Which rulesets should I use?

[tankhedgehog]

Hello! I am new to this game and had a question about all of the various rules systems.

So basically, I want to take a group of 4-5 Stars and romp around the world, exploring dungeons, recruiting grunts, gaining rep, etc until eventually founding a kingdom and maybe having some big army battles vs the canon kingdoms.

I own and have read Warrior Heroes - Legends and own and have skimmed 2 Hour Dungeon Crawl (which I was planning to use in place of the dungeon rules in WHL). I also own Legends of Araby and Red Moon Black Sand but I haven't read either of them.

How useful would it be to get Rally Around the King and/or Warrior Heroes Armies and Adventures? Also, how are the Talomir Tales campaigns? Is it feasible to play through those campaign encounters during the romp around the world stage of my campaign above or are they more stand-alone campaigns?

Thank you for your time and for any advice you can provide. I'm really looking forward to getting started with this as the rules I've seen so far look really cool!

[Atomic Floozy]

A lot of my advice depends on how much time you have for such an undertaking as carving out a kingdom and conquering the world. The game mechanics in the older rule sets take a little longer to play. Warrior Heroes Legends, for example, has more tables to consult than Talomir Tales.

For a general RPG, your choices are Warrior Heroes: Armies & Adventures, Legends or Araby, Warrior Heroes: Legends & Talomir Tales. Each rule set fbegins or ocuses on a different region of Talomir. Of the four, Legends of Araby does not have dungeon crawl rules, but it has rules for bazaars, harems and detailed rules for caravans, dealing with slavers, bandits, etc.

Speaking of dungeon crawling, Dungeon Crawl & Talomir Tales use dice rolls to generate the dungeon, while Warrior Heroes: Armies & Advntures and Warrior Heroes: Legends use playing cards.

There are actually 3 sets of rules for mass combat games - Warrior Heroes: Armies & Adventures, Rally Round the King and Warrior Heroes: Warbands. Warbands is for smaller scale armies. If you were playing Napoleonics or American Civil War Wargames, WH: A&A & RRtK would be considered Army or Corps level games while Warbands would be considered a division or brigade level game. WH: Armies & Adventures is similar to old editions of Warhammer (2nd or 3rd) & RRtK is similar to WRG & DBM. Warbands also has a kind of Warhammer feel to it & I personally like it better than WH: Armies & Adventures. The best and one I play the most is RRtK for mass battles. As a plus, RRtK is the only rule set that has a complete map of Talomir and descriptions of all of the major nations.

Red Sand, Black Moon is in a category by itself - it is a gladiatorial combat rule set. It is useful particularly if your characters decide to make some of their income from fighting in the arena. It also has a wealth of ideas for attributes in customizing a character.

There is one glaring hole in the current sets or rules - adventuring on the sea. From time to time a copy of Warring Fleets will pop up - some one will sell their copy or Ed will find a few copies in a box in his garage.

So, where would I start if starting on a campaign of world domination? I'd start with Talomir Tales As my basic tabletop RPG & I'd eventually buy a copy of RRtK just to get a knowledge of what the different nations are like and for future battles once I become an all powerful Sorceress Queen. Warbands would be nice when I've built up a decent band of followers & I'm ready to raid neighboring kingdoms.

The truth is that all of the rule sets are great sources for ideas and game mechanics. You can think of them as sourcebooks and tool boxes.

The main thing is to start playing, whether with pen and paper, paper minis, plastic minis, metal - it doesn't matter. You can begin with what you have and create great stories. There comes that time when you have to stop reading about the game and dip your toe and play an encounter.

I know this probably hasn't helped a lot, but you already have rules for a great beginning, but if I was starting from scratch I'd start with Talomir Tales (especially Piathoe's Peaks that Aromic Floozy writes a bang up adventure - See! A shameless plug!). No really, I'd start with Talomir Tales and expand from there - the newer mechanics really move the game along. If you are an old D&D or Pathfinder player, imagine doing an entire evening's game session into just 2 hours or less & having an AI system to make solo playing fun.

[shon maxx]

Talomir Tales has Challenges and Advance the Story, where you can use Skills to tell your own story, such as carving out your kingdom. Otherwise, WHL should work just fine.

A water-based scenario book for TT would be cool.

[tankhedgehog]

*a very informative response*

Thank you for the extensive answer! If I understand correctly, I should start with one of the Talomir tales, and then once my band is medium sized, I should move to Warbands before finally ending the campaign with the mega battles in RRtK.

For Talomir tales. do the books have their own sets of rules or would I be using the rules from WHL?

[Atomic Floozy]

The first book in the series - Talomir Tales Distant Shores has all of the core rules. The other Talomir Tales books are scenario books or adventure modules to use the old D&D terminology with scenario specific rules, background, races, etc.

You could use WHL as your core rules as well, though you may have to do some minor tweaking of character attributes to use the Talomir Tales scenario books.

[Crinklechips]

Talomir Tales has Challenges and Advance the Story, where you can use Skills to tell your own story, such as carving out your kingdom. Otherwise, WHL should work just fine.

A water-based scenario book for TT would be cool.

I'd second that!

[THW]

A water-based scenario book for TT would be cool.

Kind of a Warring Fleets blend.

[stryderg]

A water-based scenario book for TT would be cool.

Random ideas to knock about:
Pirates, ship boarding actions
Pirates, hidden treasure maps, with or with out mystical curses
Defending ports from sea borne attack
Fishing for profit, regular and extreme (catching whales and giant squid, squids?, squidi?, what do you call more than 1 giant squid?
Ship navigation (getting lost and having adventures there)
Running blockades
Atlantis, inhabited by fishmen or crabmen (or both!)
Diving for stuff, shark attacks!
Lighthouses, ummm, worth mentioning but I'm not sure how that would fit into the rules
Water hazards: whirlpools, water spouts, crashing rocks, kracken attacks, shallows, rip tides
Sargasso sea, area of circular ocean currents that trap ships, wrecks, lost cargo, trees that washed away into the ocean, etc
Deserted islands, lifeboats and rescues.

There, I've done all the hard work, now somebody put a rule book together.

[shon maxx]

Well I remember when Ed posted an AAR for Fortunes. In one of them, he showed how Encounters can be applied to sea-based locations. For example, a Raid can be attacking a ship.

Fishing, etc. are also easy enough. Just make them challenges.