Complex Fantasy RPG
Yeah I'll have a uhh Basic tabletop game, hold the Basic
In last week’s letter, I wrote about turning house rules into supplements to be used or shared at your discretion. Near the end of that letter, I wrote about the vision Chris Gonnerman has with how supplements would fit into the core game; he said the supplements made specifically for Basic Fantasy are meant to be used à la carte. I want to take this opportunity now to share what I use in the Basic Fantasy game I run every week, modeling my pitch after the way Gonnerman suggests. The reason for this is twofold. First, assuming I don’t radically alter the supplements I use, I can reference this letter in the future. Second, There may yet be some supplements unknown to me - the Workshop is a big place - that would play very nicely with the ones I already use; perhaps someone will share some gems they’ve found there.
The supplements I use belong broadly to three categories: character creation, gameplay, and ‘DM stuff’. Character creation has to do with only those things which change the options or methods for making a new player character. Gameplay refers to supplements that modify the game without having a direct role in how characters are born. ‘DM stuff’ is anything that modifies the game that exists outside, at least mostly, of the players’ experience. I couldn’t really find a better name for that category, so feel free to suggest one. I’m going to present each category in that order with their supplements and explain why I chose to use the supplement. I will also link to their discussion on the Basic Fantasy forums, if they are from there.
Character Creation
These little fellas are synonymous with trickery via wizardry, and, since AD&D was my starting point, gnomes must be playable.
Just like gnomes, I’m used to there being half-elves and half-orcs. I don’t allow the half-ogre, though.
Druids are responsible for curtailing the encroachment of society onto the untamed wilderness. Spiritually, they are not far removed from clerics. They worship the same deity, but druids exist outside the orthodoxy and in their own hierarchy called a grove. They still lose Turn Undead for Animal Affinity, though.
Like the gnomes, I like having rangers and paladins, because I am used to having them. I am not a fan of the paladin’s Lay on Hands ability progression, so I just have it mimic the AD&D version, healing 2 hit points of damage per level of the paladin once per day. Healing disease costs 10 hit points worth of the ability and neutralizing poison costs 20 points.
I loathe elaborate back stories for player characters, but I like having their previous occupation known. I used this when the campaign started, since they were all meant to be friends of the temple but not necessarily clerics. The players rolled or chose an occupation, and that was their connection to the temple.
Besides those supplements, I house ruled a few things for character creation, or at least things that influence the choices a player might make during it.
Ability scores are rolled 3d6 down the line. You may reroll if you have more penalties than bonuses or if you have all +0 modifiers.
Magic-Users can use slings. It’s a small but reasonable change.
Magic-Users begin with a scroll containing one 1st-level spell of their choice. This scroll cannot be the subject of research, reverse engineering, or copy by any means.
Clerics begin with a scroll of cure light wounds.
Thieves and rangers don’t use the percentile-based progression for their skills; a thief begins with a 1 in 1d6 chance of succeeding at all skills and 2 points to allocate as desired. A thief gains 2 more points each level up to and including 9th level and gains 1 point per level afterward. The highest that a single skill can be is a 5 in 1d6 chance. The ranger follows the same rules and baseline as the thief but only gains 1 point per level up to and including 9th level and gains no more points afterward.
Darkvision functions as AD&D’s infravision and is renamed so. I just like it better.
Level 1 characters begin with max HP. Makes players feel comfier I guess.
Only the core rulebook may be used when purchasing starting equipment. Buying equipment to get started shouldn’t be a slog. Other equipment sources can be used in other ways later.
Gameplay
This changes how players approach certain situations while adventuring, so I feel it fits here. In general, I use it as-is, with some exceptions. Anything requiring ability rolls, I ignore; that’s swimming and climbing out entirely and parts of mounted combat. I also don’t use the chases section, favoring instead my own implementation seen in the ‘DM stuff’ section.
I only use the dual-wielding feature from this supplement, but it has others as well as checkboxes to know at a glance which ones are in use.
This is a great supplement for equipment, and it’s just enough for what we need at my table. Most of the items in it are not freely available to the players, but the services, animals, and certain trade goods generally are. The items that aren’t available are acquired through a shady merchant in my town named Greasy Bruli. I will explain his role more after I finish the supplements for this section.
This adds a familiar-finding spell and ritual and a lot of detail about familiars. I’ve always pictured magic-users with a familiar, so it makes sense to me that it should exist.
This supplement adds some spells I’m familiar with from AD&D and some new ones, and it also adds 7th-level spells. These spells are rarer than those in the Core Rulebook, and the easiest way to acquire them is to research and create them on your own.
Spell Scrolls
This is a supplement I made for myself which has a formula for coming up with the cost of buying and making spell scrolls. I need to give it another attempt to lay it out better, but it will be shared when ready.
Just like with character creation, I have some house rules that affect how the game plays.
All coins are worth 10 coins of the type below them. The exception is electrum, which is as-written; 1 electrum piece equals 5 silver pieces. and 2 electrum pieces equals a gold piece.
