Whizbang Dustyboots
Gnometown Hero
Are they going to disappear? Maybe, maybe not, although there are publishers who've said they're taking down their 5E stuff this week and others who are talking about tearing everything down.
Before that happens, some recommendations (and please, add your own):
1) Beyond the Wall and Other Adventures: A wonderful little game that emulates the Black Cauldron, A Wizard of Earthsea and other games with young fantasy heroes. It uses PbtA-style playbooks instead of classes, and as part of character creation, players roll on tables that connect the characters' backgrounds together as well as randomly generate some of their abilities. The result is a charming, low-power fantasy game with groups of wide-eyed young heroes. The actual adventures are also randomly (and sometimes collectively) generated. Flatland Games also has sister lines that do sword and sorcery adventures and "I'm too old for this crap" veteran dungeon crawlers.
2) Castles & Crusades: There are already threads for it here, but C&C is an alternate take on 3E, with the tone and flavor of AD&D but with a unified resolution system similar to (but distinct from) the d20 mechanism. Its design goals are similar to 5E, which it predates by about a decade. I ran this for years instead of 4E and loved the fact that I could take anything from OD&D through 3E (and realistically, 5E) and convert it to C&C more or less on the fly. The core PHB is all you need to play and is offered for free on the Troll Lords website.
3) Dungeon Crawl Classics: It uses the OGL but I suspect them rewriting the game (for the first time ever!) to remove OGL elements won't be terribly painful. DCC takes contemporary game design and wonders what it would be like if the original creators of fantasy roleplaying had all those design tools at their disposal. The result is basically a Heavy Metal comic, air-brushed van and black light poster come to life, with high low level lethality, randomization for every magic spell, crazy -- and normally one of a kind -- monsters, and melee types who are mechanically encouraged to come up with crazy stunts constantly in game play. More than a little gonzo, it has a devoted following and is one of the games to bet on surviving an OGL apocalypse.
Before that happens, some recommendations (and please, add your own):
1) Beyond the Wall and Other Adventures: A wonderful little game that emulates the Black Cauldron, A Wizard of Earthsea and other games with young fantasy heroes. It uses PbtA-style playbooks instead of classes, and as part of character creation, players roll on tables that connect the characters' backgrounds together as well as randomly generate some of their abilities. The result is a charming, low-power fantasy game with groups of wide-eyed young heroes. The actual adventures are also randomly (and sometimes collectively) generated. Flatland Games also has sister lines that do sword and sorcery adventures and "I'm too old for this crap" veteran dungeon crawlers.
2) Castles & Crusades: There are already threads for it here, but C&C is an alternate take on 3E, with the tone and flavor of AD&D but with a unified resolution system similar to (but distinct from) the d20 mechanism. Its design goals are similar to 5E, which it predates by about a decade. I ran this for years instead of 4E and loved the fact that I could take anything from OD&D through 3E (and realistically, 5E) and convert it to C&C more or less on the fly. The core PHB is all you need to play and is offered for free on the Troll Lords website.
3) Dungeon Crawl Classics: It uses the OGL but I suspect them rewriting the game (for the first time ever!) to remove OGL elements won't be terribly painful. DCC takes contemporary game design and wonders what it would be like if the original creators of fantasy roleplaying had all those design tools at their disposal. The result is basically a Heavy Metal comic, air-brushed van and black light poster come to life, with high low level lethality, randomization for every magic spell, crazy -- and normally one of a kind -- monsters, and melee types who are mechanically encouraged to come up with crazy stunts constantly in game play. More than a little gonzo, it has a devoted following and is one of the games to bet on surviving an OGL apocalypse.
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