Ronin's Basic Fantasy ramblings

We are all familiar with standard ways we chuck dice. Players rolling their initiative, attacks, damage, saves, and skill rolls. GM do the same for monsters and NPCs. Some GM's tell players the target number for attacks and how many hit points monsters have, many don't. But the players usually always know their characters own health and bonuses. I've seen a few discussions lately advocating hidden hit points, descriptive combat, and alternative initiative systems. I thought it might be fun to go over a few of these ideas, and see how I would, or have used these options in a games using the Basic fantasy system. Clockwise D10,   initiative . This is one I use, especially for larger groups. Rather than each player rolling a d20 once for the entire combat and acting in order of high roll to lowest roll, a d10 is rolled by every player, adding their Dex bonus at the beginning of every round. But rather than acting in descending order, only the highest roll is important. The...

We are all familiar with standard ways we chuck dice. Players rolling their initiative, attacks, damage, saves, and skill rolls. GM do the same for monsters and NPCs. Some GM's tell players the target number for attacks and how many hit points monsters have, many don't. But the players usually always know their characters own health and bonuses. I've seen a few discussions lately advocating hidden hit points, descriptive combat, and alternative initiative systems. I thought it might be fun to go over a few of these ideas, and see how I would, or have used these options in a games using the Basic fantasy system. Clockwise D10, initiative . This is one I use, especially for larger groups. Rather than each player rolling a d20 once for the entire combat and acting in order of high roll to lowest roll, a d10 is rolled by every player, adding their Dex bonus at the beginning of every round. But rather than acting in descending order, only the highest roll is important. The ...

Basic fantasy is a 164page old school style RPG written by Chris Gonnerman. The page layouts and black and white art is reminiscent of old school role-playing games. With four races Dwarf, Elf, Halfling, and Humans. Classes include Cleric, Fighter, Magic-user, and Thief. I've seen time and again  fans of the game try to compare it to a particular version of older editions of D&D. Since I didn't play those older editions I really can't attest to how close it is, but I have played enough retro clones and OSR games to get a sence of its old school vibe. Basic fantasy is an OGL based game using the same core (although very scaled back) system as the 3rd edition of dungeons and dragons. Basic fantasy uses the core six ability scores, scaling combat bonuses, and abilities like it's roots. While keeping a simple feel and style that very much exemplifies older editions of the game. This to me is the best of both worlds. Basic fantasy is simple and elegant while taking a...

Epic 6 is a mode of play that stops progression at level 6. The idea is that to a peasant a level 6 character is a mighty hero. Even great characters from fiction would be low level D&D characters. As I understand it, the whole concept came about with a discussion about characters from lord of the rings. The discussion centered around the idea that none of the characters did anything a that a 4th level character couldn't do. That even Gandolf could be played with a very low level D&D character with access to cantrips. The main idea is to keep the game from becoming fantasy super heroes. In Epic 6 characters will never stand toe to toe with Giants. Characters will never have mountains of hit points. Goblins and low level monsters are always dangerous. In essence Epic 6 is a low powered game. It's all about adjusting the scale of the game. Scaling the game with the idea  that most people in the world are common folk. With every level characters are distancing themsel...

I thought I would kick off this new blog with a review/overview of the Basic fantasy core book. Of course I'm a fan, or this blog would not exist. Basic fantasy is in it's 3rd edition. A game by Chris Gornnerman with contribution from a bunch of talented folks. It's 166 pages with very nice black and white art that feels right at home in an old school role playing game. Right out of the gate I can say Basic fantasy is great because it is a complete role-playing game in a single volume. Sure there is a lot of additional classes and options online, but you can get a lot of gaming, years worth of gaming with just this book. Nothing shows that more than a quick breakdown of different sections of the core book. Pages 1-2 is an introduction to the game. Pages 3-9 cover character creation. Pages 10-14 cover equipment. Pages 15-35 covers magic and spells. Pages 36-53 covers rules for Adventuring. Pages 54-128 covers monsters. Pages 129-143 covers treasure and magic items. ...

There are a few options I like to use for Basic fantasy when it comes to critical hits. These are the two I like the most. Simple Critical: The most basic is any attack roll of a natural 20 is both an automatic hit, and a critical hit. Critical hits do maximum damage. Advanced Critical: same as simple, but at level 8+ critical hits are on a 19-20, and at 12+ critical hits are on an 18-20. If the attack is within the critical range, and  would hit, then it's a critical. But only a natural 20 is an automatic hit. Heroic Critical : Heroic can use either the simple or advanced option above. But critical hits do double damage instead of maximum damage. The first die does maximum and the second die is rolled as normal. The main reason for having one die doing maximum is it's very unheroic to get a critical and then roll snake eyes for damage.