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Mythus Prime
This is the "rules-light" version of the Dangerous Journeys/Mythus roleplaying system.
- GenresGaming
147 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1994
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January 12, 2025
As I read Mythus Prime, I remembered Mark Dunn's novel, Ella Minnow Pea. I decided to avoid the precipitous task of the core Mythus book by going with the basic introduction (it's the first part of the main book in short form), but it still suffers from the sense that E. Gary Gygax had to write this new game with most of his favourite alphabet off-limits.
At this point in his career, bridges had been burned, and legal boundaries had been set, putting Gygax's beloved Dungeons & Dragons out of reach. I'm not an expert, nor do I care to investigate for fear of the rabbit hole, but suffice it to say Dangerous Journeys needed to be created from a blank slate. As a result, the book brims with new terminology that the reader can recognise as being a sidestep away from a term off-limits, but usually coined without much consideration for how horrible the terms might be. Or the horrific acronyms. A STEEP is a skill, something D&D hardly even touched upon, but there it is - Study, Training, Education, Experience, Practice. Why?!
An example appears in the section about creatures and characters controlled by the individual running the game:
CREATING AND USING OTHER PERSONAS
Other Personas (OPs) are any personas which are controlled by the GM and not the players. Included in their ranks are the Evil Personas who oppose the HPs, the Monstrous Personages (MPGS) - vampires and the like - who frequently appear to menace the party, the Heroic Personages (HPGs) who occasionally serve as patrons and mentors to the HPs, the Friendly Personas (FPS) who help the HPs during their adventures, and the Mundane Personas (MPs) which includes just about anyone that doesn't fit into any of the other categories above.
In any other game, this would be a Non-Player Character or NPC. Why?!
(for reference, HPs are Heroic Personas, i.e. the players' characters - Why?!)
The game is not without a scattering of interesting ideas, but they exist amid a sea of what feels like unnecessary text, so extracting them becomes a search for the needle in a haystack.
The game is simple at heart - you roll a d% (d100) versus a Trait or STEEP to determine success. If you roll less than 10% of the target, you achieve a Special Success. If you roll 99 or 00, you have failed in a way worse than just a fail. All modifiers affect the roll — a challenging task might be modified by +20%, so when roll you add 20 to the outcome before comparing to the target. If you have wandered into unfamiliar territory and need to forage and make camp, you roll against your Survival STEEP of 43, and the GM sets a +10% modifier. As a result, you need to roll 33 or less on d% to succeed.
That's the score mechanic - though the full-fat Mythus game adds an array of secondary character scores and layers in modifiers that make the whole thing significantly more complex.
But I'm reviewing Dangerous Journeys: Mythus Prime. Aside from physical components like dice, paper and pencils, it has everything you need to play the game - covering character creation, basic vocations, handling challenges and magic, gamemastery, encounters and Other Personas, and an example adventure. An appendix includes spells, magic items, and a few details from the advanced game. It's playable, but with so many other games around at the time and many more available now, you would need a good reason to consider Mythus Prime your best and only option.
At this point in his career, bridges had been burned, and legal boundaries had been set, putting Gygax's beloved Dungeons & Dragons out of reach. I'm not an expert, nor do I care to investigate for fear of the rabbit hole, but suffice it to say Dangerous Journeys needed to be created from a blank slate. As a result, the book brims with new terminology that the reader can recognise as being a sidestep away from a term off-limits, but usually coined without much consideration for how horrible the terms might be. Or the horrific acronyms. A STEEP is a skill, something D&D hardly even touched upon, but there it is - Study, Training, Education, Experience, Practice. Why?!
An example appears in the section about creatures and characters controlled by the individual running the game:
CREATING AND USING OTHER PERSONAS
Other Personas (OPs) are any personas which are controlled by the GM and not the players. Included in their ranks are the Evil Personas who oppose the HPs, the Monstrous Personages (MPGS) - vampires and the like - who frequently appear to menace the party, the Heroic Personages (HPGs) who occasionally serve as patrons and mentors to the HPs, the Friendly Personas (FPS) who help the HPs during their adventures, and the Mundane Personas (MPs) which includes just about anyone that doesn't fit into any of the other categories above.
In any other game, this would be a Non-Player Character or NPC. Why?!
(for reference, HPs are Heroic Personas, i.e. the players' characters - Why?!)
The game is not without a scattering of interesting ideas, but they exist amid a sea of what feels like unnecessary text, so extracting them becomes a search for the needle in a haystack.
The game is simple at heart - you roll a d% (d100) versus a Trait or STEEP to determine success. If you roll less than 10% of the target, you achieve a Special Success. If you roll 99 or 00, you have failed in a way worse than just a fail. All modifiers affect the roll — a challenging task might be modified by +20%, so when roll you add 20 to the outcome before comparing to the target. If you have wandered into unfamiliar territory and need to forage and make camp, you roll against your Survival STEEP of 43, and the GM sets a +10% modifier. As a result, you need to roll 33 or less on d% to succeed.
That's the score mechanic - though the full-fat Mythus game adds an array of secondary character scores and layers in modifiers that make the whole thing significantly more complex.
But I'm reviewing Dangerous Journeys: Mythus Prime. Aside from physical components like dice, paper and pencils, it has everything you need to play the game - covering character creation, basic vocations, handling challenges and magic, gamemastery, encounters and Other Personas, and an example adventure. An appendix includes spells, magic items, and a few details from the advanced game. It's playable, but with so many other games around at the time and many more available now, you would need a good reason to consider Mythus Prime your best and only option.
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