Lion & Dragon is an excellent choice for those who love medieval fantasy role-playing games, especially if you prefer a setting with less magic. It's set in a world much like England during the 14th and 15th centuries, around the time of the War of the Roses.

The game's system, including the way leveling, classes, races, and backgrounds work together, is well-thought-out and balanced. It focuses more on the role and story of your character rather than just the mechanics listed on your character sheet.

What really stands out is the magic system. It fits perfectly into a medieval, low-fantasy world, making the magical abilities of characters feel natural in this setting.

The creator has done a great job of blending a traditional old-school role-playing system with a medieval world. This is better than many other games I've come across in this genre.

I also got the Campaign Book: Dark Albion and the Cults & Chaos supplement, and I can say they're great additions. They add depth and richness to the world and are worth getting alongside the main game.

My main critique is about the book's layout. It could use more bullet points, quick references, and a better index. The style is dense with text, much like the early AD&D books. While it's a great read (I've gone through it twice from start to finish), it's not the easiest to use during a game when you need to find information quickly.

Overall, I'd definitely recommend Lion & Dragon to anyone who enjoys old-school d20 games and wants a game set in a historical period.

Game itself is simply a rehashing of B/X with the crux of everything put onto a d20. In my opinion, the type of game being presented by the author does not work very well within a B/X framework. Needs a fair bit of copy editing work done, with quite a few "see page XX" items, typos, and the like that were not caught. Also feels deliberately incomplete in many aspects, as if the author is trying to sell supplementary material to fill the deliberately left holes in the game, such as reactions, encounters, NPCs, and setting. Likewise with setting, it is clear the author didn't do much research as they shy away from mentioning Christianity at all, and give the stand-in almost Shinto-esque trappings, which would have made for a drastically different England given the time period. All in all, feels a bit lazy, and I would personally recommend either Wolves of God by Kevin Crawford or an earlier edition of Pendragon if you are insistent on running a game in this setting.

This is a great RPG! I have been looking for something exactly like this for a very long time! I love the attention to detail and historical accuracy the author has brought into the game. A truly authentic medieval fantasy RPG!

Not to take away from Gary Gygax's accomplishment or the years of his experimentation to which all TTRPG owes, but this is the medieval fantasy RPG he was often trying to make without knowing it.

The pure note struck in this crystal distilling the period mythology & occultism of pre-Enlightenment Britain is a spiritual conversation across time to those 70s gamer basements. We see here the logical foundation for the oldest 3-alignment system (L,C,N) more convincing than any articulation before it, and in that theological satisfaction the simplicity of it outshines the burgeoning of "Advanced" 1e. 'Race' is similarly excized for a more Basic 'class' list, demi-humans you meet in Lion & Dragon return to the other side of the equation as exotic, magical, and numinous encounters as they began centuries ago. (After 50 years of abusive mundacity on the fantasy book and RPG shelves, they surely deserve the break from being met in the local tavern.)

Gygax' fetish for pole arms belongs here in Lion & Dragon more than it ever did D&D, and the chronic issue of runaway power ratio of magic-users : fighters is resolved---brilliantly. The elimination of the AoE magic bomber doesn't take away from the appeal of the magic-user class; the strategy game walking the tightrope of mortal and immortal politics is an RP game experience designed for quintessential Gandalfs (or Saurumans,) not fireballing video-gamers.

The research is taught, as is the art originating from it. The editing is crisp and clear. Even if you don't think you have a posse to play this game, this is still a huge bang-for-the-buck template to craft your own fantasy setting and magic theory by branching out once again from this perfectly pruned bonsai of historical, and therefore eternal, source material.

Quite simply, a work of art. You won't regret a dime spent on this one.

The Gold Standard for Late Medieval Authentic Roleplay.

A criminally under-appreciated product. Lion & Dragon is a solid OSR core book and makes changes to the base system surpassing its predecessor in all respects.

In particular, I love the level-up mechanic, which includes both elements of chance and choice, preserving randomness, while allowing for precise build possibilities. It's certain that no two characters will be exactly the same, but you will certainly be able to make the most out of your class.

I will try to run a few adventures with this setting to provide a more nuanced review in the future, but I'm already a big, BIG fan.

