My friend Nick created a rules lite (and thoroughly untested) game for playing Legend of Zelda style adventures. The whole thing seems pretty charming.
Rulings should be grounded in the logic of Saturday morning cartoons, so that a skillfully swung butterfly net can deflect a ball of magical energy, and places can have names like “Death Mountain.”
I love these minimalist (and probably incomplete) sorts of games. Knave, Maze Rats, Searchers of the Unknown and all it’s other one page variants.
I haven’t played LoZ since… 25 years or more ago? I’m sure it’s still the same… I’ll check this out. Thanks for sharing!
Storm Riders! from Codex Joy 2 has similar cartoon logic and is a blast in play.
I’m getting an error with the Legend of Zelda link … is it just me?
I broke the link because I was worried about referrers, but maybe I’m just being paranoid. Fixed. (Will nuke this comment to tidy up later.)
I found the system interesting, but the success rate seems really low for me. I play Eldritch Horror (the boardgame) a lot, and it has a “5 or 6” result threshold and lemme tell you, it’s hard to get a hit, even with four or five dice. Since the player would be rolling 3d6 at best, it seems like a really tough system to get things done in
Thanks for fixing the link! I was able to look at the system, thanks for linking! Shoot, that was a pun.
When Nick showed a few of us his draft the likelihood of failure was the main thing everyone complained about. I’m not sure if his goal is that most resolution happens through players coming up with smart schemes that don’t require a dice roll at all? Perhaps.
That doesn’t super sound like Zelda though… Puzzles and combat go together, you don’t usually duck combat.
I suspect what would happen in play is giving people extra dice to roll for making smart choices, etc.
Ha! I appreciate their candor.
I like this game a lot. @shane mentioned Storm Riders! - they have some things in common, but there’s a critical difference between a Saturday morning cartoon and a Legend of Zelda game - in LoZ you can die. You can fail. But you can try again! In the context of this game, I think that means rolling up a new character. In any case, that changes the stakes and tone quite a bit.
I like the simplicity of the rules, the notes on the overworld vs. the underworld, the benevolent golden light that rewards the defeat of a great monster and the purification of the land, and the tricks you give to each monster.
The success threshold does seem low, but that could also encourage creative problem solving. I think if there was more direction on when the GM should call for a check (and when not to), that goal could be made a bit clearer.