Leviathans’ Lieutenant’s Manual PDF Now Available
Leviathans is a steampunk game that simulates combat between warships that have taken to the air in an alternate history 1910. The king leviathans, battleships, are the largest vessels. Maneuvering in support are light cruisers, destroyers and other vessels. Will you captain your fleet for king and country, expanding your nation’s power and becoming legend? Or will you fall from the sky, forgotten?
You determine the outcome!
Spring 2010 will see the publication of this much anticipated box set game. The Leviathans Core Box Set will include the following:
- 3 rulebooks to ease players from the quick-start rules all the way to enhanced play for endless fun.
- 8 high-quality plastic miniatures representing ships from the British and French fleets.
- 12 Ship Cards that expand a player’s fleet, including a battleship, two light cruisers and three destroyers.
- 12 full-color Recognition Cards that correspond to each Ship Card, including the ship’s service history on the back.
- Leviathans Primer that details the alternate history of Leviathans, the technology behind the great ships, the eight major air powers of 1910, along with minor powers, and the growing hot spots of conflict around the world.
- 2 novellas throwing you directly into the action of the universe.
- Templates to aide game play.
- 2 18″ x 22″ board-game quality maps, printed on both sides.
- 12 dice
Until then, however, the Lieutenant’s Manual is now available!
The Leviathans’ Lieutenant’s Manual is a 32-page PDF offering a complete introduction to the new, innovative Leviathans’ game system, including playing maps, ready-to-cut-out-and-use Ship Cards and counters. All a player needs to bring to the table are a few sets of polyhedral gaming dice (D4, D6, D8, D10 and D12s) and in minutes they’ll be scouring the skies at the helm of several thousand tons of war-forged metal looking for the tail-tale sign of enemy smoke on the horizon.
Lieutenant’s Manual: Quick-Start Rules PDF on Catalyst
Lieutenant’s Manual: Quick-Start Rules PDF on DriveThruRPG
In August 2009 Catalyst Game Labs pushed the boundaries of publishing as the first to simultaneously release a major role-playing game publication—Eclipse Phase—under Creative Commons and through the traditional distributions network.
Catalyst continues to push the boundaries of publishing as the first major publisher to release a miniatures game under Creative Commons with the first roll out of Leviathans’ books in the Lieutenant’s Manual. Additional PDF releases will occur in the coming weeks and months leading up the release of the box set game next spring.
While Leviathan’s is steampunk in flavor, no single definition covers the genre anymore; instead, it is a collage of concepts and ideas, even if the core remains the same. This type of “mix it and make it yours” mentality fits flawlessly with Creative Commons, allowing anyone that loves steampunk to take Leviathans and make it theirs in what ever way they desire.
If you receive this PDF from a friend who shared it in accordance with the Creative Commons license, and you like it, please support the cause by buying the PDF. This is still an experiment and we hope to make it work. If it does, the success of Leviathans—along with the growing success of Eclipse Phase—may very well affect the way all game companies go about publishing games in the future. So if you like this direction, we need your support!
For those who are interested in trying it before buying it, you can find a free (legal) torrent at http://catalystgamelabs.com/download/resources/CAT31000a_Leviathans_LtManual.pdf.torrent
Part of the great thing about the BY-NC-SA Creative Commons license is sharing is perfectly legal. We stand behind our product and know that if you like it, you’ll support the line through future purchases.
This is great! Thanks!
Risky….I really hope this pays off for you guys. I sure will purchase a PDF!
My Adobe won’t open the Torrent PDF. It identifies it as a torrent doc, not a PDF.
You need to open the torrent file with a Bittorrent application. That app will then download the PDF for you from whomever is sharing it.
Just out of curiosity, how do you simulate a d8 and d10 with a d12? Obviously, it will work for the d4 and d6, but what “pips” do you repeat on the d8 and d10? In a previous post, you mention dice bell curves, but there isn’t a curve for a single die.
