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Too many free games! Which one do you pick?

Started by weirdguy564, September 23, 2024, 08:22:51 PM

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orbitalair

#15
October 01, 2024, 10:34:17 AM
Cairn v1.  Derived from 'into the odd', it's simple free and has a fair amount of support on itch.io.

I don't follow you how pocket fantasy is great , but Basic Fantasy is meh?  The whole of the Basic Fantasy ecosystem, rules, add-ons, modules, etc are all free pdfs.  Thousands of pages worth.

And if you want a printed copy they are super cheap on Amazon.

And if $5 is cheap enough I would add "White Box" by Charlie Mason, also on Amazon. It's swords and wizardry white box, reorganized.

weirdguy564

#16
October 02, 2024, 09:05:03 AM
Quote from: orbitalair on October 01, 2024, 10:34:17 AMCairn v1.  Derived from 'into the odd', it's simple free and has a fair amount of support on itch.io.

I don't follow you how pocket fantasy is great , but Basic Fantasy is meh?  The whole of the Basic Fantasy ecosystem, rules, add-ons, modules, etc are all free pdfs.  Thousands of pages worth.

And if you want a printed copy they are super cheap on Amazon.

And if $5 is cheap enough I would add "White Box" by Charlie Mason, also on Amazon. It's swords and wizardry white box, reorganized.


I like Pocket Fantasy over Basic Fantasy for a couple different reasons.

1.  Pocket Fantasy is an opposed roll system, while Basic Fantasy is a roll vs a static Armor Class number.  I grew up on Palladium's RPG's which use an opposed roll (Strike vs Parry, or Strike vs Dodge).  It "feels" better to us to have opposed rolls.  It also keeps players engaged when it's not their turn. 

2.  Pocket Fantasy is super rules lite, but still is a full featured game.  That impressed me, so it ranks high for that.

3.  Non-Vancian magic.  I am always going to prefer games with non-Vancian magic.  Quite a lot, actually.  Pocket Fantasy also never neuters the magicians.  They get 1-2 spells per fight, every fight.  More if they turn in re-roll tokens for extra spells.  In Vancian magic, when you're out of spells, you're better off putting on a chain mail shirt and a short sword you keep in your backpack. 

4.  Classes.  Both games only come with the typical four classes.  BF adds more, but they're scattered across different PDFs. PF has more as well, 14 in fact, but has them all concentrated on one PDF


I'm glad for you if you like the top selling game of the genre.  Me, I like the road less travelled, and will be the player asking we try a game you've never heard of.

Socratic-DM

#17
October 03, 2024, 11:47:44 AM Last Edit: October 03, 2024, 11:50:22 AM by Socratic-DM
Basic Fantasy: is more or less what got me into the OSR, I'm always going to give it a mention as it's a great introduction and a very good B/X system. in my imagined dream world, I'd have a book structured like OSE, but with the rules of Basic Fantasy.

Anyway for running Open-table stuff, Basic Fantasy is amazing since everything is free.

Maze Rats: Easily one of the most solid condensing and abstraction of the OSR D&D style, it's not quite compatible, but that's more an issue of translating stats more than anything.
The great thing about Maze Rats is the amount of tables, really useful tables, for loot, books, just random details or things you'd need.

Anything by Kevin Crawford: He has an extremely generous free version of almost all his major products, such as Worlds Without Number, and Stars without Number, and I do mean generous, the free versions are 85% of the paid version, and these books are huge coming in at 400 pages, so everything you need and would want is most likely in the free version.

Footnote: Now that I think about it, Basic Fantasy is Creative Commons work (another plus) someone could totally reformat it like OSE and publish that for free. not a bad idea.
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