Doug's Art and Games Blog

Five Torches Deep After playing a few years of 5th edition, I have to say that I am still feeling like there are too many rules and too much to track about character advancement. Honestly, I would like something more like B/X with some of the elegance of specific 5e mechanics. Enter Sigil Stone Publishing's game, Five Torches Deep by Ben and Jessica Dutter. I am pleased that the game restructures classes into four familiar classes, with each having 3 subclasses at level 3. I love the recalibrating of rules to have power levels more similar to B/X classes, and simplification of rules -- there are only about 36 actual pages of rules. And those include some things 5e does well (advantage and disadvantage), adds simple but useful rules on fatigue and henchmen, and sets limits on advancement that keep characters from getting to the superhero level of power you see in higher levels of 5e. Five Torches Deep is a good compromise for people who want to introduce old-school modules ...

Maze Rats Published by Questing Beast Games , Ben Milton's Maze Rats  is a tight little old school RPG that uses new rules to emulate old-style play. Originally developed as variant rules for Into the Odd , Maze Rats creates a classless 2d6 based system that is fairly familiar to players of D&D style games, but strips it down to minimalistic systems. Combat in Maze Rats is brutal, advancement is limited, and play is very straightforward. This isn't surprising since Milton has used this set of rules to run games for elementary school students. Within this very small set of rules, Milton manages to squeeze in some fantastically useful random tables, GMing advice, and a system of freeform semi-Vancian magic that means that characters are granted randomly-generated spells each time they prepare spells, which is both simple and potentially very weird. Maze Rats presents a set of rules that would be easy to run, but in a way that still requires the person running the game...

Into the Odd Lost Pages ' roleplaying game, Into the Od d,  is an old-school game not built to mimic any particular old school RPG. With rules inspired by the original edition of Dungeons and Dragons, Into the Odd goes its own way on many levels. Author Chris McDowall fits his game into a beautifully brief 48 pages, something few RPG designers seem able to do these days. Characters are adventurers in an early industrial fantasy world, exploring a strange underworld that houses ancient arcane items. The rules are simple, even simplistic, with characters defined by three abilities (rolled on 3d6), equipment, and sometimes by arcane special abilities. Rules are reduced to simple saving throw mechanics (roll d20 equal or under the appropriate ability score), combat assumes automatic hits, meaning you only roll for damage, and damage beyond your hit points lowers your Strength score and makes you roll a Strength save to prevent critical damage. While this makes character creatio...