Book of Legends
by Steven W Huggins

What is this book of legends?

Book of Legends - The Eternal Empire is a planned series of 11 choose your own adventure style gamebooks. They are set in an alternate reality where a shooting star shattered Roman Europe in an event known as the Divine Fire, and brought with it both wonderous magic and horrific creatures along with the powers of the ancient gods.

Each volume in the series covers an area of Planet Earth 800 years ago where the Roman Empire is locked in battle with the other great empires and the insidious denizen brought into existence by the Divine Fire. Being an "open world" series of books, you are free to move between volumes just as you would travel the world in real life today.

How do I play? 

First you create a character, a brave (or not) adventurer who is exploring the ancient lands of the Eternal Empire for money, fame, or simply for the thrill. You then read through portions of text and make choices of where to go and what to do in this world. You are then directed to another section of text depending on your choice, and as you move around the book, you gain clues and items that will allow you to advance the story. Be careful, there are many situations that could cause your character harm, or even kill them, ending the story there.

The Downloads page has links to the character sheets that you will need to update often during the game. It is highly recommended that you download a copy of the character sheets, and print if you wish, so you can refer to and update them quickly during your exploits. 

Where do I start? 

You may begin your journey in any of the published volumes, starting by creating your character, and then beginning from section 1 in that book. It is recommended that you start from the Prologue (Volume 0) which will ease you into the rules and provide a fun challenge for young and old, novice or expert in these games.

The main story broadly runs in order from volume I to X as one would expect. Side quests, plots, and stories might cover many volumes and you could find yourself backtracking into earlier volumes for many of these. Later volumes will be more difficult and often fatal for an inexperienced adventurer.

Visit the Downloads page to get a copy of the prologue. This is free right now to give you a taster of the system and world. Please Contact Us at any point if you have any comments, constructive criticism or requests with the books.

What character can I play? 

You are free to create any style of character you wish to play. There are no character classes, just 11 abilities and 55 skills that will shape your alter-ego in the story and will guide the way the adventure unfolds. Choose good or evil, greed or compassion, be a human or one of the main races and species that evolved following the events of the Fire. The choice truly is yours.

How difficult is the game? 

I wanted to make this series quick to play, yet offer a deep and immersive experience, and with a good number of choices for the player outside of the game text itself. To enable this depth of gameplay, the detailed rules run to many dozens of pages, far exceeding that of many other books, and the character sheets cover four pages themselves.

However, fear not! After creating your character, the most important and often used rules cover just two pages and are summarised at the back of each volume for easy reference.