Huge amounts of gamable stuff. Inventive and interesting. I just can't get on with the formatting. For me it's far too dense and wordy.

Just the other day I was looking for a module to solo, and I glanced through the Chaotic Caves, which I'd downloaded quite some time ago.

Dang, this thing is good. It thankfully does NOT use the read-aloud text of other Basic fantasy modules, instead preferring spare and efficient description. The keying works well, good encounters, and for all that the module covers--a town, two overland sites, and huge cave crawl of 76 rooms--it does so in less than fifty pages. Excellent.

Just found out J. D. Neal also did Saga of the Giants. Gotta download that now too.

This simpli is one of the best systems for roleplay due to its low entry cost, it being a single tome, easy to understand and dynamic when playing because it's fairly intuitive.

Easily one of my favorite systems that has withstood the test of timea and "new and shiny (and clunky and overpowered and inconsistent and...)" Plus it has a friendly crowd of supporters and plenty of additional material of varying degrees of quality, but all useful in one way or another.

Highly recommended.

Excellent. I prefer AD&D 2E since that's what I've played all my life, but after the whole license drama, I'm fed up with Wizards of the Coast (it's cool I got fed up with TSR before that). Old School Essentials is indeed a valuable (I won't go so far as to say essential) addition to the TTRPG "old schoolers" like myself.

Fantastic product and community! You can't beat the value of this system. Period!

Excellent products top to bottom. Thank you Mr. Gonnerman

In the final analysis, this is more or less Basic Fantasy. I have stared at both for a while, and yes, there is slightly different editing, but, one is mostly the other. I have taken the Core book, spliced it with the Monsters book, purged a few pages, inserted the Monsters portion right where the core manual monsters would be, removed the core manual monsters (they are redundant) and added the portion of the core that follows the inserted monsters. Presto 258 pages of compact game goodness. Or you could just buy both books and not fuss so much hehe. But Basic has a wealth of Adventures, and 3 monster add on books and then some, all available to be downloaded for free, or in my case I bought a nice batch of items on Amazon for close to what a print service would charge. Iron Falcon likely could use anything made for Basic. Or, if you are a rules lite obsessed DM, Iron Falcon's main book is an option. But it is about the same choice as buying just the Basic core book too :) It's like debating various brands of cola that are not Pepsi or Coke :)

This book is one of the best made D&D spin offs in existence. One book, all inclusive, nothing else required. Well printed, and not a very large tome to burden your table space. I will place it above other well known efforts such as OSE, OSRIC, and the various editions of actual D&D. Dark Dungeons X, Castles and Crusades, and no doubt I could mention a few others. The price is very right, and the product is very well crafted.

Buy the hardover, you deserve the hardcover :)

But I just went page by page by page with my 3rd edition. A few art works omitted. A few new artworks. A bit more content in magic spells for a few spells. A few additional monsters. But the 4th edition is only needed by those that don't have the 3rd edition. There is really only about a 5% difference. The pages are mostly identical in most of the book.

At 13 bucks though, well you can always buy it to be kind to the author :) It's a small price.

I originally bought the softcover, changed my mind and got the hardcover. So the softcover is my players book :)

Not a clone of any single game, but definitely an old school vibe, with just a bit of new school added in. Plus it has a very active fan base with tons of free downloads on the BFRPG website.

Of all the retro clones we tried. My groups and I prefer this one (Okay, Whitebox Fantastic Medieval Adventure Game is our second best!). But Basic has more meat than Whitebox. BF does a great old school job and has everything you need in one book. There are supplements of course, but personally we find the Equipment Emporium to be the best of these as we prefer to keep rules and other books to a minimum.

The bad... (Only my personal opinion or my tastes of course!)

Everything else other than the human has darkvision which IMO kills the dungeon crawling factor, I find darkvision OP and makes the need for torches, lanterns and light spells a joke!

Thief skills instead of % should be set to 1d6 since pretty much everything else is done with 1d6, like... Forcing open a door, roll 1d6. Look for something, roll 1d6. Listen, roll 1d6 etc. You get the idea. I think the universal use of 1d6 for all these tests would further simplify this simple game. What is also strange is that many other tests rely heavily on saving throws or some things such as again dealing with doors may require rolling 1d10 or even 1d20 in some special cases, which is so odd. These rules seem strange and all over the place even though I understand that the goal of Basic Fantasy is to emulate the rules of old.

That being said, the "bad stuff" above is easily corrected with house rules.

