"Legendorama" is an open-ended mythopoeic minifig questing game in which our hero, Sir Richard Radclyffe by name, is preparing to set forth upon a great adventure. He rides a white, caparisoned charger. His arms are a golden lion rampant on red and white quarters. By his side run his two hunting hounds, Merriman and Belman.
Sir Richard’s yeoman rides a black horse and leads the horse that is harnessed to the war-gear cart. He is, just like Chaucer’s Yeoman, armed to the teeth. He is equipped with a longbow and quiver, a two-handed axe, a cutlass and a hunting shield. He has a leather helmet and green forester’s jerkin.
Guided by the Lower Arcana of the Tarot
As Sir Richard travels through unchartered territory he will encounter a series of exoteric circumstances as revealed by the Lower Arcana of the Tarot.
If Sir Richard survives his great exoteric adventure, he will be initiated step by step into all 22 houses of the esoteric Upper Arcana.
Mapping The Quest on a Shogi Board
Sir Richard quest will be mapped on a 9 x 9 shogi board, each square of which measures 3.6 miles long x 3.4 miles wide.
Whatever incidents occur in the squares of the shogi board will be played out on a tabletop or floor with Minifigs using a set of rules that I wrote for the Kingdoms Knights games that I created for the entertainment of my daughter and (chiefly) myself a few years ago.
I will use dice to map the terrain and the inhabitants thereof. I will draw one tarot card per “game day” in a deck that will consist of all the lower arcana and only one upper arcana at a time. The tarot card will determine the theme of the day.
The 22 Stages of Initiation
One upper arcana card will be added to the deck, beginning with The Fool.
Once the upper arcana card has been drawn it will trigger the initiatic journey that will take over from the exoteric adventure. All the lower arcana cards will be returned to the deck and the next upper arcana card will be shuffled into the deck.
Will Sir Richard survive and thrive long enough to complete all 22 initiations?
What will he discover as he progresses through uncharted territory?
David Hurley
A more detailed version of this post can be found on my blog @ https://legendorama.com/introducing-legendorama-a-mythopoeic-minifig-questing-game/
That's awesome! I've often thought of trying to put a game together with my minifigs, but I always get distracted by something else.
I really like how you're encouraging storytelling in the game more than the rules; let the game make itself! Sweet!
Well, I'm only on the evening of the second day the the quest, and getting there has taken me over two years already!
Good to see you admitted you wrote it for yourself haha.
This sounds and looks pretty awesome! I’m sure your daughter loves it, they have such good imaginations when they are young it’s a lot of fun!
Thank you! Legendorama is something that developed out of the games I played with my daughter, but by the time I started it she had already "outgrown" Lego! LOL!
It's sad when they out grow it, I'm not looking forward to when our son finally does! He might be in it for longer than some though, he loves building things and all that. It's inevitable though! I think I played with LEGO until I was about 12 or 13 when we got bored of it and went onto other things. Thankfully we still have the 10,000 or so pieces in my parents attic. Hopefully going to reclaim that one day lol