Alright, let’s continue. This time, we’ll finally learn how to righteously mingle with evil!

So, next section of the Light Raider Handbook is titled “The Fellowship of the Ring Light.” It describes the PC faction.

First we get a description of Overlord. Honestly, that’s what you’d expect from Jesus stand-in: blah blah, much love, blah blah, sacrifice, blah blah, glory, etc.

The only interesting passage is this:

The OverLord loves right and hates evil. Therefore, he asks that we grow toward absolute perfection and that we totally oppose the rebellion against the Almighty Spirit. He hated this evil so greatly that He willingly sacrificed Himself to save others from such a destiny. So great is His purity that those who spurn the Great Rescue must be eternally punished.

I’m rather uncomfortable with the emphasis on hatred and eternal punishment, and this paragraph stands in stark contrast with the other talking about what a great guy Overlord is.

Anyway, next section is more interesting. It finally approaches the most famous mechanic of this game, Bible magic.

Long story short, there are so-called Sacred Scrolls (read: Bible), word of Overlord, and they are considered the greatest weapon against the dark creatures and dragons. Word Runes are specific Bible quotes that can be used to do magic. A player can read up to three of them per adventure or cite them from memory with lesser limits (some runes can be used once per day, others once per adventure, etc.). Furthermore, each character has a Sword of Truth rating (starting at 1 for all PCs). Players can only use runes rated (runes are rated based on length, and more wordy runes generally give more powerful results) as equal or below the rating and can’t use runes below three points of their rating (so, someone with Sword of Truth 5 wouldn’t be able to use first level runes). It’s rather obviously done to promote the study and memorization of Bible.

The effects of the runes are not described in this section, but they’re basically spells: buffs, debuffs, attacks, invisibility, light, etc.

So, what do I think about it? Well, Bible does have plenty of cool and weird quotes that can work nicely as magical chants, so in that respect the idea is actually fun. I’m more suspicious about its teaching potential. The focus on memorizing specific quotes as opposed to, you know, reading the Bible strikes me as misguided. Now, I’m not an expert on Christianity, the only Bible verse I can actually cite is “Jesus wept,” which I’ve learned from Unknown Armies of all places, so I defer to Fred Clark (of left Behind readthrough fame) in the matter. According to him, such an approach is what partially led to creation of Rapture mythology: its proponents basically created a Frankenstein’s monster out of quotes from different Biblical text that were about drastically different subjects. In the process they’ve pulled some of the quotes out of context, mangling their meaning.

And that’s all this game does: encourage you to memorize a bunch of unrelated quotes with little structure between them. As such, despite the devs’ claims to the contrary, I can’t say this game really teaches any spiritual lessons, at least not through this mechanic. Quite ironically, much more than D&D ever could, the game teaches its players magic: say the right words, and God would answer and protect you and give you power to defeat your enemies.

Also, the runes are bloody wordy, starting with a sentence and ending with, like, three paragraphs. I pity any kid who had to memorize this stuff just to cast some healing or whatever.

And while we’re still in this section, this passage deserves mention:

First of all, you must believe that the Sacred Scrolls are truly the words of the Everlasting Spirit. As the Scrolls themselves say: \All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, so that the man of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work.” (2 Timothy 3:16-17). This WordRune teaches us that the Almighty Spirit,  through the influence of the Unseen Counsel, qualified and enabled holy men to make an infallible record of divine truth concerning the Maker’s will for man.

That’s right, the devs are bloody literalists, which shouldn’t be a surprise considering their jab at evolution. I guess you can make a case that in the game world the Sacred Scrolls were, indeed, written or dictated by Overlord and carry his exact words, but again, this game is intended as an educational tool for kids, and it utilizes real Bible, not a fictitious holy text inspired by Bible (despite changing everything else). So, yeah, that’s the message you’re supposed to carry into the real life: Bible is the literal word of God, no matter how little sense that makes and how many liberal Christian don’t buy it.

