Lace & Steel

LACE & STEEL has sought to capture the elements of swashbuckling romance that are missing from the bulk of fantasy role-playing games. Evil grand viziers, ladies in distress, the flash of rapiers and billow of sails in a fair wind! These are the elements of romantic fantasy, and it is just such things that dour, brutal medieval monster bashing games tend to ignore.

LACE & STEEL is an unusual game to run for a number of reasons.. The LACE & STEEL combat system uses a unique card based combat system, where melee combats are played out as a card game. Combats are thus time consuming and challenging, with player skill affecting the final combat result. Combat with other characters thus becomes very dangerous and very entertaining (when compared to a dice based combat system), removing the need for wacky monsters and toothy beasties to provide challenging opponents for player characters.

Secondly, there are the inter personal relations rules. Using these rules, the personalities of non-player characters become a major part of the game background environment. Players will constantly have to deal with difficult and co-operative people, and will have to learn to deal with friendships, enmities and self confidence as part of "day to day" adventuring. Loyalty, treachery, love and hate can all easily be simulated using the game rules, and will hopefully encourage umpires to prepare thoughtful adventure plots.