Books are distirbuted in PDF and as ODF for remixability.
Dead tree editions are made available print on demand at cost.
It appears to be a streamlined take on D&D Basic but still has the modern species / class separation and ascending armor class.
Has lots of free modular expansions to expand it out into whatever play-style one needs.
The creator seemingly is progressive and nice; which has been in short supply with D&D clones lately.
Creator has a hard stance on not making any suppliments mandatory / no edition breaks, just errata revisions. With main documents continously updated for errata revisions.
It’s been around for a while so its seems pretty error free.
Ruleset-Family: “…a rules-light game system modeled on the classic RPG rules of the early 1980’s. Though based loosely on the d20 SRD v3.5, Basic Fantasy RPG has been written largely from scratch to replicate the look, feel, and mechanics of the early RPG game systems.”
Genre: Fantasy
Dice Used: Standard set
Main Die Mechanic: ?
Copying: OGL?
Maybe we should have a D&D clones thread with all their pros/cons/attributes documented out maiki style?
Indipedently I’m kinda privately surveying a few clones; because im trying to take some barometer readings while im at it, which ones are presided over by decent human beings and which ones are not. Their have been a few high profile creators lately who have turned out to be less than great human beings. Im trying to build a mental catalog of which rule sets to point people to and which to avoid on that basis.
That being said the folks behind Old School Hack seem froody.
Video games are kinda clear in my head. Kinda. But RPGs, hmmmm, what are we even talking about?
I suppose in this case we are talking about a “system”. Not documents, per se, but this idea that with this set of rules (from whatever source) makes up a complete way to spend 15+ minutes with friends.
So what would such a directory list/sort/filter? Because then I can figure out how that translates to data fields and I can knock this quest out.
Ruleset-Family
Editions
Genre
Dice Used (Standard set, multiple Standard Sets, 4dF, 2d12, *d6 ).
Main Die Mechanic (Roll Over, Roll Under, Dice Pool, etc) [ Man the ability to sort games by the dice they use kinda excites. ]
License ( OGL, Creative Commons*, Standard Copyright, etc, etc).
Lead Dev/Team
Publisher
Sexually Exploitive Art
Sexist Mechanics (strength caps on female characters, etc.)
Legal SRD Available
Rules Crunchiness (This is very subjective, not sure how you’d quantify this. But its a big factor for lots of people and me. ?)
Publishing Strategy: Everything in one book / versus multiple core rulebooks and lots of supplements.
Year Released
Battle Matt (Optional versus Heavily Encouraged versus Nearly Mandatory)
Officially Supported Campaign Settings
Community Supported Campaign Settings
Explicitly Progressive ( Games highlighting diverse characters and explicitly defining their worlds with broad definitions of equality. Pathfinder and Blue Rose come to mind here, there are of course others. ).
Classy versus Classless characters.
Levels versus Leveless characters.
Influenced/Inspired By (How 13th age was very much a different take of the 4e design philosophy. How Fudge was inspired by GURPs, etc.)
Okay, let’s run down this list and update the topic with it.
Okay, I’ve read quite a few of these modules and core books, and have a fairly good grasp of the system. I like how most of the modules I read take high-level ingredients from the B and other series of modules and build new scenarios from the ground up.
Gonna make some quests:
To play, nominate any takers to run a module or whatever
To hypertext SRD
Marking this as solved, but let me know if we need other quests.
