Demon’s Lair Roleplaying Game
by Lasalion Games
$14.95 each for the Tome of Rules and God Guide
$12.95 each additional supplement (see website for current prices)
Demon’s Lair is the not-so-new role playing game from Lasalion Games, a fledgling company run by Dan Hensel, Al Seeger, Dave Schmitz and Gino Holland. I met two of the makers of this game at our local hobby store, Adventure Games Plus in West Allis, where they demonstrate their combat system and other aspects of the game on the third Saturday of the month for anyone who wants to learn.
The game mechanics of Demon Lair emphasize variety. I will attempt to give you a basic overview of the system so that you will get the general flavor.
Character creation is based on a point system. You are given base scores to spread around for your attributes: one seven, two sixes, three fives, a four and a three. You are given twenty extra points to distribute amongst these scores. The attributes are strength, agility, intelligence, spirituality, endurance, charisma, luck, empathy and base movement. The only attribute you can not increase in this way is your base movement. That one is modified by race.
There are four basic classes that you may choose from, with subsections in each. They are Warrior, Scholar (includes Cleric and Mage), Rogue and the miscellaneous classes that don’t fit into any other category: civilian and djorre’l. The Civilian class is your basic, common everyday sort of person who just happened to turn to a life of adventuring. The Djorre’l character is one who studies from all three major character classes.
As I said, there are subsections under each class for the player to chose from. For example, under the Warrior section are archer, fighter, martial artist, street fighter and martial artist. Each class has benefits and hindrances. You also chose a profession for your character. The ones under the Warrior class are animal trainer, berserker, enforcer, exotic warrior, knight, mystic, pirate, ranger, samurai/ronin, swashbuckler, and wrestler.
Continuing with the character generation, skills and combat abilities are chosen using a point-based system. Also, the player will pick the character’s race from among the four available: human, dwarf, elf, ithok (a sort of short, stocky type of human with two irises and above-average eyesight). In addition, each character also has traits and drawbacks that are rolled up on a table. Other aspects of the character that will be chosen include a five-point code that will aid the game master in awarding experience points. And, of course, you are encouraged to come up with the character’s history, appearance, motivations, personality, etc. At the end of all this, you have one hell of a well-formed character. And according to the Tome of Rules, there are just fewer than 556,000 different combinations of characters.
There are also 4 basic dice rolls that you will be dealing with. They are the Order of Combat (like initiative); Combat Die, a role that is used to attack something and which changes with class; the Physical Defense Die, which is used to defend against attack, and which also changes with class; and the Magical Defense Die, which is used in attacking and defending against magic-based attacks.
Three things in particular impressed me about this product. The first was the obvious enthusiasm the creators have for their game. They love to talk about it, they love to play it, and they love to come up with new products for it.
There is also a mixture of serious and silly that I really like. Here’s an example from the glossary of what I mean. A Demon Lord is “otherwise known as the DL, game master, referee, or God. The head honcho. The big kahuna. The dude who runs the game by throwing monsters, traps, and other nasty things at your poor, defenseless character. A crazed psychopath who is worshiped like a god and feared like a devil. Order his favorite pizza at every gaming session if you want him to be nice to you.” There is a similar tone throughout. Don’t get me wrong. These guys take their gaming seriously, but they do have a sense of humor that is quite endearing.
The third aspect I liked about the Demon’s Lair game was its completeness. The books that may be purchased include the Tome of Rules (basically a player’s handbook), the God Guide (essentially a DMG), Lasalion’s Bazaar (new weapons and equipment supplement), the Book of the Gods (complete info on the Gods of Lasalion), the Ancient Tomes (additional Mage and Cleric spells) and Monsterous Mayhem! (new monsters to fight). A module is also available called “Curse of the Warlock,” a scenario where your heroes save the princess from two feuding towns and the Warlock. Other books that are planned include the Glory of Steel (warrior handbook), the Dark Realm (thief handbook), Flashblayde’s Journal (stories on the history of the world of Terrania and the land of Lasalion).
I have to say somewhere in this review that I got a special kick out of the God Guide in particular, especially its section on monsters. The names of said monsters are particularly fun. In the “Ickies” section, there is a sub-category of slime called “Puddings,” which are slimes with intellegence. The various names for these monsters are a hoot. For instance, your character could be attacked by a “Tapioca,” a particularly nasty slime that absorbs and hold everything it comes in contact with, including your character. The appearance it gets from doing absorbing things is akin to tapioca, hence the name. I love it. And the description of a Drip is great: liquid with a brain. Not something you want to run into. If for nothing else, I would recommend picking up this book for the monster section alone.
There is also a section in the God Guide called “Game Mastering 101.” This section of advice is intended for first-time Demon’s Lair GM’s, but the suggestions here would be good for the GM of any game to read.
In addition to these supplements, if you have access to the World Wide Web, you have the added perk of the company’s website, www.lasalion.com. There you will be able to read more about and order Demon’s Lair products, go into various areas to get answers to game questions, hear rumors in character, learn more about the game world, see about playing via email, and other bits of fun. I highly recommend checking it out if you can.
There are only two problems I have with either the product or the company. The first is the indexes in the two main rulebooks. Bless their little hearts, the boys down at Lasalion were trying their best to give their customers an index with which to find things easily. But, bless their pointed little heads, when they rearranged the books at some point, they neglected to update the indexes. The damn things are near useless. Luckily, the table of contents is accurate. And since all the books are on computer and printed into book form as needed to fill orders, corrections are being made all the time. I have no doubt that this little problem will be corrected in subsequent printings.
The second problem I had was with the timeliness of service. As many of you probably know, the small-press in a small-press publication is often a computer printer. And when that computer printer craps out on you, product doesn’t get out. I had to wait a bit to get my copies of the Tome of Rules and God Guide, I’m afraid. But to the company’s credit, when the product was finally ready it was hand delivered by Gino Holland himself rather than mailed, along with half my money back. They even replaced my God Guide when it was discovered that their printer had started to run out of toner halfway through spitting out the copy, which made the book only slightly hard to read. I consider all this good customer service.
Incidentally, there is also a bit of a spelling and typo problem throughout the books, but unless you’re a copy editor like me, these are forgivable and don’t interfere with anything vital.
All-in-all, I would recommend picking up Demon's Lair and having a look see. It can be ordered via their website. And they will have a booth at this year's Gen Con, so you can look for them there, too. Otherwise, they can be reached via snail mail at:
Lasalion Games, Ltd.
1825 S. 26th Street
Milwaukee, WI 53204
Enjoy!
(review (c) 1999 / Erica Woollums )