Arcanis - Review

Arcanis from Paradigm Concepts is a bit of fresh air in the tabletop RPG market.

It's not as rules heavy as D&D 3.5/Pathfinder and not as infantile as D&D 4th Ed.  It brings back some mechanics from early rpgs like speed factor of actions affecting when you go next and gives some interesting color to the bland longsword/mace/longbow weapon selections.  It also includes fire-arms as a standard weapon option, though I still contend that the 875' range on a flintlock pistol is a bit silly.


But what makes it better than most other rpg off-shoots is it effectively does away with character classes!  You wanna be a gun-shooting thief, ok, you wanna be a mace wielding mage, no problem.  These mechanics throw the tried-and-true method of protect the mage, and standard tank/healer/dps/cc 4-man parties out the window.











Pedro Barrenechea ran our demo and we got to see some of the more intricate mechanics, but our space was limited and not exactly favorable for an extended game session, so I will hold final judgement on the game until I've had a chance to play a full game-session.

The one point they kept coming back to was that they don't ever want to release a 2nd edition that invalidates the original game.  Seems they got burned by Hasbro/WotC with the release of 4th ed.  A most honorable notion, yet I cannot help but be cynical to decisions made when hungry versus decisions made while greedy.

They did have several tools to make turn tracking easier, the dial below is simple and helpful.  The image at the top of the blog has 6 tracking dials, a master tracking dial and is make from white-board material, so you can write/erase it easily.  Handy, but dangerous if you are using a wet-erase miniatures mat and dry erase markers at the same table.