/message/1706] . For example, the Maze Masters Guide has 49 pages, not counting the front cover. The 1st edition Dungeon Masters Guide has over 200.

The game is intended to have "a genuine old-school, 1970s feel, reminiscent of early D&D" [http://storygame.free.fr/how.html] . That is, it is intended to have some features which are typical of early role-playing games, but not typical of contemporary games. Some examples are:

i) The game is 'class and level based'; that is,
* each character is a member of exactly one class, which represents what 'type' of character they are and is the main determinant of their abilities,
* each character is at a specific level, which broadly represents their experience and power and increases as the characters complete adventures.

In this it is unlike 'skill-based' role-playing games such as RuneQuest, where characters pick a combination of a broad variety of skills, or the current edition (as of 2008) of Dungeons and Dragons, which combines a class/level system with a system of skills and 'feats'.

The results of this decision are that character creation is much quicker, and there is far less customisation of characters, than in many contemporary games.

ii) The game treats non-human 'races' (species) as classes - for example every Nymph character is a member of the Nymph class, and similar for every Centaur. In most contemporary fantasy role-playing games, if there are both classes and races, characters have both a class and a race (so that a character may be a 'halfling rogue' for example).

iii) There is no variety of 'career' progression available to characters. That is, a character who starts as a Noble can only ever become a more powerful Noble (by gaining levels), and similarly a character who starts as a Thief can only ever become a more effective Thief. In many games, characters have a choice of skills that they can learn, and may be able to move from one profession to another.

The game's classes are divided into three broad categories: warriors, magicians, and specialists. This three-way division is similar to the three classes in True 20, or as an option in D&D's Unearthed Arcana. Specialists are a general 'everyone else' category, and currently (as of November 2007) include Hunters, Thieves, and Mariners.

Adventures

As of April 2008, there are four adventures published for Mazes and Minotaurs, all in the magazine-style expansion 'Minotaur'.

Distribution

All game materials are available for free download from the game's website.

External links

* [http://storygame.free.fr/MAZES.htm home page]
* [http://games.groups.yahoo.com/group/mazesandminotaurs Mazes and Minotaurs Yahoo group]
* [http://www.rpg.net/news+reviews/columns/tempus12nov02.html original article which inspired the idea]