"Lighter style RPG alternatives?" Topic

I have been thinking about getting back into RPGs having left DnD 3.5 a few years back as it got too bloated for me.

I was sick of spending a few hours developing a NPC to see it blown away in a few minutes and battles that took hours to fight out.

I really want something with some evolution of skills/levels but where the skirmishes can be finished in a 10-20 minutes and final battles in a hour or two. Building a grunt NPC should take seconds and a high level final threat to overcome no more than an 15 minutes.

I like the Two Hour Wargames approach but want just a tad more range of levels and some long term ability development. I haven't seen their magic system but I want something less bloated then DnD. Shields, like THW's, should be more valuable too. Where should I look?

Have you had a look at Goalsystem Delves?

Savage Worlds.

Any of the D&D revivals will be perfect. All the best bits of D&D as you remember without the post 3rd ed bloat.
When I was looking for exactly tehs ame thing last year I chose to go with "Swords and Wizardry" but OSRIC, "Labyrinth Lord" or "Lamentations of the Flame Princess" will work just as well.
The only real differences between them are whether they look back to D&D or to 1st ed AD&D. Just pick the set that looks back to the D&D version you enjoyed most.

Intro rules for all of them (full rules for S&W) are available for free as are hundreds of already generated adventures and campaigns.

Have your looked at 5th edition D&D? It's much simplified and quite appealling… and you can find an introductory PDF explaining character generation, combat and magic rules, for free direct from WotC. I never cared for 3.0, 3.5 or the horrid 4.0, but 5th strikes me as a solid return to what was good about the old school, while adding innovations that vastly improve over everything that was cludgy or clunky in the past.

Or if old school appeals, almost all the older editions are available as PDFs on RPGNow, or are fairly common in hard cover both as reprints and just used copies on eBay and used book stores.
(I personally like the D&D Rules Cyclopedia, a compilation of the Basic-Immortials boxed series from the late '80s.)

Other possibilities are D&D-clones like Labyrinth Lords, OSRIC, etc..

I second Savage Worlds. Great ruleset.

Tunnels & Trolls.

D6 is also a lot of fun. It was one of the early Star Wars systems. There is D6, D6 Space, and D6 Fantasy, plus a couple of others, I think.

There's a RPG set of rules for Fubar.

1PG:
link

Up from that are Deep 7's Arrowflight, Ganesha's Tales of Blades and Heroes and Precis Intermedia's Iron Gauntlets.

Savage Worlds-lots of conversions and their own fantasy worlds.

Fudge(10th Anniversary book has a fantasy set up)

Gurps-easy to 'strip down', can get cheap on ebay.

If you have Traveller there is Magic in Traveller on Drivethrurpg and Wanderer, a fantasy project.

Others out there-my mind just went blank..hate being old.

Another vote for Savage Worlds. If the system is a little to sparse for you, try its predecessors — DeadLands and Hell on Earth. I prefer the earlier systems, but I'm the nutjob who's running an Eberron campaign using them. (They're originally for the Wild/Weird West and Post-Apocalypse.)

Another recommendation is Legend of the Five Rings. Again, it's tied to a mostly-Japanese setting, but I successfully ran a Traveller-style campaign using it.

As you can tell, there are a lot of options nowadays.

1) If you want to play current D&D, then the new edition (5e) is actually a nicely streamlined system (especially compared to 3e) and harkens faithfully back to core D&D style play (unlike 4e). The Basic rules are free online, and the Starter Set is cheap and wonderful.

2) If you want to play in older D&D styles, there are numerous "clones" of these rules, and most of them are also free. There's Swords & Wizardry for Original D&D, Labyrinth Lord for Basic D&D (probably the most popular), and OSRIC for AD&D.

3) There are also "clones with a modern twist" that emulate older D&D style play but add modern gaming developments. Probably the best of these are Beyond The Wall (Basic D&D style engine with streamlined combat options and an innovative spell system, resting on the best character creation system I've ever seen) and Adventurer Conqueror King (AD&D style engine with a fantastic end-game economy and domain action system built in from the ground floor). Both of these can be used to play older TSR era D&D modules.

4) Or, if you want to emphasize more heroic S&S style combat and break free of the D&D system, there are rules like the excellent Barbarians of Lemuria that let you fight Conan-esque combats in a fast and enjoyable way, complete with a suitably costly magic system.

There are a ton of good options out there, and I'm sure I've missed more than a few, but these are all good, solid bets.

Cheers,

Christopher

Perhaps THW's Warrior Heroes: Legends? It has some character developement, a very streamlined magic system (only three types of spells, if I remember correctly) and a random dungeon generator and campaign system.

GME?
1PG?

Full names please, my search found nothing under those.

I looked at THW's free rules for combat…great for stand alone skirmish games but not quite enough levels/variance for a sense of career building for multisession campaign role playing. I do prefer it to any D&D version for combat. Shields are real and death can be quick.

Not interested in any random dungeon generators, I still want to be the DM. Story over combat.

GURPS. Points based character generation, skills MEAN something, and roleplaying is encouraged. Perfect system for those that want tactical fights as well, having great character skill has to be backed up with solid play by the players.

