Pits & Perils is probably my most favorite OSR system and rules-light game out there. In just these 80 pages you pretty much are ready to go into making your campaign with all the rules you need.

Too many rules-lite games don't include enough for campaign play, but this game has everything you need while staying nice and simple! I hope to see more in either a setting book or an expansion.

I finally game mastered these chronicles for Barons of Braunstein last week-end. This is a classic old school fun dungeon crawling set in Saxon England. There is a starting village, its surrounding, the rumors table and of course the dungeon/underground maze with map. If you have read Robert E. Howard's Bran Mak Morn it can help to capture the mood of the game ;) The authors suggest to expand the village and the surrounding and add new personalities and they are right! Indeed this village could be the starting point of all your future chronicles. My players spent more time in the village talking with the locals than exploring the ruins so I'm planning to expand the region. The treasure "keeper" is very original and the players characters should make a choice between greed or death. Mine were cowardly wise and choose saffety over riches but they had a lot of fun! Too bad there isn't more Braunstein Chronicles!

Mydwandr is complete game and setting from Old House Rules. It's 60 pages or so and calls itself Rules-Light. Here we have the bejewelled fruit of authors James and Robyn George's continued exploration into the art of the perfect small role playing game. We gamers are nearly all searching for our favourite game, that one that has it all. Of course it can't exist. But if you were ever to be stuck on that desert island, Mydwandr might just be the game that would see you through. All you really need is here: straightforward rules of play with a highly unified mechanic, magic, monsters, treasure as you'd expect. But what you might not expect in a slim volume such as this is the backbone of a setting: the world of Mydwandr. The detail is light but sufficient, clues to set a referee's mind racing but enough to get going pretty quickly. Things I really like? The two and three dice mechanic (Doubles and Trebles as they are called in the game), the 'monsters' are called Hazards and include tricks, traps, extreme weather events and so forth. The magic system is free form- imagine what your character wants to do, roll the dice and see... The Magician's Hat magic item is like a Bag of Holding from DnD, but on your yead and I can't wait to use some Singing Bones! There are walking forests called Woodwandrs, which follow migratory paths around the world across the seasons. There's lots packed in here. So, go and wander around Mydwandr, take a coastal path of Cornyth, enjoy some of the famous beers of Hafandr, but for goodness sake- don't drink a Skyfire potion!

Blood of Pangea is a rules-lite sword and sorcery RPG. This by itself is not notable.

What IS notable is there aren't endless lists of spells, skills, weapons, or items. Yet you can have any item you wish, cast any spell, or select any skill, provided it fits the character. BoP bills itself as "a narrative system." Usually that means player-centric. I've read promises like that before, but the designers put their money where their mouth is. From the text: "Everything about this game is designed to ensure that the character's concept and, indeed, success, depends more upon the choices of the player and less upon special powers and abilities."

And that quote tells you everything. They put a lot of thought into this game. They specifically wrote Blood of Pangea to emulate the sword and sorcery genre. And if you don't like something, permission is given to change it. Hats off to the designers for not making another D&D clone, and for not trying to make that venerable game do something it wasn't designed to do.

Experienced players and judges will really be at home here, being able to fill in the blanks better than a novice. There's a bestiary of sorts, although split among different sections. The advice on creating monsters is solid. Task resolution is simple yet robust. Everything from combat to skill rolls is decided by 2d6, and those rolls can be modified by drawing from a fund of points called Might.

While I'm not crazy about the typewriter font, it does the job and fits the feel. Also the Hugh Rankin pieces in the book are a nice touch. For those who don't know, Robert E. Howard once stated that Rankin was his personal favorite of all the artists who illustrated his stories in Weird Tales.

I can't recommend this enough. This is a hidden gem, given it's been out for 8 years and I've never heard of it before. If you're looking for sword and sorcery action, look no further than Blood of Pangea.

I still enjoy this system very much after many years of gaming. Blood of Pangea is a rule-light and easy to learn system, which was written with great attention to detail. It offers one of the best introductions to the Sword & Sorcery genre I've ever read.

Compared to other systems, I don't miss anything at all. The game provides me with enough structure to empathize with my characters, but the fact that it has so few hard and fast rules allows me to keep my head clear and focus fully on roleplay and storytelling.

Blood of Pangea has become my favorite system and my number one choice when playing fantasy. This game is an absolute recommendation on my part!