Moving on.

Next section is about celestial guardians.

Both Unicorns and Pegasi are embodiments of angels in the world of EdenAgain. They have certain ministries and abilities given to them by the OverLord for His purposes. Unicorns and Pegasi are holy beings, presenting themselves to human view in a physical body, and have a much greater knowledge of the OverLord than does any man.

Yes, yes, it’s all well and good, but let’s not lose sight of the truly important matters: how many HP do they have?

Still no mechanics, in other words. I assume they’re all in the rulebook, which leaves this section pretty sparse. It’s basically a brief description of pegasi and unicorns appearance, not many details on what they actually do or what abilities they have.

Sometimes angels take on forms other than the two mentioned above. As the particular assignment requires, they may even change from one form to another right before your eyes.

Do they turn into burning wheels with many eyes? More stuff should use classic mythological angels. They’re so cool and Lovecraftian.

The section concludes with a list of info about angels taken from Bible:

1. The nature of angels
(a) They are created beings. (Colossians 1:16)
(b) They are greater than man. (Psalm 8:4-5)
(c) They have great power. (2 Thessalonians 1:7)
(d) They have great knowledge, but they are not omniscient. (1 Peter 1:12)
(e) They are not proper objects of worship. (Revelation 22:8-9)

And other such passages.

It’s interesting in an abstract way, but not particularly practical or relevant. Supposedly angels protect Twice Borns from accidents and the like, but I don’t think there is any mechanic enforcing that.

Next we have normal and talking animals because Narnia, I guess. Long story short, while there are plenty of normal animals around the world, there are also animals that talk. They tend to be bigger than their counterparts, but otherwise look the same, making hunting a difficult affair for those who don’t want to accidentally murder people (dragon slaves hunt anyway). Talking animals is a pretty common idea that can be found in many stories, not just Narnia, but these animals are not like others. They’re missionary animals.

1. They serve the OverLord and bear witness to His truth. (Hehe, bear)
2. They may help to convict dragon slaves of the truth.
3. They instruct LightRaiders on living a holy life.
4. They help LightRaiders to discern between right and wrong.
5. They help raiding parties remember the words of the OverLord.
6. They give guidance to LightRaiders.

Honestly, it’s such a bizarre idea. I mean, seriously, imagine receiving a spiritual advice from a rabbit wandering by. I have no idea why the devs included this little tidbit, and I’m not sure what to say about it.

Still, a bear priest is an awesome image, so there is that.

Next we have other good creatures. It’s a blurb about how there are many other good creatures around, like faeries (I guess not old-school ones), elves, halflings and other standard fantasy races. I think they may be described in more detail in the second edition? Here, though, it’s a stump of a section that tells us nothing beyond “some shit can be found out there we know nothing about” and, as such, is a bad game design. I would actually be more OK with it if it didn’t list the names of the creatures and simply stated there are some good creatures out there we know little about. That would be a carte blanche for the GMs to add their own stuff to the setting. While experienced GMs need no reminders that they’re allowed to do it, it is useful for beginners.

Anyway, next we finally get to PCs. All PCs are Light Raiders, Twice Borns sent on missions into the Dragon Lands to promote Overlord’s cause of global domination liberation.

Throughout the books, there were references to Salt Warriors, and I had no fucking clue what they are because the definition section didn’t mention them for some weird reason. Here we finally get an explanation: they’re Light Raiders who are assigned on long missions into the Dragon Lands and don’t return to the Liberated Land for years.

Well, that was anticlimatic after all the times I was wondering about them.

Retired LightRaiders who instruct and prepare the TwiceBorn to live for the OverLord’s glory are called Guardians of the Light. When a Guardian of the Light returns to the Dragon Lands, however, it is usually to die a martyr’s death for the cause.

…Holy shit, they institutionalized dying wise mentors.