I love this game. Ive been playing RPGs for over 30 years and I have never seen anything like L&D and Dark Albion. This is what I imagined a "real Medieval RPG" would be like. (and more than I could imagine) An enormous amount of research and love went into this game. This is not high fantasy- there are no Fighters taking 4 spears to the chest while fighting 10 opponents and winning with his sword +4. No Mages throwing fireballs while flying and invisible. Hit points are kept pretty low. Fights can mean quick death. Wizards (Magisters) use alchemy, astrology, summon Demons. It feels like magic from history, what people believed magic was like in medieval times. It takes time, effort & preparation. The game can be summed up by reading a bit on the table of contents: Social Staus is Extremely Important, Life is Cheap, Magic is Rare. The game is heavily supported- Dark Albion( rules & setting), Cults, adventures, and many interesting articles in RPGPundit Presents. Dont wait- go & buy this game.

The person that gave this game 1 Star is a pathetic fool as well as a liar. RPG Pundit is a very vocal guy with strong political views- that is no reason to give the game 1 star. You are rating the game, not the person. Personally I think he is great.

Although I've been in the RPG hobby since the early 80's I was never keen on D&D itself, so that the whole OSR thing largely passed me by. However, I do enjoy RPGPundit's blog and YouTube videos, and appreciate his barbed mockery of the SJW entryism current in the RPG hobby. So I decided to buy Lion and Dragon as a gesture of support.

Of all the Pundit's games L&D appealed to me the most because of his pitch of it being “medieval authentic” with a magic system based on actual occult tomes. I flatter myself that I know a lot about medieval England and Europe, and I dabbled in occultism as a youth. So either L&D would be right up my alley, or I'd have the knowledge to identify over eager self-promotion on the Pundit's part.

Physically the hardback book I received is a quality product. The design of the book makes a virtue of the publisher's relative lack of funds compared to larger RPG publishers. Rather than trying to compete with a slick, highly produced design style, they've made use of a lot of suitable public domain art, old etchings, woodcuts, illustrations from old editions of occult books, as well as some commissioned pieces which are in a similar style. There's quite a lot of art, and it all looks good, and the simplicity of the layout and design recalls a Victorian or Edwardian design aesthetic, which while anachronistic for the C15th, does fit the game's attempt to be authentic to a real world past.

The mechanics of the game are obviously derived from old D&D, but tweaked to give a game which is set more in the real medieval world rather than the modern-day-in-medieval-fancy-dress which has always been the assumed default in D&D. One of the things I always disliked in D&D's class-and-level system was how characters quickly become superhuman, their inflated hit points allowing them to shrug off an axe full in the face from a great big orc. L&D starts characters at level 0, advancement restricts HP inflation, and there's a nice table to roll on for permanent physical wounds. It's not as tidy a nod to realism as d100/Runequest, but in terms of a D&D based game it's great stuff.

Although the game makes explicit the social order of the medieval world, including gender roles, I was slightly disappointed that the setting wasn't actual medieval England but a fantasy simulacrum Dark Albion, the subject of a previous Pundit book. However, transferring the content to the real medieval world would be easy for any GM with the right background knowledge. This is made easy because Albion is very close to a real medieval nation, which comes through especially in the magic system which is the real gem of the book. Clerics work miracles, all of which are strongly of the sort associated with actual saints and their relics in the middle-ages, and Clerics are assumed to be agents of a monotheistic faith which the book calls The Unconquered Sun but can easily be run as the Catholic church. It occurs to me that an L&D game with the players as Clerics during the protestant reformation would make an interesting campaign.

Wizards no longer blast Magic Missiles around with abandon. The L&D magic system is based on ritual, and is drawn heavily from magical beliefs of the time, when alchemy was science and what we term “supernatural” was seen as just one aspect of an all-encompassing natural philosophy. This is the Magic User as Faust, or even Roger Bacon, rather than Gandalf. The magic section is both extensive and fascinating, and clearly well researched – I only discovered after ordering the book that Pundit classes himself as a practicing occultist and it shows. Although my copy of Abramelin is long since gone, it is obvious from the magic system in L&D the Pundit knows his stuff.

I suppose the best compliment I can pay this game is that I actually want to run it, despite my historically lukewarm attitude to D&D. The powering down of characters, real world societal assumptions, and especially the excellent magic section, make L&D the D&D the teenage me really wanted – if only Pundit had worked for TSR circa 1983 my RPG life might have been very different!

