What is Adventures Simplified?
Adventures Simplified is a D20 Tri-Stat system of Body, Mind, and Spirit. The core rule is you roll a D20 and add the relevant stat bonus to meet or beat 15 to succeed.
This book includes instructions for creating a basic character, a basic equipment list, running a basic map crawl and "dungeon" crawl, and includes a basic creature list. Also included are some rules for miniatures combat and a note on playing this as a TTRPG.
Noah promises to release a number of "Adventure Add-Ons" of various genres (one has released as of this review) that will expand on the various crawls, item and creature lists, and character creation options.
What's my take?
If you want a solo game that includes simple map crawling and dungeon crawling, this book is worth picking up, but you may find - as I did - it necessary to do some tweaking.
This book is basic. Almost too basic, and really needs to be balanced in the areas of level advancement and economy. You have to spend 50 coin to advance a level, but the rewards are very small. You only have a 50% chance after a successful encounter rewarding you from 1 to 6 coins (more if you encounter a group of creatures - but there is a problem there too).
Creature encounters are also in need of better balancing. Creatures have Danger Dice which denote their threat level. This die will be rolled to determine how much damage they do when you are unable to dodge their attacks. However, this die is also rolled once to determine how tough their are (Life Points) and once to determine how many of this creature are encountered!
I hope you see how broken that can be!
At first level you might encoutner 1 or two Field Rats with 1 or 2 LP. But you have just at much chance of encountering 1 to 12 Young Flame Dragons with 1 to 12 LP!
(⊙﹏⊙)
I have already tweaked a number of the rules to better balance the rules for my plays of the game, and hope that Noah will release an official update to address these imbalances.
I would also love to see a "Monster Manual" which would be a beneficial add to this product, as well as an updated Mimble's Book of Many Things and/or Madame Mimble's Star Codex.
My favorite part of this product has been the inclusion of the Map Crawl for overland travel from a home base to search for quest locations (you roll your quest and then where it takes place). I also appreciate that each move in the crawl (both Overland Map and "Dungeon" Maps) are not always going to be monster fights with the inclusion of Social, Puzzle and Obstacle encounters.
I look forward to see where this product goes and what new Adventure Add-Ons will get released.
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