XP is gained from three sources. Treasure acquisition, monster killing, and world interaction. 1 gold piece equals 1 XP, but it must be either in coins, or else the value of non-coin treasure must be determined by an appraiser to gain XP for it. Treasure which is wasted will yield an additional point of XP per gold piece wasted. “Wasted” is not strictly defined, but generally it requires money or treasure be given away for no immediate or direct benefit. Monsters give XP according to their values. 50 XP is awarded for “doing things”. Pulling a lever, remembering to check for traps, talking to people, etc. It’s not quite “story” XP, because my only requirement for getting it is doing something besides waiting for something to happen. This is to encourage my players to “poke around”.
When you level up, roll 3d6 for each ability. If what you’ve just rolled is higher than the score you already have, then increase the existing score by 1 point.
When you reach 0 Hit Points, or if you suffer a “save or die” effect, you may make one final save vs. Death Ray. If you succeed, you are unconscious at 0 HP. If you fail, you really are dead. Roll a new character. This rule extends to classed NPCs, including enemies.
Critical hits deal additional damage as if the damage di[c]e was at its maximum. If you hit with a 1d8, then you roll 1d8, add your Strength modifier, then add 8.
Critical misses allow you to make a choice to either lose the weapon or hurt an ally (or yourself). If a spell should require an attack roll, critically failing the attack would cause the spell to end, if it has a duration, or harm an ally (or yourself) like a weapon does.
All light sources shed bright light in a 5’ radius with another 5’ of dim light after that. You would be able to see carvings on a wall in dim light but would only be able to read them in the bright light. All oil-based light sources are instead candle-based. Magically created light doubles the ranges. This idea came from a blog, but I forget which one.
Equipment in the Equipment Emporium should be considered unavailable by default, but you should ask to be sure. Equipment that is unavailable can be found by Greasy Bruli. He will accept only one request per character per week and requires half the cost of the sought-after item up front. He will spend the week locating the item and sell it to you for a percentage of the other half of the cost; roll d% to decide how much. There is also a 1% chance that Bruli will not be able to locate an item, and he will keep the half of the cost already paid as a fee for his time searching. In addition to Equipment Emporium items, Bruli can also sell spell scrolls this way via the Spell Scrolls supplement.
‘DM Stuff’
This sits at the front of my DM binder, and I use it to reference during play so as not to forget accounting for anything that should happen during play.
I keep the Daily Log from this supplement right behind the Adventuring Procedures. I keep more copies in the back of my binder in a section just for blank sheets like this.
This sheet is great for keeping track of monster HP. It has checkboxes in groupings of five which are then grouped into five again for a total of 25 per row. There are two columns like this. When I roll HP for a monster, I just bracket off the grouping of boxes I’m using and write the number above them. I keep this inside a plastic sheet protector and write over it with an erasable marker, so I’m not constantly sending sheet after sheet into the trash.
This is a turn tracking sheet similar to others available online. This also resides in a sheet protector. There are at least two such trackers on the Basic Fantasy Workshop, but one of them is just too wordy for me - I’d prefer just the boxes and the key on a second full sheet - and the other one I saw takes up too much space for me with all the lines. I may make my own approach to this at some point, but for now my current sheet works for me.
Dot Grid Graphing Sheets
You can find sheets like this all over the internet. I use these for hand drawing my dungeon maps on. I do just one level on each sheet of paper, unless the dungeon is very small.
I print this on the reverse side of my dungeon grid sheets. I write all room descriptions on it, and there’s a wandering monster roster as well as an empty box for drawing, notes, or anything else.
I keep the map of the region on this sheet. It uses a [very old] program called mkhexgrid to generate hex patterns, but there are pre-generated, printable PDF files available there. I only have the one map in my binder, since my campaign’s events for the foreseeable future are not very distant.
I print this on the reverse of my hex sheets, and it provides similar functionality to the Dungeon Map Key but adapted for the open world. It has an encounter table that can accommodate up to 7 categories comfortably for 12 encounter entries each. There’s a scratch space present here too.
This herds all rules related to combat in Basic Fantasy under one umbrella. I reference it most often for seeing where a grenade-like missile lands when it misses.
My own implementation of the chase as an encounter state. There are some ideas given for different actions to take and other ways to spice up the encounter.
This is just a list of all of Basic Fantasy’s monsters by Hit Dice and alphabetically, but it lists not only the source but also the page number for each monster.
I use this sheet for writing down the monsters I make up to use in the campaign later.
I use these for weather and wind conditions, terrain generation, and “people” NPC attitudes (like the local lord).
This sheet is technically for use with B/X or Old-School Essentials, but it works well enough for Basic Fantasy. I’d consider one made specifically for Basic Fantasy, but the style of this sheet is hard to pass on.
I have a bit more in my binder for DM eyes only, but those are things like treasure lists and random tables that don’t really change how the game is played.
Overruled
I haven’t looked at what anyone else uses at their tables, but I think my list here is pretty concise and not too much for anyone, player or DM, to keep track of. I am wary of changing too much, because I am a subscriber of “not fixing what ain’t broke”. If something that exists in the game proves to be annoying or just not as fun as it could be, then I can change it when the situation occurs. So far, what I have here has been working, which is why I am comfortable sharing it with you now. When my table encounters something that doesn’t work, I often give them the choice between a few different ways of resolving the issue, and we continue with whichever one they choose.
I’d like to hear how you do it, though. Share your own house rules and the supplements you use, if you’d like. Let me know what you think of mine. Thank you for reading this letter, and have a great day.
Big fan of the thief+ranger skills here