Category: Games

Reign is an interesting system by Greg Stolze. It’s a fantasy variant of the system underlying Godlike and typically involved rolling pools of d10 and looking for matches. In general, there are two things you’re looking for with those matches– more matches is good [and reflects skill], high numbers on the matching dice indicates luck, and tends to act as a tie breaker. (Though combat has some interesting quirks, where the number on the die indicates his location.)

Die pools are enhanced with specialty dice with specific functions, some pools act differently than others [blocks, dodges, parries, and other defensive maneuvers are “gobble dice” with different rules], and so on. The basic rules look a little complex on paper, but will probably be second nature by the end of the first session. Many additional rules are included from advanced combat to special abilities (that reduce the cost of maneuvers, provide new options, or otherwise tweak the rules for a narrow application– including magic).

The world is interesting– rather than high or low magic, it’s a more firmly mythical world. The continents are literally the bodies of sleeping gods [see the reign page animation], magic is narrow and tightly coupled to the history of specific cultures, etc. A cool thing is that he’s put out several supplements, not quite for free, but using the Ransom model.

There is some errata, but it’s actually pretty light (a few typos, some page number references are incorrect), and the slight errata does a good job of clarifying the errors. (Evidently the corrections were made before the softcover was printed, so it should have even fewer errors.)

An important element is that the game is setup for the PCs to be tied to their communities (somewhat like Aria), and typically the PCs are leaders or participants in various organizations [called companies throughout]. The intended scope of companies is huge– from gangs fighting for over control of a district to Empires competing. The scale looks too compressed, but I haven’t playtested it– the proof’s in the pudding. I’m interested to see how well they integrate– Birthright, mass combat rules and the like have taken a stab at this before– but they typically separate the individual and political scale events so you’re playing two linked games. It’ll be interesting to see if Reign overcomes that, or if it also plays out as two lightly linked games. I’d be happy to play and find out!