Low Fantasy - Best Systems?

[S'mon]

I'm using Mini Six RPG (free pdf at Mini Six: Bare Bones Edition - AntiPaladin Games | DriveThruRPG.com ) for a cinematic low fantasy swords & sorcery campaign. Not Game of Thrones gritty, but Conan/Kull/Beastmaster sort of level. Mini Six derives from the d6 System used for stuff like 1987's d6 Star Wars from West End Games, and does Hollywood style action very well.

My campaign page, including some rules extracts Primeval Thule

Re mass combat mini 6 and d6 system have a great technique where you use average result for all dice except the Wild Die, and can assume 1 in 6 wild die rolls get a 6 and reroll. This makes it very easy to do say 60 shots at once vs the hero pc or ship.

 

[aramis erak]

Re mass combat mini 6 and d6 system have a great technique where you use average result for all dice except the Wild Die, and can assume 1 in 6 wild die rolls get a 6 and reroll. This makes it very easy to do say 60 shots at once vs the hero pc or ship.

I found the WEG Star Wars Miniatures Battles rules a brilliant solution for d6 mass combat. And I say this as someone who loves the scaling and many-on-1 rules of 2E unrevised...

The basic idea is this: instead of the roll of a pool for a given character, roll 1d then add to the result the number before the d...
EG: Fred normally has 8d melee, and 5d melee parry. Fred rolls 1d6+8 to attack, and 1d+5 to parry. If he takes both, he's rolling 1d+7 attack and 1d+4 to parry. I'll note that a 6 also open ends...
The default difficulties and damage steps are not coming to mind.

I've used it both for ground actions (which it was written for) and ship actions... I was able to run a wing-vs-wing level fight, with PC squadron leaders, in about 5 hours.

 

[S'mon]

I found the WEG Star Wars Miniatures Battles rules a brilliant solution for d6 mass combat. And I say this as someone who loves the scaling and many-on-1 rules of 2E unrevised...

The basic idea is this: instead of the roll of a pool for a given character, roll 1d then add to the result the number before the d...
EG: Fred normally has 8d melee, and 5d melee parry. Fred rolls 1d6+8 to attack, and 1d+5 to parry. If he takes both, he's rolling 1d+7 attack and 1d+4 to parry. I'll note that a 6 also open ends...
The default difficulties and damage steps are not coming to mind.

I've used it both for ground actions (which it was written for) and ship actions... I was able to run a wing-vs-wing level fight, with PC squadron leaders, in about 5 hours.

That's nice; the Mini Six approach is to count each D as a 3; so 8D > 7x3=21+WD, 5D > 4x3=12+WD, which keeps close to the results of rolling 8d6 & 5d6. Mind you I'm not sure this is explicitly stated in the Mini 6 rulebook, I came across it in d6 Fantasy (etc), which unlike Mini Six use 3.5 not 3 per die. '3' certainly makes calculating much quicker while giving heroes a slight edge vs massed mooks, depending on where you cap dice rolls - the game suggests cap at 5d6 but I'm going with 10d6, so eg Emperor Palpatine 15D Force Sense skill > 10d6+15.

 

[Scott Christian]

I saw this in B&N last night. I've never even heard of it, but it looked pretty good. Will pick it up and let you know if it meets your criteria.

ZWEIHANDER RPG: Revised Core Rulebook|Hardcover

2018 ENnie gold winner of Best Game and Product Of The Year, this revised edition features an all-new layout, rules clarifications, and errata updates from 2018.WELCOME TO GRIM & PERILOUS GAMING Featured on Forbes.com, ranked one of the best-selling fantasy...

www.barnesandnoble.com

 

[Scott Christian]

Judging by the description I read (first page), it seems to have what you are looking for. A group of villagers can still overpower a knight, etc.

 

[PencilBoy99]

Low Fantasy Gaming, Forbidden Lands

 

[BrokenTwin]

I thought about running Shadow of the Demon Lord and overlay it with some classic 1e adventures. How would that work? Low to mid level, not high level.

I haven't had much difficulty converting things to SotDL. Biggest thing to remember with monsters is that if they have large to-hit modifiers, convert part of the bonus to boon(s) instead, otherwise they'll never miss the party.
If you understand the rules well enough, converting on the fly is relatively easy. Honestly, I find converting OSR adventures to be a lot less work than D&D5e adventures. You'll definitely want to cut back on the amount of loot you hand out though. I find the expected amount of loot from most adventures to be a LOT higher (like, 10x and up) than what SotDL assumes you'll be giving them. Not a game breaker by any means, just something to keep in mind.
And if you're doing a megadungeon or other larger adventure, keep in mind that SotDL assuming characters level up after every adventure, so there's no EXP rules in the book. If you want to use loot as experience or experience points in general, you're going to have to ad hoc something.

 

[Nebulous]

And if you're doing a megadungeon or other larger adventure, keep in mind that SotDL assuming characters level up after every adventure, so there's no EXP rules in the book. If you want to use loot as experience or experience points in general, you're going to have to ad hoc something.

Every adventure/session you level up? I don't use XP in D&D, I just do milestones.

 

[pogre]

I saw this in B&N last night. I've never even heard of it, but it looked pretty good. Will pick it up and let you know if it meets your criteria.

ZWEIHANDER RPG: Revised Core Rulebook|Hardcover

2018 ENnie gold winner of Best Game and Product Of The Year, this revised edition features an all-new layout, rules clarifications, and errata updates from 2018.WELCOME TO GRIM & PERILOUS GAMING Featured on Forbes.com, ranked one of the best-selling fantasy...

www.barnesandnoble.com

It is a love letter to Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay, which is mentioned up thread. IMO it would take some heavy rules modifications to fit the OP's stated goals.

 

[BrokenTwin]

Every adventure/session you level up? I don't use XP in D&D, I just do milestones.

SotDL was build with the assumption that each session is a single adventure, with long stretches of in-world downtime between sessions.
If you're already using milestones, than the conversion is dirt simple. Since most campaign books / adventure paths / d20 adventures assume the characters are getting up to a lot more "on screen" than SotDL does, you just need to space out your milestones appropriately to match the expected power curve. I did something similar when I converted Lost Mines of Phandelver.