The good...

The rules are simple and quick to use. (Even considering my personal nitpicking!) They simulate old school well. It's hard to be an adventurer, you're not super heroes here.

We love that the game stays true to the basics (pun intended!). What I mean by this is... The game just uses the four classic classes (Cleric, Fighter, Thief, Magic-user) and the same with the races (Human, Dwarf, Elf and Halfling). There's nothing wrong with playing with other classes and or races (Everyone has their favorites!), but for the core book it's good to just have the basics so we don't have to remove stuff too much.

There are no setting in this book. (Some may see this as a negative) I don't because it allows us to use whatever campaign setting we prefer. For me, that's one of its biggest strengths.

The book is well formatted and clear, easy to flip through and to find things. After a while, it becomes second nature.

The game is easily accessible, that is, it is easy to find PDFs or physical copies. The PDFs are all free, and the copies are so cheap you can buy them for your whole gaming group and spend less than a single D&D book.

The whole thing shows passion and dedication, it feels like a real labor of love, which is rare these days. This game is not meant to take money from you, it is meant to entertain you with endless fun and adventures ahead. You can't beat that! Other books in the old school fantasy genre may look prettier, get more hype, etc., but they'll never hug you the way Basic Fantasy does.

LOVE this game. It's simple, easy to learn, and best of all SUPER cheap.

Excellent digital copy and yes, I went on to purchase the paperbac copy of the book. Love the simplified system and may run my next game using it or the OSR format.

Stellar system! It is a lot like classic D&D (AKA Basic, B/X, BECMI) except that classes & races have been separated. However, the human race leaves much for want in my opinion. I decided to give humans +1 to all saving throws instead of the higher numbers for two specific ones you get with other races. This is my attempt to echo my understanding of a Gygaxian humans are versatile & decent at everything while other races are specialized & really good at some things but not others. This rule tweak works for my parents & my friends, but it may not be for everybody. The rest of the rulebook offers everything you need & an incredible assortment of monsters. It also has lots of pictures for most of the monsters while still staying space-efficient, as opposed to the D&D Rules Cyclopedia where it has few photos for every creature. The AC's of all are modified to ascending type, giving the number one needs to roll to hit. This removes the need for a "to-hit" table which can be very handy. I fing it is still easy to quickly convert to the older descending AC system in your head if you prefer. I highly recommend a printed copy. I bought a hardcover from Amazon before I realized I could have ordered it here. They are the same price, though, to my knowledge, so it would be great to add to your cart here so you get the combined shipping if you are picking up a few basic D&D modules like I did! I much prefer BFRPG to 5e & I think it is a wonderful set of simple rules that leave lots of room to player imagination & beginner or expert DM's alike (:

Eu e meus amigos gostamos muito de algumas mecanicas e da facilidade e flexibilidade do jogo.

Basic Fantasy RPG is one of the true gems of the OSR world! It's a great way to get started in tabletop gaming. It's perhaps the first retroclone and still one of the best. Anyone who grew up playing D&D in the late 70s or early 80s will instantly find themselves at home. It keeps the core mechanics of the game while making a few intuitive changes like ascending armor class. The core of the system is very simple and easy to learn, and all you need to play is just this book, a few dice and some friends! Yet the game is strongly supported with dozens of supplements as well as a vibrant, active online community. BFRGP has its own forum and the author posts there frequently. The core book really is a self contained game but you can as much or as little as you like! Supplements add rules for wizards, new spells, new/old classes like the Scout, Paladin & Ranger, or you can run it lean and tight. This book will give you the basic races and classes, the mechanics and combat rules, spells & weapons and enough monsters to get you started. And there's a pretty well developed campaign setting you can get for free!

That leads to the next thing, and this is huge- the book is free! You can download it for free and see what you think of it. If you like it- and you probably will- you can continue to use the PDFs or buy a hard copy. The hard copy is very inexpensive and even the hardcover is only $14!

Mechanically it's very much like the old B/X D&D of the late 70s/early 80s. You have the familiar classes and the races you'd expect. Hit dice, weapon damage, it's all like you remember. The art in the book varies between really nice and cheap'n'cheeful but the entire presentation is clean and professional. A beginner will pick it up easily but there's plenty of material out there to expand the game. Adding all the optional rules will get you pretty close to the pre-UA AD&D 1e.

In case I haven't been clear I love this book! BFRPG is a great game, one which I still play weekly with a steady group. You can't go wrong with it, highly recommended!