jdrakeh said:
Has anybody here ever run a D&D-like fantasy campaign using only non-commercial OGC (e.g., the 3.5 SRD, Modern SRD, Anime SRD, Mecha SRD, Core Elements, Classically Modern, etc)? I think that it might be fun to do something like this, if only as an experiment, but I wonder if it's even feasible.
Close.
I used commercial OGC. I used an OGC setting (Murchad's Legacy, a fine one at that), and allowed the players any OGC resource they could lay their hands on. But I am afraid the response was underwhelming. I only got one person interested in OGC poisons (commercial) and prestige class (non-commercial), and the campaign splattered (for unrelated reasons) prior to using these.
I've found you get a measure of satisfaction from being able to write everything down legally (well, I did), but that doing so properly is a lot of hassle. Otherwise, you can get some excellent content but some leading company's content (Malhavoc Press and to some extent Mongoose Publishing) is unusable. Extracting the OGC from the rest can be time demanding and tedious.
I don't see any problem with using only non-commercial OGC for a "D&D" game, except that you would need to come up with experience rules, money at first level, ability score generation, and so on.
The lack of a having the handy core books around would be the biggest obstacle, but can be overcome with a laptop or printed-out copy. I would use a laptop for rule referencing, and print out stock and used monsters, magic items, combat rules, spells, and so on - good organization will be more important than in a usual campaign in that regard.
An online free-OGC-only campaign would be even easier.
I don't think I'll ever do such a campaign. All OGC perhaps, but I don't see limiting myself to free-OGC only.