First time character creation can be a chore since there are a lot of options.

Fate Core or Fate Accelerated
Savage Worlds
Cortex

BattleSystem Skirmish: based on 2nd Ed. AD&D, uses THAC0 system (relatively quick and simple once you learn it), and combat is drastically simplified. I ran a game recently, to test drive the system: four Fighter PC's (around 15th Level, so 15 Hits each) against a host of Hill Giants (AC is normal to the RPG rules; Hits for each Giant were in the range of 10-12, per figure). The PC's min/max damage is crunched through their conversion system, which yields how many Attack Dice (AD) they roll each round (basically, an averaging system): each successful Hit, removes one pip from the figure's total, until they reach Zero, and they die.

Level advancement is per the RPG rules; the book lists XP awards for each monster, so it is easy to determine XP awards for foes defeated. Combat is actually very fast to resolve. For example, the 15th Level Fighters each had around four AD rolls, each round; the Giants had two AD rolls. The game basically took combat, and grossly condensed it down, which speeds it up dramatically.

All of the magic is still present, from the RPG; mages, thieves, and clerics are playable, I just went with simple fighters for the test drive of the rules -- fighters get around one Hit/Level, but the other classes get fewer Hits/Level, as you might expect. There are templates within the book, for spell effects, which can be photocopied onto transparencies for use on the table. Mages are still the heavy artillery with their Fireballs, Lightning Bolts, etc. The rules cover individual figures, as well as army units, but it is geared towards skirmishing, rather than mass battles (use 2nd Ed. BattleSystem for mass combat games). This is a gridless game system -- no grid system is employed for determining spell areas of effect, it is all measured out, by hand, or by template (circular, triangle, rectangle, or four-sided polygon, depending upon the spell employed).

The 2nd Ed. RPG books would be very helpful, at least the PHB. The rest are more optional. Most monsters are covered in the BS Skirmish book, but a 2nd Ed. Monstrous Manual may be something you want to add to the collection. Copies of BS Skirmish, as well as the 2nd Ed. RPG books, are available from the usual sources: Amazon.com; e-Bay; and other used gaming supply shops. Cheers!

I looked at THW's free rules for combat…

Okay, now I understand. The free rules are vanilla and stripped down. They are a complete stand alone entry level game, but very basic so not to overwhelm new gamers.

Warrior Heroes Legends goes into much more detail and there isn't any cap on how high your characters can go.

link

Also, has a very detailed Campaign System. Here's the TOC.

PDF link

Warrior, Rogue and Mage and it's variants. Free on the net.

Trapdoor. It has all the best of old school inspired gaming wrapped up in a tight 36 page modern design.

There are some well done tutorials on the designer's blog that will give you an idea of how it plays.

Monster of the Week
Fate (any version)
Cold City (not actually a fantasy game but the mechanics could easily be used for any genre)

Ian

"3) There are also "clones with a modern twist" that emulate older D&D style play but add modern gaming developments. Probably the best of these are Beyond The Wall "

Christopher, picked this up on your recommendation! Looks very good. Silver based economy is nice. Still digging into it.

3) There are also "clones with a modern twist" that emulate older D&D style play but add modern gaming developments. Probably the best of these are Beyond The Wall…

Christopher, picked this up on your recommendation! Looks very good. Silver based economy is nice. Still digging into it.

Savage Worlds and BESM, either always worked you our group. :)

"With"

@Mick the Metalsmith – This is way late, but 1PG is the name of the line of games by Deep 7, I provided a direct link in my post. The line is so named because the rules originally fit onto 1 page.

I ended up buying Tales of Blades and Heros and its supplements as well as buying 2HW's Dungeon Crawl. Dungeoncrawl plays more like Song of Blades and Heros and less adroitly for RPG. Tales seems to fit the bill, but I am not sure I like the open-ended magic system because of its vagueness. I actually like Song's magic better.

My question today is what is the difference between 2HW Dungeoncrawl and the Warrior Heroes: Legends. What is brought to the table there? I bought Dungeoncrawl sort of by accident. I was looking for Legends but did not see a link to it on the website in the fantasy header and assumed it was the Dungeoncrawl rules. I wonder now if it is worth ponying up another $20. USD

Does Frostgrave have any RPG potential or is it purely skirmish?

I have both 2HDC and Warrior Heroes Legends. I was also looking for a simplified RPG system and found Warrior Heroes Legends does that well. I really like the way WHL provides all the mechanics for an RPG game the way you want it. You can expand your games/encounters from other THW rule sets or add ideas and concepts from other systems. I do both and have created a pretty deep world for my characters to roam around in, urban, wilderness, and dungeon.

2HDC is just a dungeon crawl. WHL is a full adventure system that also includes a dungeon crawl.

Since I play solo, I also enjoy the narrative WHL generates.

After my current solo WHL campaign, I'm going to try and use WHL to play a classic D&D adventure and then see how it does as a regular RPG with me being the DM.

4 Against darkness by Ganesha games. Great game for this.

A bit too light.