THOUGHTS-ASSH, MAZE OF THE BLUE MEDUSA, LION & DRAGON

I am a huge fan of the game Astonishing Swordsmen and Sorcerers of Hyperborea (ASSH). I had liked the game before, but put it on the shelf for a bit right when I started going back to school again. I figured that GURPS is a game for engineers, and why shouldn’t I be playing a game for engineers? In that brief time I became reacquainted with the GURPS Vorkosigan Saga, and even started reading the Vorkosigan books. The best of the GURPS books will always inspire you to take a look through the source material. I tried to start a campaign using their superlative GURPS Discworld rules, but decided to wait for Dungeon Fantasy…and I waited…and I waited.

It’s probably a good thing that I waited for that boxed set to release. Calculus was definitely getting harder, and Chemistry was becoming more and more of a bear. The time commitments for both developing a campaign using GURPS, and reacquainting myself with GURPS, were not going to be there. I won’t even go into how surreal time management gets when my reserve drill commitments come into play.

In that time of waiting, the kickstarter for Astonishing Swordsmen and Sorcerers of Hyperborea paid off! The books arrived! I had forgotten that I had ordered two of them and was gobsmacked when they arrived! Now, I thought that a second edition of this game was completely unnecessary. The original was contained in two coil bound books, with the most evocative art I had seen in an OSR book. These books were digest sized, but the newer books were not. This book took everything about the original and turned it up to eleven! I was wrong. The presentation, and the minor corrections were more than worth the kickstarter. This single book took all of my GURPS books off the shelf. It is that good! The art design. The homage to the works of Robert E. Howard, Moorcock, Clark Ashton Smith, and Lovecraft are brilliant! This is the game that I have always wanted to play. It sits on my shelf, with its own line of adventures and Barrowmaze. This is my favorite game and book ever!

However, there are two other products that I would like to write about today. I’m somewhat reluctant to, given the vociferous reputations of both of the authors, but each of these works is superlative in their own way. I’ve been struggling, wanting to write this piece for months because these other two books are just that good, Zak Sabbath’s Maze of the Blue Medusa and RPGPundit’s Lion & Dragon.

I already have a favorite game, and I have neither the time nor the money to invest in further games. At this point, I hope to earn enough as an engineer to pay off my student loans and keep my wife from having to become a hooker. I was reading tenfootpole.org, when I came across a best of list. Maze of the Blue Medusa was listed as the best of the best. My opinion differs from the blog author’s in many ways. For instance, I enjoy the ASSH adventures, while he seems to hate them. But I had been looking at this product for a while, and with this recommendation I decided to purchase it. Lion & Dragon has just been released, and while it looked interesting, I couldn’t afford it. However, given the apparent snowflake reaction to pundit and the various shenanigans that rpgnow and onebookshelf seemed to engage in to drive his sales down, required something more than words from me. I purchased the book. I do not care for bullying.

So what are my thoughts?

Zak Sabbath has been pushing the envelope graphically ever since Vornheim was released. A Red & Pleasant Land pushed these boundaries even further. Maze of the Blue Medusa is his finest work so far. Graphically, I wonder if he is pushing the limits of what can be placed into a book. Now I say this, not having a physical copy of the book. My feeling is that just as much care went into the making of the book as the pdf. As much as I love my copy of ASSH, my feeling is that I would love Maze just as well. These products catch the eye, spark the imagination, and aren’t just a window into the mind of an author but enable any dungeon master to follow them and run the same kind of campaign just as effectively.

As an admission, I am not Zak’s audience. I have no desire to run an Alice in Wonderland type game. My stuff is much more mundane and much less gonzo. I prefer Greg Gillespie’s Barrowmaze, primarily because I like tons of undead running about. Barrowmaze is the ultimate in what I feel would be a standard dungeon. It’s only flaw might be in that it is not organized as a series of levels, but is one huge level. I understand this dungeon and could easily run it. Most megadungeons have trouble with their organization. The Dungeon of the Mad Archmage never grabbed me. The organizational aids for Dwimmermount, took a huge book and made it even more intimidating. Everything would be changing all of the time, renedering the original book moot at some point. Stonehell is interesting, if a bit staid. Maze of the Blue Medusa is something else altogether. It is a complete package of a wild and gonzo dungeon that anyone can run.

Zak and Patrick Stuart have taken this conceit and created a dungeon with deadly encounters, moral quandaries, allies, enemies, consequences for decisions, and they have organized it so flawlessly that anyone could run it. They have created a dungeon that any party can encounter. If you are low level, you can survive, if you keep your wits about you. Choice matters here.