Seriously, what is this with the martyr complex? As I understand it, the idea here is that the Guardians are sent on most dangerous and urgent missions, hence the high expectation of death, but the way it’s written, it’s like they’re specifically sent to die, like death is the purpose.

I’m fairly sure they don’t have Gray Wardens’ reasons to all end up dying in battle, so it comes across as very unfortunate.

Anyway, what makes Light Raiders special and fit to go on missions is character strengths, which serve the purpose of standard attributes here: LOVE, Joy, Peace, Patience, Faithfulness, Kindness, Goodness, Gentleness and Self-Control.

Yeah, so here is a thing. I’m generally deeply suspicious of personal attributes. Mental attributes like Intelligence and Wisdom can be tricky already: it’s hard to role-play a wise character when you yourself are not very wise. Codified personal attributes go beyond that and impose limitations on your role-playing that have a good chance to be detrimental.

They can be done well, but they need to be kept abstract and open for individual interpretation. For example, DRYH Madness is fine: as it grows, your character becomes more unhinged and less in control of the Madness Talent, but the exact results are up to you. You may play up some obsession warping character’s behavior, you may go for more realistic mental illness, you may go for Madness Talent flaring up and locking the character between illusion and reality, anything you think appropriate. And there are only four stages to it, so you can crank up the effects dramatically each time without worrying if you’re overdoing it and if there would be room for escalation later.

Unknown Armies madness system, on the other hand, I don’t like much. It’s elegant and fits the themes of the game (though it should really be called stress coping system or something as actual madness comes only at the end of the scale), but it can be hard to go in the middle of the game “oh yeah, after that encounter my character should be a bit more fatalistic. It does make you think about the character’s psyche and its evolution but in a way that can easily break immersion and distract you from the events at hand.

And the personal traits DragonRaid proposes are, well, not good. They cover a lot of ground, which can easily lock you to a character you don’t like or have trouble role-playing (and, oh yes, they are generated randomly. I’ll rant about it more once we get to actual rules, though), and demand from you constantly juggling a lot of mental concepts. Are you behaving in accordance with your Patience 9? Or is it closer to 7? What about Peace? Is your character at ease enough?

And they overlap a lot. What does it mean to be gentle but not kind? Patient but with little self-control? Joyful but not in peace?

Hell if I know. What I do know is that I would struggle playing a character created in this system, which makes it a bad design, regardless of any messages the game tries to deliver.

And, oh yes, there is one hell of a message.

The Character Strengths will be developed in you insofar as you are obedient to the OverLord of Many Names. If there is no obedience, as in the case of a dragon slave, there will be no strength. Thus, LightRaiders with the highest Character Strengths are the ones who have been most obedient to the OverLord. Obedience to the OverLord enables Him to make you a new creation. You will be changed from glory to glory into the likeness of the OverLord.

It’s kinda funny how villainous that sounds once you ignore the Christian aspect. It’s something straight out of a mouth of a mad scientist or a sorcerer cultist. “Obey me, and I shall give you perfection of form!”

And, of course, only Twice Borns (read: Christians) posses character strengths. Non-Christians don’t have love or joy or peace. They live in sin and have no morals of their own. Because that’s how the world works, right?

Ugh, moving on.

Next are character abilities, weapons and defenses, for the most part pretty standard: endurance, listening, vision, knowledge, etc. The only odd one is hope, which is used to, well, not lose hope when things are grim. Not sure how it’s used by the system.

Players have solo battle weapon ability by default and can pick three more, like lances, swords and so on. Pretty classic.

Defense abilities are evade enemy, recover from injury and resist torture.

What’s interesting about all of them is that the way their rating is calculated. All abilities depend on one or a number (up to all 9) character strengths, so you have formulas like Courage = (Love + Joy + Goodness + Faithfulness + Self-Control) / 5. The formulas aren’t all that hard, and in theory it’s a nice thematic touch showing that all virtues are important, no matter what you do, but man, is it a pain in the ass to calculate all of the standard abilities. Weapon abilities are also pretty hard to pick because of that since it’s often hard to tell in which weapon you’d have the highest score without calculating all of them.

