Back to the Labyrinth with Labyrinth the Adventure Game

 Well it's a long time since I've been here... how are yous doing?

Inspired by a Facebook post from Dyson Logos about a Spirited Away-inspired game - Yazeba's Bed and Breakfast from Possum Creek Games https://possumcreekgames.itch.io/yazebas-bed-breakfast - I thought I'd say something about a non-D&D game I played a little earlier this year, and want to play more of.

As anyone who’s read the blog will know, I'm a massive fan of the movie Labyrinth (links to posts about Labyrinth specifically, and discussion of 'portal fantasy' where Labyrinth comes up, are here, here, here and here, and there are couple of unpublished posts too, which maybe I should look at...), so I decided to get my hands on the ‘Labyrinth – The Adventure Game’ RPG from River Horse Games - https://www.riverhorsegames.com/products/rh_lab_005. I'm going to do a little review of it here.

Dust-cover of the rulebook, (c) River Horse Games

 

First off, the book is very nicely produced. The illustrations are spot on, the maps are lovely (most of the book is the around 100 adventuring locations, mostly with maps and the occasional elevation drawing), the dice (there are 2d6 supplied with the book) have an owl in place of the one-spot, and for nerdy fans of the film like me the physical production of the book itself is a very pleasing Easter Egg.

The way the game works is that the PCs are an adventuring party and the GM takes the role of the Goblin King, who is forcing them to run through the Labyrinth, because they're trying to get something back from him. It doesn't have to be a kidnapped child, but almost anything else (in the rules there is an example party who are united in their desire to get a favourite hockey-stick back, but other suggestions include a fond memory or a singing voice) seems a bit anti-climactic after 'your helpless kidnapped sibling'. There is a time limit, as in the movie, and the PCs can fail by running out of time.

The Goblin King doesn't have to wear a wig and tight trousers, or do a David Bowie impersonation, but I plan on all three for my next attempt at running this (I don’t know if the wig or the Bowie impression will be worse, pretty sure I can manage the tight trousers).

The PCs can be one of a number of suggested races – human, Dwarf, Horned Beast (like Ludo, though not necessarily reddish-brown, and with the ability to control a particular sort of object, not necessarily rocks), Goblin, Firey (like the fire-spirits in the movie), Worm or ‘Knight of Yore’ – an anthropomorphised animal like Sir Didymus. Not necessarily a fox-terrier, you could be a monkey, a squirrel, a lizard, a blue hedgehog or Sir Reepicheep the Talking Mouse from Narnia, if you like.

Each of these character races is called a ‘kin’, and players are encouraged (once they have a little experience with the game) to experiment with creating other ‘kins’ in collaboration with the Goblin King. An obvious one might be a Fairy, as they exist in the movie, but it’s not hard to think of other potential kins, either imported from other games/properties or cut from whole cloth. Elf, Hobbit, Troll, Tinman, Wookie, Vulcan, Dralasite… I’m sure they’d all work, somehow.

Each kin has certain attributes, called ‘traits’ and ‘flaws’. As well as there being traits and flaws according to kin, such as Worms being very small (which can be either a positive or a negative, depending on circumstance), there are others that characters can choose, such as being good at running and jumping, or being forgetful. This more-or-less completes character creation – there are no ‘stats’ as such, no version of STR-INT-WIS-DEX-CON-CHA, no saving throws, no HP or AC. Just some things the PC may be good or bad at which effect the outcome of determinations.

It might be nice if the rules included some mechanism for establishing a party at the get-go; instead it's sort of handwaved, the party establishes itself out of a shared distrust for the Goblin King and the desire to get some thing or things back, and that's that - it's up to the players to add any more depth or detail.

It's not a crunchy ruleset, resolving around 'rulings not rules'. The mechanics only take up a couple of pages, and basically revolve around the Goblin King deciding the complexity of actions and either they or the player concerned rolling to see if the PCs accomplish them, using one or two dice, depending on whether there's any advantage or disadvantage - if no, roll one die, if yes, roll two and pick the higher or lower depending on advantage or disadvantage, if there are both advantages and disadvantages (someone is helping you climb but you're also clumsy, let’s say) then they cancel out and you go back to one die. The principle is very basic and pretty flexible and can be applied to multiple situations as long as the Goblin King is prepared to give everything a 1-6 difficulty rating.

There are also a bestiary and some tables that can be used to fill in extra detail between the main encounters or create unique scenes, but these don’t quite constitute a ‘dungeon labyrinth design kit’ – it would take a little work, I think, to make into a truly useful tool for extending the world significantly (or using this ruleset for other worlds of portal fantasy – Narnia I think is an obvious possible setting, or Wonderland, or Oz).

In many ways it’s a pretty gentle game (gentler than the variants of D&D I usually play anyway – obviously I tend very much to Moldvay Basic). The book has lots of quirky encounters with a really simple set of mechanics. It's great if you're a fan of the film; loads of things that evoke the setting of the movie, plenty of Easter Eggs. If you're not a fan, but are looking for an encounter source-book, it's also pretty good - you could just raid it for encounters and drop stats in for monsters from your system of choice (easy enough to find equivalents for most monsters I think). It is quite heavily rulings-not-rules so if that's not your way working you may not like that aspect. It’s not quite complete enough, I think, to use as a toolkit for running a million other games, and there’s a certain amount that has to just be taken as being settled without actually being settled (like how the party forms), but as a fan I think it’s great, and for the not-fan I think it could be a useful source of encounters. 9/10 for production and design, 9/10 for content, 6/10 for mechanics, because really I want a full game with enough tools to spin it off wherever I want.