Welcome to the POCGamer Basic Fantasy Role-Playing Game materials page!
This page is dedicated to sharing materials I’ve made for my Basic Fantasy RPG campaign with the rest of the gaming world. Why? Because I want to share my creations and if I want to do it and be able to say “this is for Basic Fantasy”, then that means this is open content stuff as per the use information on their website here.
What is and why Basic Fantasy RPG?
I first mentioned this game in the Four Alternatives For Fantasy Tabletop Gaming post. Basic Fantasy RPG is a retroclone type game, and a member of the OSR (old school role=playing or old school renaissance movement) family of games, and the best part as far as I can tell. It seeks to recreate the feel of older style gaming, but unlike many other OSR products, it drastically overhauled the mechanics of the game. Specifically, they drew heavily from both Advanced Dungeons & Dragons and 3rd Edition Dungeons & Dragons to create a set of mechanics that runs smoothly and provides both some crunch and some flexibility to the players and GM. The result, in my opinion and others, is that Basic Fantasy RPG effectively “fixed” 2nd Edition Advanced Dungeons & Dragons. It also carried very little of the problematic material from earlier editions forwards; and because it has no profit drive, it isn’t committed to trying to keep the rules and game as presented in the base book set in concrete.
From a creative perspective, Basic Fantasy RPG has been a much easier and fluid set of mechanics to develop ideas in than other game systems. It’s familiarity to my players (and sometimes GMs) is a bonus, since it lessens the shock of the system, and it means that building stuff for it is easier. The other big reason that I’m going with Basic Fantasy RPG is that it’s completely free online and very inexpensive to get a hardcopy of the core book. Given the economy and everything else that comes with adult life, we can’t all afford to buy physical or electronic copies of 5e D&D.
Contents
House Rules
Basic Fantasy RPG can stand on its own RAW (rules as written), but half the fun of an OSR experience is modifying the rules as presented to match your ideas. This can be done with any game of course, but with a game like Basic Fantasy RPG, it’s part of the experience. This is where you’ll find the house rules we’ll be using to play.
Player Races
Building a set of unique player races for the world. Some are entirely new, others are variants of exisitng player races from the Basic Fantasy RPG core book and online supplements. Unlike classes, which persist larger unchanged from one world to another, player races will have different roles and positions on different worlds.
Classes
The standard classes in Basic Fantasy RPG stick to the classic Cleric, Fighter, Magic-User, and Thief combination. This is fine, and can work with the adventures and stuff I’m going to post up, but it’s too basic for me. There are a number of optional classes on the Basic Fantasy RPG website, and these are my additions to those. Some are new creations, and others are modified versions of existing classes.
Monsters
Dungeons need things to fill them, and here’s where you’ll find monsters I’ve created to torment my players, and where appropriate, information blocks for playing them as player races. Accompanying them will be my distinctly amateur art (until such time as I have an art budget).
Modules
In keeping with the classic D&D stylings of the game, and our limited time to game, I’ll be making short modules for us to play with. Some of those, as well as maps of the world, will be posted here.
The Legal Stuff:
In keeping with the requirements of Basic Fantasy RPG, OGL version 1.0a is included and adhered to, as well as the Basic Fantasy RPG Product Identity Licence.
All art is either my own or from Pixabay under CC0 Creative Commons; any future purchased art will be handled according to the requirements to maintain adherence to the Basic Fantasy RPG Product Identity Licence.
All maps produced will be either with Hexographer 2 (Worldographer) or Inkarnate, both of which I hold a commercial licence with, allowing me to distribute the maps created at my discretion.
