D&D feel/fun in games without class, level, etc. (+)

[Thomas Shey]

Only in as much as it's levels get you skill points. Every skill is available to every character, albeit not always cheaply.
There are no class benefits that aren't skills, either, so functionally, it's a skill based game.

Ah, its what I call a "class and level in name only" game, then. I've seen a couple others like that (Alternity was about 95% over that way).

 

[Thomas Shey]

Yeah, if I was going to go lower power level I would be inclined to use Hero also. You can really drill down on what you want, character wise, in Hero and the complexity is all front loaded. Once you start playing it is a moderately crunchy medium tactical game.

Yeah, I tend to say that people who think Hero is particularly complex in play either are used to fairly lightweight games, or are going off reputation, not reality.

 

[kronovan]

I'll repeat some of the choices already made - Fate Core, Fate Accelerated and Cortex Prime. I'd also add Fantasy Age 1e as a different, simpler TTRPG to play the genre with, ableit IMO it needs some rules tweaking. I also like Mythras Classic Fantasy, but I need to know the party of players is up for the crunchy combat it offers. I'm also a fan of what I call D&D derivatives, i.e. True20 and 13th Age. While those cling closer to the bone (D&D 3.5 for True20 and 4e for 13th Age) than the others I listed, they're still vary enough from their origins to provide a different play experience.

I've also used Savage Worlds for the Classic Fantasy, but I'm not particularly keen on any of the 1st or 3rd party settings - Hellfrost is the only one that's piqued my interest enough to run some adventures. When using SWADE for the genre, I want to homebrew to the extent of creating my own worlds, which is what I did with my myrkRinna and Mythical Oyashima settings. I guess it comes down to all SWADE's tools and modularity giving me a desire to homebrew in entirety, rather than adapt or use prexisting. I know I'm mostly alone in that, because I've participated in many a forum thread over the years, with highly enthused GM's achieving good results with their adapatitions of the World of Greyhawk or Eberron, to name just a few.

 

[kronovan]

BRP Classic Fantasy has a very D&D like feel when we used it for a one-shot. It was actually surprising how close it felt.

I'm interested in this, but where do you buy it?
It's not available on drivethru and if you browse to the BRP Classic section @ chaosium.com, you're just taken to a store page which has the new CRB and their Fantasy settings. About the closest thing is a link on that page to a BRP Classic Fantasy character record sheet. I have Mythras Classic Fantasy which shares much of BRPs DNA, but I'm guessing the combat is simpler in BRP CF, which would appeal more to some of my players.

I just ordered the new BRP CRB and I'd like to get CF, but I'd prefer to buy a PDF to a print copy.

 

[dbm]

where do you buy it?

The content is available from the Design Mechanism now.

ETA: comparing the two versions, the TDM one is more complex than the original Chaosium one. But the TDM version looks to contain all the content from the original.

 

[kronovan]

The content is available from the Design Mechanism now.

ETA: comparing the two versions, the TDM one is more complex than the original Chaosium one. But the TDM version looks to contain all the content from the original.

OK cool - I own both Mythras Classic Fantasy and Classic Fantasy Imperative from Design Mechanism. I'm a fan of BRP for fantasy gernres too, having run campaigns with some of Alephtar Games' settings. I was hoping to find something with an altenative to Mythras' differnetial rolls with Special Effects, but I do also own M-Space with its simplified combat alternative, so I guess I could always adapt that.

 

[aramis erak]

Ah, its what I call a "class and level in name only" game, then. I've seen a couple others like that (Alternity was about 95% over that way).

Yep. When Alternity came out, my first thought upon running it was "This would do D&D better than Sci-Fi"...

 

[Autumnal]

Lots of good stuff. I’ll catch up either tonight or tomorrow morning.

 

[dbm]

I was hoping to find something with an altenative to Mythras' differnetial rolls with Special Effects

It was originally intended for BRP - I would have thought you could use it on top of Magic World or even OpenQuest if you wanted to have a simpler system than Mythras?

Magic World might be worth checking out in general if it isn’t a version of BRP you already have looked at? It’s the Stormbringer system with the IP removed.

 

[Reynard]

Yep. When Alternity came out, my first thought upon running it was "This would do D&D better than Sci-Fi"...

I bet at least 60% of Alternity GMs at least started a fantasy conversion. We even tried a campaign, but it collapsed under the weight of kludge and conversion pretty quickly. I would have killed for such a genre book for Alternity. They could have even pretended it was still sci-fi by making it Numenera like vancian dying earth or whatever.