Unfortunately, I was unable to test play Novus as soon as I had hoped. However, after discussing our future gaming plans with my girlfriend she made an interesting choice.

I got a bunch of books out and asked her which game she would like to play the most for a long term game with other friends joining in. I had gotten out Savage Worlds (she has played this one for over a year), Iron Gauntlets (which I have since found to be quite a broken game), WEG Fantasy d6, and several others. After only a few minutes of discussion, she quite firmly chose Novus as her favorite candidate and I agree with her.

The more I become familiar with Novus now that my print copy has arived, the more I am impressed with it. It seems to support Tolkienesque fantasy better than rule sets that were specifically designed just for that. The only thing I'm not quite sure about is the lethality of the system (which you touched on in your reply above.) My favorite brand of fantasy requires there to be quite a few "mook" type enemies. The common orc in your short bestiary has a rather respectable 65 hit points. Creating some sort of mook rule for easily killable enemies seems like the only house rule I will have to make so far.

However, I have only run one small little mock combat on my own. Perhaps when I test it out better I will find that I don't need such a rule afterall.

Edit: I forgot to mention that sometimes the two of us game without a devoted GM by using the Mythic GM emulator. While the Mythic RPG system is excellent on it's own, I believe that Novus has serious potential to work well with the emulator also. I will have to try that out too.

Hello fellow geeks,

My name is Ian. I'm a long time gamer with most of my experience as a GM for a whole host of games. I started my exploration of the hobby when a friend of mine (rest his soul) bought me a D&D Second Edition beginner's boxed set and he then ran my first game for me. I was hooked from that very moment! I still remember the adventure and my first character vividly. After that, I branched out into just about every genre one can think of. Tolkienesque fantasy and vampire dramas developed as my favorites rather quickly. Over the years I have noticed that so many of the offerings from the "big" RPG companies have lost the charm that had me so hooked in that first game.

So many game systems are so huge that they strangle under their own weight. If there are so many rules that I can't ever hope to remember them, what is the point of even having those rules? I don't mind referencing character creation rules or the odd weapon damage value, but the rest of a game needs to be dead simple and easily commited to the average memory. There are a few game systems that have come close to this such as Savage Worlds and Cortex. However, Savage Worlds is very swingy, rather limited, and many characters come out looking the same (odd for a classless system.) Cortex is an excellent narative system, but it is also a touch swingy and a bit mushy in the middle (I think it could have used another 15 minutes in the oven, if you know what I mean.)

I found Novus just a few days ago through a review on RPG.net. It sounded curiously like what I wanted, was inexpensive, and available. Hey, what gamer doesn't buy a score of products he will never use anyway, right? So I thought I would give it a whirl. Not being one to do things half-botoxed, I purchased the deluxe version along with a print copy. I opened the PDF... oh it's one of those...hmm that 2d10 mechanic is pretty nifty...hit points don't inflate like a sun-ripened orange ruffy...anime elves seem to have crashed the party...no classic damage rolls? kind of neat...multiple magic themes, maybe Gandalf could be hiding in there somewhere..and this went on for about two hours.

The entire time I kept trying to relate all of my wants for a solid base for Tolkienesque fantasy to what I was reading. Most of it seemed to jive pretty well and I fell in love with it pretty rapidly. In a couple of days I am going to try running a one-on-one game with my nerdy girlfriend (yes, I really have one of those neener neener!) and see how it works out in play. I am optimistic that this will be a positive experience. Any tips, tricks, or things I should look out for in my first game? It will very likely be set in Middle-earth as I want to test the system before I go through the pains of creating an original setting.