I have never encountered any product that is organized as robustly as this one! If you only have the money to buy one OSR dungeon get this one! Even if you don’t want to run a gonzo dungeon, the hand holding and organization here will help you with your home game. This isn’t some guy bragging about their home campaign with a product so huge that you won’t know where to start. It is bigger than itself! Read it! Be sparked! And run something!

Lion & Dragon is much more down to earth. This is what Pundit’s Dark Albion should have been. By that, I mean that these are the rules that should have been in the book. No system notes from the campaign, no conversion notes from Fantastic Heroes and Witchery. These were good things, but they pale in comparison to the rules in this slim book. This is a medieval authentic OSR rules set. One that is true to the material, and that does a wonderful job of preserving player agency. For example, at each level you can either roll twice for your level benefit, or you can choose once from the table. Which will it be? The choice is the player’s.

Where Zak hits you, like that first time I saw the Warhammer 40k Rogue Trader preview in White Dwarf magazine, with a tightly packaged surprise of something that you never thought you would be able to run on your own, Pundit gives you an overflowing box of ideas that just keep leaking all over the place. Dark Albion has multiple small dungeons that you can place anywhere in your home campaign. They fit into the Dark Albion campaign very well, but they are almost modular in that they can be dropped into your campaign almost at will. His scenario The Child Eaters is one of the simplest and nastiest scenarios I have come across. This isn’t some fake cosmic horror, but down to earth terror that explains just why Dark Albion’s society is the way that it is. Cults of Chaos is designed for Dark Albion, but can put chaos as a horror front and center in your campaign in ways that Games Workshop hasn’t done in years! This is great stuff!

If I have twenty, then I’m getting ASSH. That game will not disappoint you. If I have ten for an adventure, then I’d get Blue Medusa. It may not have exactly what you want, but it can show you the way to get there. Afterwards, if I had some more money, I’d pick up Dark Albion. It’s not gonna exactly fit into my ASSH campaign, but it has enough adventure bits in there to more than make it worth my while. Most especially, it provides the background for Cults of Chaos which will fit into ASSH.

Talanian bears watching because of the overall excellence of the entire package in ASSH. Zak bears watching because his envelope pushing is going to go beyond the printed page at some point. My guess, is that he will come up with something that is going to redefine what can be done with a pdf in the near future. If I had the money, I would pick up whatever he had to offer in print. Those will be utterly fantastic books. Pundit…I would like to see him strike off on his own and form his own company. His products have always been playtested to death, but graphically the execution hasn’t always been there. Arrows of Indra was a brilliant OSR imagining of ancient India, but the art and design just wasn’t there. Dark Albion and Lion & Dragon are dramatically better. The maps alone are just amazing!

As a caveat, I have run ASSH. I have not had a chance to run either Blue Medusa or Lion & Dragon, so I would advise you to take my words with a grain of salt. All three of these products come with my highest recommendation. They will serve to take you places that you never imagined going. All of them will spark your imagination, and have been skillfully designed for ease of play at your table.

Summary : a nice OSR RPG, which delivers its promise, albeit on a high fantasy tone for something "medieval authentic". Four stars as a game, the fifth is earned on the reuse potential for most elements. I have reviewed the pdf version.

Content description : Inside, you get : a complete set of rules, including : character creation, magic (divine , profane, and summoning demons), fight, NPC reaction rules, morale rules to deal with followers, equipment list, medieval poison list, magic item list, adventures seeds, a bestiary… List are displayed in the form of random tables. Art is a strong point. More than one drawing per page, with a medieval and / or OSR product vibe in all of them.

What I liked :

• most if not all of the content can be used outside of this product.
• simplicity of the rules. Grab and roll your D20, apply the modifier (generally, one from skill and one from level...) and roll it against difficulty.

Could have been even better with :

• "default setting" of the author, aka Dark Albion, is still very present is this product. This is a design choice, as explained early in the book, but I feel at least a comparaison table between "real world" and "Dark Albion" could have been useful. Perhaps even a few pages. Or a complete removal of it.
• the default fantasy level is high, which surprised me a bit, for an "medieval authentic" experience. Some optional rules or rules tweaking advice to tune it down a little or completely could have been great.

Lion & Dragon is a fantastic and complete RPG. The game tries to emulate a more realistic medevial world, our world, and can easily be converted to any OSR system that you'd like to use. The game is presented in black and white with the traditional two column layout and features fantastic art and is a joy to read. I highly recommend it!