What's your favorite free RPG?

Might I suggest Radiance RPG:

http://rpg.drivethrustuff.com/produ...te-Roleplaying-Game-in-the-Age-of-Electrotech

As the description says:

Behind the bright lights, beneath fuming factories and above dirigible skies, at fey masquerades, or off in exotic lands... mysteries whirl, eldritch magic unfolds, ghoulish tentacles slither, and angels and demons still struggle in battle for our eternal souls.

Inside this 284-page game book, you will discover:
--Familiar d20 rules with splendid simplifications for rapid play.
--Colorful races: barbaric, exotic, and cosmopolitan.
--A bevy of classes including the artificer, cleric, gunslinger, medicant, pathfinder, and witch, among others.
--Ancient deities of all persuasions, and means to access their power.
--A wondrous trove of steamgear, electrotech, potions, scrolls, spellships, symbionts, and more.
--Themes such as the believer, protector, and traitor that silo awards along coherent and compelling narrative paths.

Radiance RPG blends the best of editions of the world's most popular role-playing game. You may choose to focus on a fantasia of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. You can even play in a pseudo-scientific future! Alternatively, the system is meaty and flexible to support any campaign setting you may imagine.
 

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I want to give a +1 to Radiance as well. We haven't ran our first full fledged adventure yet but I have ran my prelude adventures with the players and everyone seems to be picking up the rules well and enjoying the system mechanics.
 


Old School

Old School and free. Along the lines of S&W Complete, Advanced Labyrinth Lord - but with a pile of adventure and campaign building extra content. Old School B&W artwork and colour versions included. Renegade.

And just moved/ moving a free scenario for Renegade or any of the other clones/ 1e/ Next from DriveThru to a web page Dragons' Rage.
 

As Neonchameleon brought up, we'd need to know what kind of game you are looking for in order to point you in the right direction. FATE is a very different experience from an OSR retro-clone.

Here are a few questions to help you decide what sort of RPG you are looking for, and what sort of experience you want to give these first time players.

1. Am I looking for something that is basically like D&D, or completely different?
2. Do I want the rules to be about as complex, simpler, or more detailed than D&D?
3. Do I want to give players narrative control? (Ie, players have ways of dictating events in the game other than the actions of their own characters--such as spending a resource to declare that things just happen to work out right, and how they do)
4. Do I want the focus to be more on telling a story, on playing a game, or on world/setting exploration?
5. What are my genre preferences?
6. Am I looking for larger than life characters, or people that can die from a single arrow or gunshot wound?
7. Do I intend to spend lots of time preparing for a game session, or do I want a game that lends itself to fast improvisational GMing?

Without knowing the answers to those sorts of questions, our suggestions are of limited usefulness. You'll spend hours looking at recommendations that don't fit what you want at all.
 



Lots of great stuff available. I have to plug Basic Fantasy RPG. I started a one off that become a recurring thing, eventually became biweekly, and is now 3 year old campaign. It's old school D&D with some 3.0 isms, free to dl, modular via supplements, and rather easy to mod. If one likes this kind of game, its a winner.
 

While I personally prefer Castles & Crusades over Basic Fantasy, Basic is free while C&C is not, which of course is a big plus point. The best free AD&D retroclone there is.
 

Lamentations of the Flame Princess has a free version without art. IMHO, the best retroclone out there. Swords & Wizardry and Labyrinth Lord are fantastic as well.
 

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