Saturday, July 25, 2009

Old School RPGs

I've found two "old school" fantasy RPGs that might interest some people.

The first, Labyrinth Lord, seems to be a blatant copy of second edition D&D. I am not sure how this endeavor avoids lawsuits through nostalgia.

The second, HackMaster Basic, evolved from a comic book about RPGs. Its focus is on combat tactics, which makes it too much a wargame for my tastes. For example, nearly every RPG uses combat "turns" in which the heroes and their opponents each perform one action. Not this game! Instead every action has a specified length of time (in seconds), allowing combatants doing quick things to act more often. Nice for realism, but one more table in which to look up numeric values during combat.

No comments: