Basic Fantasy RPG Appreciation Day

Being a huge blabber mouth, I talk about my role playing hobby quite a bit and as a result I was recently asked to introduce a couple of long time friends to the hobby. The question in my mind was what set of rules to use.

When it comes to new players I want to provide them a fun and challenging experience, so that they will be encouraged to pursue the hobby on their own. So, for me the what set of rules question boils down to "Old School" mechanics and descending armour class or the new d20 rule mechanic with ascending armour class and a bunch of other rules I just don't think the game requires.

Further down the page you can read my musings on this under "Not In Isolation". For now, this post is about my choice of Basic Fantasy RPG Basic Fantasy RPG as the rule set I will use to start off my new players.

Like a lot of the "Old School" RPG games available these days, author Chris Gonnerman has adapted the best of 1st and 2nd edition AD&D to the new d20 mechanic without all the overhead, but with some subtle changes, additions and adaptations we would normally call House Rules. The changes have been kept to a minimum, or they reflect commons practises we all use so well that they are mostly transparent.

An example of this was pointed out quite admirably on the Gamers and Grognards blog Gamers and Grognards Blog  which is participating in "Basic Fantasy Role-Playing Game Blog Appreciation Day.  This appreciation day is spearheaded by Tenkar's Tavern, another great gaming blog: Tenkar's Tavern .

BFRPG is completely free, as some have said, a gift to the role-playing community, and what a gift it is.

Chris provides the rule book free to download as a PDF and he and the BFRPG community have proved numerous and wonderful adventure modules, rules supplements and other game aids for free.  An even bigger bonus - the rules are also provided as a free download in OpenDocument format!

This means that you can grab Chris' hard work and bend it to your will! Remove what you don't like or add those house rules you've always played with.  In this way, you can create a custom game document for your game style or game world. This is a great thing to hand to your players especially those just starting out who may not have the inclination. (please remember to give credit to Chris Gonnerman and his contributors, as well as the OGL under which the work is published.  Respect!)

If you are a lapsed role-playing gamer and can't face the daunting task of learning a new set of rules, if you are a current GM who is tired of all the additional book keeping you must endure under new rules, if you just want to know what all this gibber-jabber is about, then BFRPG is for you!  All the old familiar old-game rules are there, but utilizing ascending armour class as presented in the d20 mechanic.  It's a good cross between what is now known as "Old-School" or "retro-clone" role-playing and the new basics of rolling dice used in the new rule systems.

Postscript: BFRPG is not the only retro-clone rule set out there.  Labyrinth Lord  is another free "old-school" RPG and there are a number of others you will learn about if you read any of the blogs mentioned above.

Many are based on the old rules but add enough changes or additions as to be significantly different and unique games in themselves.  Castles and Crusades or Barebones Fantasy represent two excellent examples.

Some offer their rules for free in electronic format. Some offer for-pay printed versions and many offer both options. Go check 'em out!



Not in Isolation

If you are a fantasy role-playing gamer yourself, you are probably at least peripherally aware of how the game has changed hands over the years and how the system mechanics have changed significantly since those heady days of the 70's and 80's.

Like me you may have fallen off of the "one true path" as presented by the current lords of the patent for our favourite old-school RPG. There are many reasons why that may have occurred. For me, the break up occurred with the the addition of so many new rules and systems for what seemed to me at the time, no good reason.  Rules, procedures or mechanics that were generally used "off the cuff" were becoming formalized and codified.

For instance, there were no formal rules for swinging across a room on a chandelier. Many GMs decided "off-the-cuff" that rolling a d20 and comparing the result to a character's dexterity score would provide enough of a basis to determine if such an antic succeeded, failed, or fell somewhere in between.  There was no reason to make it an official game rule. In my mind that sort of adjudication was the purview of the GM who is not only responsible for presenting an interesting story but whose primary responsibility was to provide flexibility to the rules.  Rather than saying "You can't swing from the chandelier because the rules say you need two arms.", the GM could look at the characters and say "Even though you only have one arm, you are strong enough to swing on that chandelier, but you're not going to be able to take a sword swipe at the enemy...you might be able to kick him though..." and so.

Like many others, I began to add rules and remove rules to the game I played, in order to address problems I thought existed. These "House Rules" were often employed to address balance issues within the original rules, to add new and interesting themes for players and settings and to streamline game play.

One of the House Rules I use alters the way in which a magic spell is cast or a new Spell is recored in a spell book.

Most spells require specific items and materials at the time of their casting.  Often, they require very rare or very expensive material. Many times, characters are sent on a side quest to obtain the item, such as a pearl worth 1000 gold pieces. That's a significant amount of game cash and it seems a bit silly if every time my Magic User wants to cast the simple utility spell that needs this pearl, he'd have to go on a quest. Additionally, a 1000gp pearl would seem to be a fairly rare thing to come across.

My House Rule says you will still need the components normally used to cast this spell, however, you will only need them to enable the magic used to write the spell into your book the first time. Once it's there, you can memorize it when needed without paying the heavy cost of components to fuel the spell.

This provides an opportunity to send the character on a quest for the first round of components, a quest that you can make as difficult as required, but without the tedious repetition of a computer MMO. Trust me, there are *lots* of spells and lots of components for which to quest!

I also use house rules that govern a spell point system that includes elements of casting fatigue and spell recovery. The system allows the caster to manage his own casting in a way that spells can be cast without having to wait for an arbitrary time for them to regenerate. If the character has to endure a long battle without periods of rest, he can still cast spells but then has to face the problem of exhaustion.

A key part of that spell point system is that it places the record keeping into the players hands.  New and recent rules have added a monumental amount of record keeping to the list of tasks already on the GMs plate. Just look at a couple of editions and see how many new "states" have crept into combat. Add to that, Feats and Skills for a ton of extra die rolls and suddenly combat takes for ever and the story grinds to a halt.

I think a lot of it comes down to how combat has been handled in recent game editions. The use of miniature figures to represent characters during combat is along standing tradition.  When the hobby first started, a lot of the game took place in "the theatre of the mind" - the GM described the environment and each player visualized it in their head.  When the GM said there was mold on the cave walls, I might have envisioned a green slimy mold while another player might imagine something yellowish and dusty.

However, in combat, "theatre of the mind" can portray a less clear picture. It's often crucial to know where the chair and table is or if a fellow adventurer is standing between you and your opponent when you prepared to shoot that arrow. Miniatures are a great way of taking one look at the table top to get an instant picture.  If you are not in position to fire that arrow, you can tell the GM "I'm taking one step to the left so I can get a clear shot past the fighter". Again, the responsibility is in the hands of the player to ensure they are where they want to be, to avoid any difference in interpretation.

In recent rules, it appears as though miniature rules have been used to attract a different type of gamer to the RPG fold. Miniature gamers are accustomed to rules that simulate everything from movement across hills and rough terrain to time to reload ammo, or the chance to go berserk on the battlefield. It's a fun type of game to play with lots of little rules, but it isn't role-playing and in a role-playing game it tends to put the game into slow motion.

So....

If any of this seems confusing or poorly laid out for you the reader, my apologies - all this stuff has been rolling around in my head for years, in response to the many questions I've answered about what I *don't* like or would change in new rules. Now that I am comparing old-school gaming to the "one true path", I have tried for the first time to put those thoughts in writing.