What can I say? A must buy!sapggrpgrororogrpgrorogrpggrpggrpgroI worshi

Eng. : Nice character sheets for a nice Rule light System of cosmic horror ! Fr. : Sympathiques feuilles de personnages pour un sympathique système de règles légères permettant de faire de l'horreur cosmique à la Cthulhu. Alors certes le joueur francophone préfèrera sans doute les feuilles traduites par Le Grumph, mais les fiches originales sont beaucoup plus belles et illustrées.

It's been a long time since I last played a Table Top game featuring Giant monsters. Especially one where you just sit down with a sheet and build a monster from scratch in just one sitting.

Well, I think I have found that game again, and I can say that "Monster: Destroy All Cities" is an easy to manage, pick-up-and-play, Giant Monster Mass of fun! And with the likes of "Monster Island: the Game of Giant Monster Combat" being out of print and extremely hard to find. I can see this game as a really good replacement. Though there are a few details that I would like to address in regards to some aspects of this game, but we'll certainly get to that soon enough.

My Review:

One of Many

I won't lie, this game isn't the only Kaiju / Giant Monster game out there. There are plenty of games to look at (Plenty right here on this site alone). But I can tell you right now that it is hard to judge whether or not you will like many of them. As there are many angles that a Kaiju games can approach. From board games, to crunchy Rpg games, to even story driven affairs, with most players ether ending up as a Character driving a Mecha or a Human guiding a Kaiju through a special link that they share. There are ALOT of games out there, and that's more than enough material to read and draw up conclusions about. Maybe too much material, as I have spent Years trying to look for a Kaiju game after getting into DnD and discovering that there were a Ton of Rpgs out there that I could play!

And to some degree that was cool, until you find out that some of the good ones don't really exist anymore.

Point is, the journey to get to this game wasn't easy, but it certainly was worth it.

Good ol' Stomping Fun!

Honestly at a $1.49 along with free pdf Character / Monster Sheets, how could I not place a purchase down for this? It was a tough call at first, yet once I got it printed out and sat down with it, my outlook changed.

One thing I noticed right off the bat was just how light a read this game pdf was, stacking up to a nice 48 pages that give you all the rules and the ideas for what to use on you table to get this game started, with more suggestions after monster creation.
Speaking of which, Monster creation being failrly sparse, with only 3 defined "Body-Types" or Monster-types. Those being Avian, Saurian, and Simian (You can sorta tell as to who these monster types are a mirror of). With the Fourth and Fifth body-types being Xenoform and Mech (or Mecha).

The game has a point-buy system for Monster skills and abilities that go towards your overall strengths. Letting all monsters start out with the same amount of points, while Xenoform and Mech both get their own own set of points. All in all though, most of the Monsters starting out will be roughly the same in terms of fighting potential. So while they start out small, the game really makes you feel like a powerhouse as you go toe to toe with your enemy players. Its simple and easy to use, and almost feels like watching a wrestling match take place (just like all my favorite Giant monster movies!)

With the only difference being how you use your Skills as you Tactically try to outwit your oppnent. The name of the game being to win! Winners gaining two points for every win, and Losers gaining only 1 point just to keep up. However, if your Kaiju decides to Fly or swim away, than no points are added. Running away being the real loss for any player.

A Few Missing pieces

As much as I like the sparse material, there are a few key details that I feel I must address. with one being the skill list, as there are only 24 skills on this list and most of them are terrestrial based, meaning while your monsters do get alot out of Acid Spitting, Radiation Blasts, and Earth shattering attacks. The Game doesn't quite give you a whole lot of attacks that vary, in fact it much of the skills are a mix up of support Abilities, movement based (Tunnel Vision, Flight, etc), or mostly close-range brute fighting. None of its bad. But I do kinda wish there was more. as we don't have say, a Whirlwind or Tornado attacks, Watergun or an Ocean Vortex, Energy Blade(s) options for Mechs. Or even the option to do a Tail Strike or Tail-Whip. Not even a Sonic Scream? Sure there probably is a way around that, but it clearly seems that the list was still being thoughtout at the time.

And while it is true that the Xenoform and Mech (Mecha) Body-types do exist to make up for the lack of the Diverse Kaijus species out there, I'm alittle vexed as to why we aren't given an Insect, Aquatic or Astro-Monster Type to use either?

There is also one thing that I would like to point out, Hit-Points. While it is true that all monster gain the same hit-points (10) no matter what body-type. In one of the sample monster,the Hit-Points on it are at "11"! I don't know it if this is a typo, but from what I can tell, there is nothing in the book that details about raising your maximum HP. I combed it pretty thoroughy. Was I missing something?