Anyhow, the QSR look really interesting, and I’m looking forward to the boxset!
Yellow: Facings 1 to 8 remain 1 to 8; facings 9 = 4, 10 = 7, 11 = 5, 12 = 2
Red: Facings 1 to 10 remain 1 to 10; facing 11 = 4, facting 12 = 7
And thanks!
Thanks for sharing this, I’m looking forward to trying it out.
One question though: What is the purpose of the crew slot in the stern of the HML Raven? There are no guns in the back to take advantage of it, and none of the guns in the other sections can use it.
In the Commander’s Manual there are Repair Rules that occure at the end of each turn. If you have a Crew Slot in a Location with a slot destroyed on a previous turn, you can attempt to repair that slot (you cannot repair armor or another crew slot in this fashion). So in this case the Raven has a crew in the Stern specifically for when it gets damaged and it can attempt to repair any slots destroyed…especially useful repairing Engine Slots.
This is PFC (pretty ******* cool).
Art is great, rules are great and I can understand them. don’t know if the minis will be pre-painted or not, but will not have a chance to play it unless they are pre-painted. College, job, help taking care of my father and a girlfriend does not allow too much hobby time, let alone actually playing a game. More than willing to spend the extra green backs for prepainted.
If not, I’ll just get the rules from someone, scan them, then use my War at Sea minis as stand ins.
On another note, if there is trouble opening up the rules, I can put up a link for a direct PDF download wither PERMISSION of one of the catalyst labs employees.
Not getting my poor college ass sued.
(I was threatened once my games workshop, since then stopped buying their games)
by the way, will ze Germans be in the initial release?
Thanks for your offer, but I believe the torrent appears to be working fine.
British and French are in the Core box Set. Additional Faction Box Sets will then follow, such as Germans/Italians, Japanese/Russians and so on.
Will there be Carriers in the Core/following releases? Will there be bombing missions? Will the US come?
I’m loving the basic rules, I can’t wait for the box set, my imagination suitable teased by the hints at aerial torpedoes, altitude changes, etc.
Also, loving the Creative Commons, very handy for beginning game designers such as myself.
No carriers or bombing missions planned for the first year or two of release…but have no fear they ‘are’ planned and I’ve got a pile of notes on how to make them work.
And thanks!
Victory
I have been following this for some time now and was able to try this today. We had such a great time. We’re definitely looking forward to some of the advanced items such as altitude and boarding actions.
We found in this first game our ships spent a lot of time close in to each other and once the leviathans began to scar from battle, the captains spent more time attempting to out navigate the other. I was also impressed at how sturdy the beasts were (though perhaps this is a false sense of security due to the rolls.)
For this game we played with actual d8′s and d10′s. I am interested in trying it with the d12′s for each to see how they effect shooting.
Thanks for getting this product out and I look forward to seeing what lies ahead.
Thanks for the great comments and glad you enjoyed the game…and the end of the day it’s all about the fun. Thanks!
I am impressed by your willingness to go with a CC license and the honor system to get paid. Unlike GW, it appears you respect your customer base. Good luck with the project.
I went over the rules, and I have to say, it sounds pretty awesome, if I have the chance to try it, I will. I will definitely get the box when it goes out, as well as japanese and russians, and maybe germans and italians as well, cuz well, when you’re passionate…
A few questions though, how many factions are planned so far?
How many ships can we expect for each faction?
Will we have scenarios in relation with ground battles (like wings of war have ground defenses…)?
Will the game feature planes? I’m a big WWI aviation fan, and I’d love to see some included…
Hello all! We’ve found a few niggling mistakes in the Lieutenant’s Manual PDF. We’re in the process of correcting those so we can get a corrected version to everyone for free that purchased the PDF. While we’re in this process, if anyone sees something in the PDF they think might be an error, feel free to pass that on to me at randall@catalystgamelabs.com, so we can fold anything else in as well.
Thanks!