Welcome to Labyrinths & Liontaurs!
A free fantasy tabletop RPG for gamers who want real character choice, more logical design, and ethical sandbox play.
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A TTRPG For You!
You're a veteran gamer, and you want something more. You want a game that scratches an itch, maybe an itch you didn't even know you had. You know, that one between your shoulder blades that you can't quite reach. Well, Labyrinths & Liontaurs is the backscratcher for you! Here's why:
Flexibility and greater choice: You've played the big games, D&D and Pathfinder. You want more flexibility to make your character exactly what you want. You're tired of railroad advancement. You want to create an original character concept without compromising. It is not unreasonable to mix and match abilities to make your character match your vision.
A game that makes sense: You've tried the old school renaissance games like Dungeon Crawl Classics and Old-School Essentials. But you want a game with logical rules, balanced magic, and a fair chance to survive adventures — we can do better than the design philosophy of the 1970s!
A complex and rich game experience: Sure, one-shots and rules-light games can be fun, but you want a deep, long-running game set in a sandbox world you can explore for a full campaign. And you want more than a short story or a world of battle encounters interspersed with short rests and cut scenes. You want a game that prioritizes exploration and interaction as powerfully as it does traditional combat.
Heroic deeds: There are plenty of grimdark and morally ambiguous games out there, treating evil play as a viable alternative to good. Instead, you're interested in playing a hero rather than a villain, because uplifting stories are more satisfying than those that glorify the worst in people. What if you could defeat evil without killing? You don't want to be a murder hobo, and you hate worrying about your friends eating your face.
But what about you RPG newbies? Maybe you've heard of Dungeons & Dragons, the great-grandaddy of the genre. If you are new to the hobby, go visit the Getting Started Page. Also check out the Wikipedia article on Role-playing Games; there are lots of good links there, so head down the wiki rabbit hole and learn more.
In short, both veteran gamers and newcomers seeking deep rulesets, flexible character advancement, noble play, and simulationist adventures will find something to like in this game.
Labyrinths & Liontaurs is free of charge and entirely open under a d20 Open Game License. It will eventually be released in multiple digital formats. All of the rules of L&L can be found on the Contents page, linked at the top of every page. Go ahead and bookmark the Contents. That's what I use as my go-to link to L&L. From there you can easily find any part of the rules you need.
Design Notes
If you want to read my long essay on why I wrote Labyrinths & Liontaurs, then these Design Notes may be interesting. There, I talk about my game creation choices and why I made them. That page includes my opinions on roleplay game design, why we play the game, and how I devised L&L to be the best darn roleplay game ever.
The Notes are linked at the top of every L&L page, too.
I started thinking about the core design innovations in L&L in May 2008. I started actually writing these rules as a dedicated system in December 2022. I began playtesting the game in September 2026. The 1.0 version of this game will be released in January 2027. It is entirely and completely the creation of one individual, myself, Michael Cayzle Alterio. I hope you enjoy my work.
Note that placeholder AI art in this game was created years ago — before I understood the effect on artists whose work was used as training data without permission — and it is being replaced asap.