Conclusions

While not perfect, I don't believe this game (or any other) has to be in order to enjoy it. Supplemental material would however make this beautiful game even more enjoyable. Still, even if none of it comes, it may be possible for a game master to homebrew up some minor tweaks and changes. Heck, even so much as writing Insectoid under Xenoform makes it more interesting and personal.

But probably one of the biggest changes that could be good suggestion to follow up on; would be to allow minor annoying enemies to show up, like Jets and Tanks, we already have rolls for Missiles and Bombs, but as for simple stats from DFs (Defence Forces) or Aliens and their Space weapons would be interesting. Although, that can simply be up to the Game master to create, and the game itself seems to allow for the modification of "units" to be added like that.

Heck, even changing up the combat and giving people a few Scenerios, such as having some Kaiju protecting their eggs or stopping a bunch of humans or aliens out to enslave the Kaiju makes for a change of pace when it comes to the combat.

All in all, I found "Monsters: Destroy All Cities" to be a great addition to my collection, and I'll probably be playing it alot more often. And if there comes a time where some more material is added to this game, I'll pick that up too. But For now, I think I'll play it as it is for now before giving my friends a few homebrewed challenges to offset the wrestling vibes. :)

Thank you James & Robyn. :)

A fine small ruleset for standard historical adventures in the Middle Ages. It just has almost nothing to do with the Braunstein of its namesake.

There's one page suggesting you could play a Braunstein with these rules, but you're better off googling "how to run a Braunstein" for any actual guidance.

TLDR: A nice ruleset for historical fiction, but has as much to do with Braunstein as D&D.

I give it a 3/5. As a system, the only game design principals that this game has is the game design principal of limited resources and advancement. Advancement deals in that your character gets skill points through play, but even these are treated as a currency and are used to buy off death or being hit by monstrous abilities such as a basilisks stare turning you to stone. You don't level up immediately with skill points, but instead you hold onto them for use as the above or spend 7 of them to gain a new talent. Talents in this game do static things that always work, but can only be used X times per day in some cases. Talents like Frugal automatically haggle prices down 25%, while others like Oracle allow you to use their ability (in this case tell a prophecy) once per day. Outside of Talents, which as just mentioned are used as passive abilities or actives with uses per day, you have three items in the equipment list which act differently than each other (not counting obviously provisions which act as normal (X days/weeks rations)). Bows, which can be fired up to 200' away to reduce the strength of a foe by 1 type or the number of rounds needed to slay a group by 1. Armor and Shields, which do the same thing and are not differentiated, they both can be sundered if lethal wounds are accrued in order to avoid death via cancelling the gaining of those wounds and then must be repaired at 25% cost before they can be worn again. All other weapons do the same thing, that is to say in the combat system they are merely cosmetic. Traps have to be actively searched for which I like and prefer, usually house ruling out the "Search" skill in any other game because it encourages brute forcing your way through adventuring, while at the same time existing in games where tactics and combat competency are necessities to survival and brute forcing is shamed because of the difference between life and death. Traps deal up to 25 wounds and generally allow you to spend a skill point to half that amount. Combat amounts to, "Your party will take X wounds, mitigated by the arrows spent before the round." and then you divy them up amongst yourselves.

In my opinion, it's okay if you're in a situation where you literally cannot obtain dice and you NEED to roleplay, but otherwise it's a wireframe for which you have to build upon to make it playable for any sort of long running campaign wherein the system of play isn't just "you need to spend X things to stay alive or to avoid this consequence." 3/5 because it was only $3.50 at that price I can't comlain too much. Would be lower if it cost more.

This is a fantastically light and easy system to use and, as a previous reviewer said, it's ripe for use with other genres. I've already used it to run games of Star Wars and 7th Sea (treat ships like characters with their own stats and abilities). It's not completely flawless. There were a couple of minor things that I had to clarifiy with the writer or just houserule, but it's quickly become one of my all time favorite systems. Try it. For the price, even if you find you don't care for it, it's worth buying just to see how the system works.

Elegant rules, clearly written. My only issue is with the treasure table--am I supposed to roll for each monster or each group? I don't think it's mentioned.

Great OSR-style game.

I enjoyed my read through of Diceless Dungeon. I like the abstract take on diceless combat the Olde House Rules has come up with. I think this will click with my home group and hope to try it out in the near future.

I love this product! For a while now I've been looking for a simple diceless system that still offered a very small level of resource management. This is a fantastic baseline for many great hacks and house rules! Keep up the great work!