I am the type of GM/Judge/Player that likes rules-lite systems. I suppose this comes from when I started gaming with Holmes Basic back in grade school. I never have liked rules getting in the way of playing a game. Looking for a specific rule in the middle of a game brings everything to a stop and is the antithesis of fun to me.
On the other pseudopod, I am not hidebound to keep on playing 35-year-old systems either. I like new game and trying new things.
For this reason, I always have an eye out for anything that is rules lite and evocative of the spirit of those games of yore.
A few years ago Goodman Game's Dungeon Crawl Classics RPG caught my eye while it was still being playtested. It took me a little while to warm up to this game as I wasn't took keen on the race as class or the fairly limited class options for humans. To tell you the truth, I didn't much like how DCC has an upper level limit of 10th level for all player characters either. I figured this was going to be one of those games I collected a copy of the rule book, but used it nothing more for reading and, perhaps, inspiration. How wrong I was about that. I absolutely love DCC now. It is easily my favorite new rules old school game bar none.
This game combines a fresh and innovative take on the rules while incorporating inspiration from all the old source material from Appendix N in the back of the ORIGINAL Dungeon Master's Guide by Gary Gygax. This is one crazy mind-blowing swords and sorcery game with all the best of the gonzo goodness of Weird Tales like pulps, planetary adventures (think Barsoom), and whatever else was rattling around in Joseph Goodman's demented imagination while he scrawled these rules at 2 AM after waking from a fevered nightmare inspired by The Great Old Ones themselves!
Yog-Sothoth be praised and hand me that silver key!
This is one of two new OSR type games I am playing.
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