My current favorite RPG is Dungeon and Delvers Dice Pool Edition.  Am I the only one here to have played it?

To be clear there there is a D20 game with two versions out referred to as the Black Book and Red Book.  The Dice Pool is a third game, the one with Chibi art, including a frog spearman on the cover as it is somewhat marketed towards children since the game uses only very basic math.

I really like the game.  I'm a sucker for rules lite stuff, and it fits this wonderfully. 

The core rule is roll attribute dice + skill dice + any talent dice, pick the best two and add them up, and beat a target number. 

Anybody else try it?

I've been curious about looking for a rules light-ish* alternative to D&D, both name brand and OGL, to prevent system burnout and also just to see what's out there.

*when I say rules light-ish, I put it this way: I want rules for grappling. I don't want rules for grappling, outside, on a slight incline, in the rain, on a Tuesday.

The main features of Delvers Dice pool are:

1.  No D20.  Ever.  It uses D4 thru D12 as incremental improvements to attributes and skills.  Almost all rolls are skill checks vs a target number I spelled out in the top post.

2.  Hit points are kept reasonable.  A Warrior starts with 5 HP, maxing out at 8 HP. 

3.  Eight races.  Human, Elf, Dwarf, Kobold (3 foot tall Germanic spirit, not a Dog-Lizard), Cambion (half devil), Ishim (half angel), beastman (ambiguous type), and Frogman. 

4.  Ten classes.  Barbarian, Bard, Cleric, Druid, Fighter, Paladin, Ranger, Rogue, Sorcerer, and Wizard.  The only one a bit odd is Sorcerer who gets dragon type spells.  Otherwise they're pretty standard, but also customizable with the talents you pick at creation and leveling up.

5.  Magic use is a skill check.  Intelligence attribute + Arcana skill vs enemy Dodge, Block, or Mind. 

6.  Three defense stats based on your attributes.  Block, Dodge, Mind. 

7.  19 skills.  Everyone gets them all at D4.  This includes Arcana and Religion skills that wizards and clerics use for their skill checks to hit bad guys.  For everyone else the skills are used to know lore or WTF is going on when shit gets weird. 

8.  Armor is just a few extra HP per fight, easily repaired back to full using common repair kits.  It doesn't make your defense number go up. 

9.  All 1-handed weapons do 1 damage, all 2-handed weapons do 2 damage.  Thus an archer will out damage a wizards fireballs. 

10.  Wizards and Sorcerers do not use mana or spells per day.  Their spells are in their list of talents.  They have unlimited magic, just not very strong.  Clerics do have a resource called Favors, but only some talents use Favors.

11.  A modest bestiary is included, as well as a very basic adventure creation setup using just two random roll tables. Also, a handful of magic item to use as loot or rewards. 

Here is a link to the game.  It's not on Drivethru RPG anymore.  Not sure why.  But the new Big Geek Emporium was made after Drivethru started censoring people.  It's not a large site, but it's run by two old nerds like us. 

https://biggeekemporium.com/product/dungeons-delvers-dice-pool/

I recently watched an extensive page by page review of it and I liked what I saw.  Although I must admit that I would change a couple of things.  I would probably add some low, variable damage rolls and make armor a damage reduction, but one point always gets through.  Even though this system would totally work for a standard, serious fantasy type game, I think it would be great for a Legend of Zelda style game as well.

Here is a sample character sheet filled out.  I've heard some people believe that a character sheet is a good way to judge a game. 

Note that I had to slightly edit the talents to include invisibility.  That's one of the three racial talents available to Kobolds.  It is one of the typos in the book.  FYI I've already emailed David Guyll about it, and a few other typos.  He was kind enough to write back and even promised me a free hard copy book for doing that after he fixed the book and re-uploads a new version 1.1 edition.  That hasn't happened yet.  He's been busy working on the D20 version.  Dice Pool was always the red headed step child.  Oh, well. 

Ya, it's too bad they don't focus some more on the dice pool version.  The world needs another D20 retro clone like it needs another Kardashian.