Rules To Live By
Company: Interactivities Ink, Ltd.
Authors: John Kilgallon, Mike Young, and Sandy Antunes

Reviewed by: Shade
Added: October 22,2002

Overview: Rules to Live By (RTLB) is a generic Live Action Role Playing game system that can be used in any genre. I tend to think of it as GURPS for LARP. The game system is written more for "theater-style" gaming, as oppose to "live combat/ boffer" systems such as NERO, IFGS, or Dagorhir.

Game Mechanics: The core rules are very simple and universal. They revolve around a character\'s Statistics and Abilities. Statistics, or STAT,  include things like Strength and Intelligence. Abilities are "modifiers" for STATs. There are four types of Abilities: Skills, Resources, Handicaps, and Aptitude. When a character wants to do an action, such as combat or picking a lock, the person is doing a "challenge". Challenges are handles as follows: Base STAT +Ability Level + die versus Target number + die. I guess this brings up a point. This game system uses dice. The book talks about how to deal with dice in the game. I do not have trouble with the dice system. However, for those who do not want to use dice, there is an alternate system RTLB call "finger flicking". I think this is a good system to handle challenges. I can see combat can be bogged down in this type of game system, especially when it involves multiple people. However, it is inherent to most LARP systems that involve "challenges". That is why good Game Masters are needed.

Presentation: RTLB can be broken down into to parts: Core Rules Section  and Game Master Section:  The Core Rules Section covers Challenges and Combat. It also lists the Abilities. The section provides many examples to get a good feel for the system. One thing I would have liked to have seen is the "Abilities by Category" in the beginning of the Abilities Section as oppose to the back. The "Abilities by Category" is the list of Abilities and an index on where to find them in the book. I think it should have been more of table of contents for the Abilities chapter. Of course it is just an opinion of mine. I\'m very glad the book did have a list of Abilities. The Game Master\'s section is excellent. It gives great examples and options on running a RTLB game, and LARP games, in general. 

The book is 0.29 x 11.01 x 8.27 in dimension. This does not allow it to be ideal to carry around during gameplay. This would make it tough for players or GMs to find rules/abilities in the middle of the game. However, the new LARP Pocket Players Guide featuring RTLB should rectify this.  I will be reviewing that product sometime in the near future.

Summary: RTLB is a good LARP system, though it is not for everyone. If anything else, this is an excellent resource book. It gives many insights on running a LARP game. Since this is a generic game system, it is not bogged down with pages and pages of "background" information on a setting of a LARP. It is the "nuts and bolts" of a game system.

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