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Game News Low Magic Age, an OGL-based tactical RPG from China, now on Steam Early Access

Infinitron

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Tags: Low Magic Age; Low Magic Studios

Wizards of the Coasts' Open Gaming License, originally published in 2000, allows anybody to freely create commercial games using a D&D 3E-like d20 ruleset. Sadly, only a few CRPG developers have taken advantage of this, the most famous of them being the modern classic Knights of the Chalice. Now a new OGL game has appeared from an unlikely place. Its name is Low Magic Age, by Chinese developer Thomas Lee. Originally released on Steam Early Access in January as a Chinese language title, the game has since been translated to English and continues to be updated on a regular basis. I can't find its current trailer on YouTube, so here's an old one from when it was on Steam Greenlight:



Low Magic Age is a fantasy RPG that focused on turn-based party-based tactical combat. Field of View, Fog of War, Cover, Zone of Control, Charging and Flanking, various and abundant tactical elements are implemented in the combat system of Low Magic Age.

The game rules are evolved from the Open Game License (OGL), the set of rules based on the pen-n-paper version of fantasy role-playing games of all time, made by Wizards of the Coast.

Normally, you'll create and customize a small party of 4~6 characters: choosing from multiple races, classes, dozens of feats and spells, or choosing a character template directly. And then fight with all kinds of monsters!

Features:

  • Inherited from classic game rules: Evolved from historic pen-and-paper game rules, plus well designed information display UI, clear prompt of hit percent and damage range, help players to learn and immerse in the fantasy world. The innovative combat system, flanking, charging, full-attack, etc., various circumstance bonuses bring more meaningful tactics selections.
  • Classical fantasy monsters: 7 categories, 100+ classical fantasy monsters. Goblins, trolls, giant ants, basilisks and much much more. Different monsters need different strategies and tactics to defeat.
  • Tons of equipment and wondrous items: 60+ common items, 90+ wondrous items, 80+ enchantments. Slashing, piercing and bludgeoning, different weapons against different monsters. Gloves of Dexterity, Counterstrike Bracers, Ring of Regeneration, Belt of Magnificence, Cloak of Thorns, Elemental Gem, collecting powerful magical artifacts to create the hero character in your mind.
  • Well designed skills and spells: Fighters own a variety of martial arts movements, not only basic attacks. All of the arcane spells and divine spells of caster classes are greatly improved, too.

Right now Low Magic Age is basically just a combat engine with random arena battles, but it will eventually receive an "Adventure Mode" campaign. According to people who have played it, the game is already quite promising, and it's got a price tag that's hard to beat - just $4. China, man. Who knew?
 

luj1

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Looking like incline for reasons previously listed,


- memorable style
- sprites
- BB gameplay
- simple execution
- Nwn-like 2D art
- dirt cheap
- D&D 3.5E
 
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Excidium II

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Does anybody know if the sprites in this game are from a free package? They look nice. (The portraits I know are, I've seen them in other games)
 

Antigoon

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Steam page said:
We purchased and used a tileset of monsters/items from the Norwegian artist Raymond E. Gaustadnes (Shockbolt). He made another tileset for ToME4. So, both tilesets share the similar style and a few same tiles.
 

Latro

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Bought this months ago, it's a great steal at the price.

Who knew the Chinese would be the harbingers of incline?
 

thesheeep

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Does that title sound better in Mandarin (or whatever Chinese variant)?

It just sounds like a literal translation that shouldn't have been done. Also wrong, since OGL isn't exactly low magic...
 

Country_Gravy

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Reminds me of the Gold Box games combat or a simplified version of Wizard's Crown or The Eternal Dagger.

It's just combat, though.
 
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It looks like monocled gentlemen can suddenly appear at any place. Good. Keep the incline going!
Is D&D a thing in China?
 
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Davaris

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They pared it down to the bare essentials, didn't waste time on iso, 3D, or creature animations. No art, just game.
 
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Is D&D a thing in China?

Doubt it, but there are one billion of them. Even if only a tiny fraction become interested in Western games...I said years ago that China was a potential source of future incline.
There must be a lot of chink CRPGs that never saw the light of day outside china and are impossible to find via english google search.
 

FeelTheRads

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Yeah, and they're probably called Dialobo, Fullout and Planetscape: Tournament.

I doubt they produce much quality stuff when their business is in shitty clones.
 

Au Ellai

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Did China just discover the Gold Box games? Might wait on it until it has a meta-game tying all the battles together, but then again, a shit meta-game with an amazing battle system is just wasteful fluff and a drain on development resources. Either way, at that price, hard to argue against checking it out. Don't really like the 3/3.5 D&D ruleset though.
 

Name

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It looks like monocled gentlemen can suddenly appear at any place. Good. Keep the incline going!
Is D&D a thing in China?

It was a nerd thing in China. You should be able to find many boardgame communities in the big cities (Beijing, Shanghai etc) especially ones with many universities. Nowadays they prolly moved onto Pathfinders LOL.

Remember, they had official release of Baldur's Gate back in the good old days (before the Internet Great Wall & Cultural Bureau crackdown on computer stuff). Such official support died with Neverwinter Nights 2. Some of the other stuff like Fallout and Arcanum, they did fan translation patches.
 

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Is the "low magic" setting an excuse not to implement all the classic spells?
Still, looks interesting, I will keep my eye on this.
 

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