The Manual of the Three Adventuring Arts
Foreword
Welcome to the Majestic Fantasy RPG. What is it, and what sets it apart? It is meant to do a few things. It supports my setting, the Majestic Fantasy Realms. It is built to run sandbox campaigns. And it is written to be useful for people running fantasy games regardless of edition, setting, or rule system.
The Majestic Fantasy Realms grew out of the fantasy campaigns I have been running for my friends for over four decades. I kept the same setting across successive campaigns, with different groups and even different systems. Over time, that produced a fair amount of original material. The Majestic Fantasy Realms is the setting portion of that work. The Majestic Fantasy RPG is the rules portion, adapted to classic Dungeons & Dragons.
What makes this a sandbox RPG? In a sandbox campaign, the players act as their characters and decide what matters. The direction of the campaign comes from the choices they make. The referee builds the setting and serves as a neutral arbiter. My book How to Make a Fantasy Sandbox explains how to build a setting. The Majestic Fantasy RPG focuses on how to describe that setting in game mechanics, how to adjudicate the players' choices, and how to keep the world in motion. What it does not do is tell you how the campaign ought to go or what choices the players ought to make.
I have always kept my campaigns grounded in the medieval fantasy of classic Dungeons & Dragons, no matter what system I was using at the time. Decades later, medieval fantasy and D&D tropes still sit at the heart of most fantasy roleplaying games.
Throughout the text you will see Rob's Notes. These are short comments explaining why I wrote certain sections the way I did. By laying out the thinking behind the rules, I hope the material remains useful even if you do not adopt the system as written.
Over the years, and after reading more about how Dungeons & Dragons developed, I came to believe that most campaigns are hybrids to some degree. By including Rob's Notes and structuring the Majestic Fantasy RPG as four books, I want this game to be useful even if you only use parts of it.
Thank you for reading. Let's step together through the door and see what kind of world you and your players will build.
Introduction
The Majestic Fantasy RPG consists of four books: The Manual of the Three Adventuring Arts, The Doomsday Codex, The Legendarium of the Fantastic, and The Tome of the Mundane, Strange, and Arcane. The book you hold, The Manual of the Three Adventuring Arts, is the player's handbook of the Majestic Fantasy RPG.
Here you will find the rules that govern the Martial, Mundane, and Magical Arts as they apply to creating characters and adjudicating their actions. This includes the classes they may pursue, the workings of arcane and divine magic, the equipment available to them, the resolution of combat, and advice for players exploring the Majestic Fantasy Realms or any setting your referee creates.
Everything here assumes a medieval fantasy setting. Its historical foundation rests between the fall of Rome and the Age of Reformation and Exploration, when firearms and long ocean voyages began to appear. Onto that foundation are added the familiar elements of Dungeons & Dragons: Vancian magic, dragons, and the strange creatures found across its various editions.
With modest work, these rules can also support campaigns set in earlier periods or later ones up to the first industrial revolution.
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