This rules set if updated to match the original D&D 4 classes and 3 racial classes and it would be better than most games on the market. Brave Halfling captured the spirit of old school gaming. The 2d6 2017 update version spells system could be meshed into this easily. Online gaming makes the drama of a character searching their paper for an ability they don't have that much more disruptive. This keeps it moving and forces the character to focus on Non-Numbers parts of thier characters. This is a true asset to the Gaming Community. Thankyou for your work. I will use this often.

I am an avid player and DM of 5e D&D and my younger siblings and cousins were interested in the games I play. Some were a bit too young to grasp the mechanics of 5e so I looked for a simpler ruleset for them. I immediately was a fan of the dagger ruleset as it is similar enough that it took me little time to understand and was easy for me to adapt my 5e settings and adventures to the Dagger ruleset. I have had a great time running games for them and regularly DM groups with children as young as 4 years old. The system is easy enough for them to understand but has enough structure to give them ideas on how to play. It has also been great for getting them to practice their reading and basic addition with dice. I strongly reccommend this system for anyone who wants to run games with children who are not able to learn the mechanics of 5e yet.

In a word, Dagger is Superb!

GET DAGGER if you have kids or even if you enjoy rules-light gaming as an adult. It uses any OSR game as a base, so you can use Descending or Ascending AC, whichever you like better. But even if you don't have your "big" books with you, You can play Dagger on the fly, so it may serve as a good, cheap, on the go pick up game or a simple game to introduce new players or to take camping. But to introduce kids to tabletop RPGs, it's perfect.

I think I'm becoming minimalist in my gaming preferences because Dagger has no Attributes and I find that liberating! That's right, no STR, DEX, CON etc... how is this possible? You know what? it totally works!

Dagger is designed to distill OSR/D&D down to the minimum to make it accessible for kids as young as 5. I dare say it does this flawlessly. This Sunday, I 'ran a combat' with my 5 year old daughter, and she basically got it on the first try. She just turned 5 in January and it was a hoot. I can totally see this working for kids 5-10. I can see how using figures would totally help with younger kids.

The spell list captures the iconic spells of the game, and the rule book states it's a suggested list. With only 4 spells of each level (levels 1-5) you may want to add more, and it's super easy to do (which was the bulk of my house rules). You can basically just plop in spells from from S&W, OSRIC, Labyrinth Lord, C&C, D&D Oe, 1e... not hard to fudge it on the fly even. That said, since this is for 5 to 10 year olds, keeping a tight focus (that is, short spell list) is wise. Also, with no Ability stats, spells like (Bull's) Strength and Haste simply won't work.

The characters are simple but effective at capturing the essence of each class, and here, as you may expect, Dwarf and Elf are classes. You can of course, call the Knight an Amazon or Warrior Princess or the Wizard a Fairy Princess or whatever any player wants, really. They can be a Gorn or zombie, even, and the rules support this on the fly make-believe fun; as they should!

So in brief, Dagger does what it sets out to do, and it does it well. It's great as an introduction to gaming for the young or for older kids or even grown ups who are afraid of dealing with a ton of rules.

If you have youngsters clamouring to learn to role-play - or you think that role-playing would be a fun activity to get your younglings involved in - you might like to check out this ultra-simple set of rules. What they have done is cut the mechanics of character creation to the bone so that it is quick and easy to set each youngling up with the character that they want to play, freeing them to concentrate on the 'person' that they are playing without needing to worry about all the rules stuff.

It's a nice idea, and could work well with really young children or as an initial introduction even for older ones. It isn't for the novice Game Master, though, the idea is that whoever is running the game should understand 'proper' role-playing rules and as the children become more adept they will be able to filter more sophisticated mechanics in to the game until they are ready to play Labyrith Lords (or old-school Dungeons & Dragons or Dungeon Crawl Classics or whatever ruleset you prefer).

As an introduction it's neat, especially if you are not confident in being able to explain the more complex aspects of your chosen ruleset to complete novices, particularly very young ones.