I sure hope that the formulas apply only for the starting rating. There are buffs rising one of the strengths for the period of an encounter, and recalculating every relevant ability as well would be downright cruel to kids.

On a brighter side, there are optional abilities. There are 11 of them in total, and each player picks 3 for their characters (the abilities not picked default to rating 1). Most of them are pretty standard as well, like water movement or “climb skillfully,” but then there is this gem:

Righteously Mingle With Evil.

Guys, you can righteously mingle with evil in this game. Yes, that is the source of the subtitle for my reviews. It may seem underwhelming for you now, but it’s just so, so perfect. I mean, just try to imagine righteous mingling with evil. For me, it conjures an image of a priest on a devil’s party talking pompously about sin and God while drinking wine and covering demons crawling up his robe.

And that’s what this game is, ultimately: a bunch of fundamentalists trying to reach to kids through something they like and in the process turning their own holy book into a magical grimoire and stumbling straight into the old moral pitfall that has nothing to do with demon-worshiping and everything to do with the desire to simplify the world, to create enemies it’s OK to hate and kill.

So, naturally it’s my favorite ability in this game. I don’t even care what it actually does*, it’s great. So you may imagine my disappointment when I learned that to righteously mingle with evil I need another optional ability, Hatred of Evil.

*It’s a spy stuff, “an ability to resist being soiled in evil surroundings,” to be among evil without being tarnished by it. The mechanic is not explained here, I presume it has something to do with sin enchantments, or maybe allows characters to do evil for the greater good without penalties or something along these lines.

Hatred of Evil basically increases damage against dragons and dark creatures, but that’s not important. What’s important is that certain abilities have other abilities as prerequisites. Normally, it would be unremarkable, but with only 11 optional abilities total and with only 3 being allowed per character, it does limit customization options rather severely, which is not a good choice.

Who the devs think they are, denying me the ability to righteously mingle with evil right away, huh?

But let’s move on. Another way Light Raiders are special is their spiritual armor, Armor of God.

LightRaider armor weighs nothing. It is invisible to dragon slaves, dark creatures, and – under most circumstances – to other LightRaiders. Only at special times can LightRaiders observe one another’s armor. Dragons, however, can see the armor from a distance of 1/4 mile.

I see Light Raiders are not allowed to have transformation sequences, eh? And what are the special circumstances when they can see the armor? Anima flaring up?

Anyway, the Armor of God is composed of a several items with neat effects:

• Belt of Truth which protects you from believing falsehoods (I assume it’s useful against mental speech);
• Breastplate of Righteousness (what an awesome name) which protects you from temptations (I assume it’s used against sin enchantments;
• Shield of Faith which offers actual protection from weapons and specifically dragon fire;
• Helmet of Salvation which gives LightRaiders their hope of eternal life in the Everlasting Kingdom, whatever that means in game terms;
• Sword of the Spirit, which is still considered armor for some reason and enables you to use Word Runes;
• The Boots of the Gospel of Peace, which have an awesome name. Oh, and also help you when your courage fails, but who cares? The Boots of the Gospel of Peace. Say it three times, and your tongue will turn into stone.

All in all, it’s not a bad power set. And you know, if the armor was what separated Once Borns from Twice Borns, I wouldn’t have problems. Kyurei gives chosen ones the power to fight against darkness metaphysically linked to their virtues, business as usual. But no, they had to go with positive character traits being denied to non-Christian. Ugh. Yes, I’m still not over it because it’s an old and dumb argument that should die already.

Anyway, Christianity aside, the armor is a cool idea, actually. The rating of each item depends, once again, on character strengths, so it’s not a perfect defense, just the first line of resistance. The powerset is decisively magical girl’s, something that allows you to resist corruption and mind control, of which mahou shoujo villains tend to be fond, as well as work (presumably) purifying magic on foes.

