Lateral Worlds

Just to be clear right from the start this isn’t my system and its not entirely new.

I talked the creator into letting me post it here to show off a few of the ideas. Comprehensive rules are coming. But I thought I’d post a few of the concepts I remember since they caught my attention.

There are 7 levels of magic and the 7th level gives you access to one of the 4 high schools. The lower levels just gives you lots of cantrips and the medium levels give you some interesting spells. From memory the schools of high magic are Binding, necro and 2 more.

There are several PC races. There were orcs, elves, dwarves and treants. Each have 7 levels of “purity” If you don’t buy at least one point in a race you’re human. (No benefits or penalties) The races all get an uber ability at level 7 and you can’t have more than one race or change your racial level after character creation. The level 7 powers I can remember are: Immunity to metal weapons for dwarves. Unable to be attacked unless you start the fight for elves. Treants I think get some natural armor and strength. I don’t remember about orcs.

Your cash is much more important in this system. If you buy a weapon you’re actualy paying for training with it. (You also get the weapon) If you pick it up in game but haven’t paid for it you have to use it in your off hand. They also buy armor which I think might have been customised enough that it can’t be looted.

Now I’m starting to get a little vauge here but asside from the 7 points you get to spend in character creation you also get to buy a skill. One involved making magical trinkets. All mages need to have the literacy skill. Um . . there are a whole bunch of others.

Now this larp existed long before Mordavia or the society and its awesome. The magic system is the most complex I’ve seen in a larp. The races have levels of purity allowing in theory for intra racial tension as well as inter racial. There is a rich history both created by the game designer and also by the players actions.

If you remember details I’ve left out feel free to add them. Otherwise leave thoughts about how it sounds. I’ve probably left out a great many things but I like to think I’ve remembered enough to give you a feel for the world.

I never actualy played. Only having read the manual after the last game was run. So I appologise for not telling you more about the world and the NPCs and the SLs. In any case everyone I’ve talked to who’s played seems enthusiastic and many of them have diligently nagged Anna Cruise to run another game.

I played at two Lateral Worlds events. The Mordavia rules borrowed a number of ideas from LW, mixing them with rules from Portal Games.

LW had an omniverse setting where characters could come from any fantasy fiction. That “open world” was probably the biggest difference to Mordavia (which had multiple realms, but not inclusion of all fantasy fiction). For my money I prefer closed worlds because I find them better integrated - as a player, it’s more likely your character will have something to say/do to another character if you’re from the same world. But it certainly did allow people to play anything, which a lot of people enjoyed.

There was some cool stuff in LW. I think there were three magic colleges, the other being Enchantment which involved reading rhymes from a scroll. Binding was called Warding, and required you to draw a different diagram in the circle depending on what spell you were casting - I liked the idea but it was quite hard to pull off, and quite rarely used. Which is why we simplified it to just laying down a circle with a scroll inside it in Mordavia. Combat allowed limbs to be severed, and Necromancy allowed you to put them back on.

I liked the generic races like Treefolk and Beastfolk. They allowed players to invent characters and costumes with a fairly open hand, which suited the open world. For example a Beastfolk could be a satyr, a minotaur, a centaur or anything else animal-like. I reckon the “Priorities” system in LW where you purchases progressive levels in a race might have worked better as an open list of racial advantages you could buy with priority points. For example, if beastfolk could buy advantages like Hard Headed (can’t be sapped, suitable for beastfolk with hard heads) or Natural Armour (for animals like turtles or molluscs with partial shells) then they could pick and choose racial advantages that suit the specific animal that their character resembles. Personally I reckon that would work well in a closed fantasy world that has a wide array of races within it.

I played Lateral Worlds and it was fun. Here’s a page about it that Ryan made:
homepages.ihug.co.nz/~genome/lar … teral3.htm

Some nice familiar faces there.

I played a shape changing dragon in Lateral Worlds. It was lots of fun. I could breath fire using a hip flask of meths and a lighter :smiley:

I was standing outside at night in human form when someone wanted a light for their cigarette…

:smiley:

They still have their arm.

That was you!!

I played a thief and took unbelievable amounts of stuff off people. Lots of “so that’s where it went!!” at the end. Ultimately I killed a lot of game by temporarily nicking neat props. I was disappointed because when I crept silently through the forests, floors and walls I’d hear people talking out of character every time. D’oh!

I was at the last game they did, and I actually talked to Anna and Patch about the game, and running one, and they actually looked like they might have been thinking about it. But we shall have to see, shant we.

Will be there will bells on if they do get another opne off the ground. Big bells. Like the ones found in churches.

R

People need to hastle Anna C about this. She’s said she’ll run but no ones holding her too it and so it keeps getting put off.

Dylan

LW sounds like it has promise. How does it handle damage to body or arms or is it just 1hp for any location?

I can’t remember. You should pester Anna C. I’d post her number here but thats probably against the rules for forum use.

I’ve got the rules somewhere, will drag them out. Wounding was a little complex as I recall.