So, I actually like this bit and may rework it for something else at some point.

Next we have the Great Rescue Word Rune or the Fantastic Invitation (technically, the Fantastic Invitation is a subtype of Great Rescue, but there are no other Great Rescue Word Runes, so there).

Long story short, it’s a conversion instruction. Light Raiders are supposed to convert dragon slaves to the Overlord faith, and here we have a five steps program to that effect. From what I can tell, it’s similar to real life counterparts. So, by learning it, you too can become the most obnoxious type of plane passenger!

Yeah, one good thing I can say about it is that at least it acknowledges that no miracles should be expected and that the subject of this “runes” would just become aware of Overlord and his faith, not convert automatically. Still, the focus on the missionary work as a duty and the rigid formula that must be followed is what makes certain Christians perceive us heathens as objects to work their Bible magic on first, people distant second.

Once again I bring up Fred Clark, who talked at length about how this stuff is supposed to be an open invitation for those who would take it, not an extortion or a ritual.

Look, I’ll say it simply: I’m not particularly interested in becoming a Christian, and quoting Bible at me won’t change it. Realistically, most dragon slaves who would hear the fantastic Invitation would nod and walk away, the words forgotten in the next hour. Maybe there are arguments that would appeal to them – or to me, for that matter – maybe there aren’t, but you won’t find them in step-by-step instructions. People are a lot more messy than that, and so you need to approach them as people, make an honest attempt to understand them and to be their friend.

Without love, it cannot be seen, as the saying goes.

Alright, next we have battle prayer. Basically, during a battle players may write names of their characters (or other players’ characters) and handle them to the AM. Something good may happen if the AM decides the situation warrants divine intervention. The game states that it should be used in an emergency, but there are no actual rules for it (there are rules for the effects, but they’re in the AM manual, so we’ll get to them later), which seems like it could easily lead to abuse. If nothing else, stalling the game in a middle of a dramatic fight for that seems counterproductive.

Next we have special runes. First of them is Ultimate Hope Word Rune, also known as TRP avoidance. It can be used once in a lifetime of a given character and it totally obliterates any and all dark creatures around. No word on the dragons, though. Can be used only when character’s life is seriously threatened.

Eh, pretty straightforward, and is useful for new players, who are most likely to need it. If you’re facing death in a TRPG, it generally means that either you or the GM did something wrong (or the dice decided to fuck with you, but that’s part of the tension), so normally I would say such a thing is unneeded. Death comes either as a consequence of your own mistakes or the GM’s doing, and in the latter case you have a bigger problem. However, for people who are just learning the ropes? Yeah, it’s actually a neat feature.

Life Verse Word Rune can be any Bible quote picked by the player (though no less than 30 words). It’s basically a call for a timeout stopping all action for five minutes and giving the player a chance to think. I like the emphasis on personal choice of words here*, but the concept of the rune sounds kinda dickish. I mean, it’s a common courtesy to give players a time to think when they feel pressured, unless the pressure is a part of the game (like horror or high action) and the players are fine with it, in which case stopping everything would be dickish to other players whose immersion may be broken.

*In general, I think this game would benefit from players making up their own Word Runes and assigning effects to them from some list. That idea could be used in a different game, of course, with Bible replaced by made-up magic chants and the like. UBW mantra, anyone?

Back on Track Word Rune, also known as the Retcon rune, allows your character to go back to some important decision and do it all over. Can be used twice for a given character. Yeah, not a good choice. Nothing destroys the tension quite so completely as going back in time after already learning important reveals. There are no limits mentioned, either, so in theory you can go back all the way to your first mission.

I understand that sometimes players may do something dumb they wish to take back, but, well, having to live with the consequences of your actions is part of the appeal of TRPGs. It’s what makes the game world feel more real than what you would find in video games and the like. If you simply can’t have fun anymore, you’re better off with creating a new character rather than retconning stuff. Especially considering the headache of recalculating your virtues and abilities.

The Ultimate Hope rune erases the consequences of a bad decision, which already can be immersion-threatening. This one destroys the decision itself, and the reality of the world with it.

The Transgression Word Rune halves the penalties for killing a dragon slave. I must say, repenting for a death of a fictional character is some kind of new form of torture. It’s an actual prayer, too, it doesn’t even change God to Maker. It’s fucking lengthy, too, four paragraphs. Also, note that there are no penalties for killing dark creatures, despite them not being inherently evil according to their backstory and potentially redeemable. Only humans matter in the eyes of God (I’m also not sure about talking animals, but at least it’s mentioned that Light Raiders are forbidden to kill them, whether or not they get penalties for that).

The section concludes with prestige classes or Special Character Roles, as they’re called here.

Basically, once your stats are high enough, you may qualify for one or a few roles and receive various bonuses or abilities. Naturally, determining whether your stats are high enough involves more math. You get formulas like this: (Self-Control + Goodness + Joy + 2*Peace) / 5 >= 7.

Yeah, not the most intuitive system.

Anyway, the roles are as follows:

Lion Warrior, Wolf Soldier and Bear Knight all receive a corresponding talking animal companion. I must say, “you now have a talking bear with you” is some creative character advancement if nothing else.

Also, Bear Knight sounds awesome.

Animal Master gets a number of regular animals trained to follow orders, pretty standard RPG thing.

Renewer is a healer. Well, healers at least are handled better here than in some other games. Normally, nobody wants to play a dedicated healer because it’s boring, but here it’s an additional thing, you mostly still kick ass and take names, so it’s not too bad. Still other options are more interesting.

Knight of the Way and Rescue Master receive flat bonuses to some abilities (Track Enemy, Evade Enemy and Blend with Surroundings for the Knight, Climb Skillfully,
Blend with Surroundings, and Water Movement for the Rescue Master). Pretty straightforward and not very interesting. I’m also rather dubious on Rescue Master character concept. Is someone who can get to you quickly that valuable without anything else special going for them?

Overlord’s Guard is the role that requires Righteously Mingle With Evil, so it’s automatically the best role. More, its unique ability is also cool: shapeshifting. Only into humans, sadly, and only twice per day, but it’s still pretty neat for spy types. Dragons can still detect them, though, limiting the depth of possible cover. Nevertheless, I was right in trusting RME, it didn’t lead me astray.

Raid Leader is a weird role. As the name implies, it’s the party leader. Except… shouldn’t it be a role that someone could get at the very beginning of the game? Whatever the system says, players are likely to follow someone’s lead after an adventure or two simply because having a leader simplifies everything. And they would likely chose a leader based on their RL charisma and leadership qualities, not on stats because, well, even if someone has better stats, it wouldn’t help them to formulate a good plan or break arguments.

As such, the role feels redundant. By the time anyone could actually qualify for it, there already would be a de facto leader, and if someone else would take the mechanical role, at worst it would just generate some drama and at best won’t change anything, it would just create a figurehead.

Also, the role doesn’t actually offer any mechanical benefits. There simply aren’t any. I don’t know if it’s an oversight or if the leadership position is supposed to be a reward in itself, but either way just go for the bear.

The last role is Guardian of the Light. The role can be obtained only by getting perfect 10 in each character strength, which I guess is the reason why they tend to retire or go on suicide missions: there is nowhere else to grow their characters, so may as well kill them off and start anew.

Also no mechanical benefits despite claims to the contrary:

Since Guardians of the Light are willing to pay the price, they receive great rewards.

I guess their abilities may be reserved for some stuff akin to epic levels guide that was never published or something?

Anyway, that’s it for now. As you can see, this section was a very mixed bag with some neat ideas, some silliness and some godawful moments as well.

Tune in next time for the reminder of the Light Raider Handbook, where what should have been its own thick book is told in, like, five pages. I expect the next post to be much shorter than this one.