I must say that I’m very disappointed with this book, especially since I really like Alan Bahr’s TinyD6 line. I was curious to see how he would streamline old-school D&D, and he definitely has some nice ideas. What I got, though, feels at best like a well-illustrated and spell-checked first draft, not a finished game. Here is my in-depth review.

On the good side, Torchlit has many cool ideas : a simple yet pretty robust and scalable skill system; hexcrawling and camping “phases” with specific actions; degrading (and repairing) equipment; items that become “magical” by using them and spending XP; spending HP to raise a d20 result; manipulation and intimidation resisted by a saving throw; reckless and cautious attacks. Some of them might not work great exactly as presented, but they are interesting nonetheless.

But Torchlit is not a bunch of house rules suggestions. As a full game, it fails.

Some rules straight up contradict each other: how to repair things have different rules under Equipment and Camping; running out of food have different rules under Camping and Journey; the Fighter can have advantage on some loyalty checks (a 3d6 roll), yet the rules states that you can never have advantage on a non-d20 roll; light sources project different light under Equipment and Light.

Some rules are very poorly explained, or even mistaken, so that you can’t use them properly unless you are already familiar with them from other games. Spells for the Sage are a good example, where a number is listed but left unexplained (it’s probably the maximum number one can cast each day). Surprise is either very confusing or the explanation makes a mistake. Movement rates are clearly mistaken, allowing two 12-feet moves per 10 minutes. Many times, the book reminds the reader that the GM will adjudicate, advocating a “rulings not rules” approach, but it either does not give them tools or even guidelines to do so (XP, Poison, Hexcrawling procedures) or states some specific rule that could undercut some rulings (Thievery, Disguise, dropping a torch).

Some rules appear to be a pain in actual play. Hexcrawling procedure requires four different checks from the PC for every travelled hex, none of them involving a real decision on the player’s part, and a party is assumed to travel three hexes per day. Every weapon can degrade after a fight, and a check is needed for each one that hit. Stoking the light encourage mindless rolling to success (or failure) and requires tracking if a fire was already stoked on each of the three light levels.

The compatibility with other OSR games is also a bit baffling. On one hand, there are many similarities: six same basic stats with XP bonus, similar array of modifiers, saving throws, attack and damage rolls, etc. On the other, the game use different name for many of them: five stats are different (yet mean exactly, and I mean exactly, the same thing), HP is Lifeblood, AC is Defense. These changes make conversion harder, but they serve no purpose, so why were they made? Another important difference: XP is awarded through combat, not treasure, so monsters have no treasure listed.

In my opinion, there are two key rules differences to keep in mind for OSR compatibility. The first one is HP : it’s much higher at low level, but raises much less through leveling (Constitution+Level; it’s the same for every class, which runs counter to their respective roles, but the way armor works effectively give the Fighter many more HP). To convert monsters, the book advise to use average HP+10, so it’s pretty easy to do on the fly. The major difference that will muck the compatibility is the Reduction from armor (it cancels damage instead of raising AC) and the AC that appears to be much less varied (mostly around AAC 12-14, always 10+Int+Dex+Wis, some weapons boost it). Unfortunately, this important difference is not acknowledged, and no conversion advice is given; but to be honest, once you eyeball a couple of different monsters, it’s easy to make on the fly.

Unless you don’t mind spending a bit of money for ideas, or use rulesets in a very loose way, I can’t recommend this. If you don’t care about OSR compatibility, buy Tiny Dungeon instead.

If you are still interested, here are some additional facts that might be useful:

• Nice black and white art, serviceable layout (it’s fine, but some people elevate layout to an artform of beauty and usability, and that’s not the case here).
• No fluff, but traditional low-magic medieval-fantasy is assumed.
• Mostly traditional D&D mechanics, but with a unified simple skill system: roll a d6 to equal or beat target number.
• 10 PC levels.
• 3 traditional classes (Fighter, Thief, and Sage, which is some kind of mage/cleric/scholar/McGuyver hybrid ). Each class has a small number of simple abilities, and some are chosen.
• Each character also define a Profession (it's freeform) that makes them better at skills under it (roll a d8 instead of a d6).
• Low-magic. Sages start casting spells at level 5, don’t have many of them, have access to 3rd level spell at most, none deal much damage, and casting have a pretty high risk of damaging the PC. It’s mostly support and exploration, with Sleep being the nuclear option.
• Combat damage is dictated by class, not by weapon, but some weapons modify that (enhancing the damage die, piercing armor, etc.).
• A couple of special attacks and maneuvers are described, and the resolution is always simple and straightforward.
• There are subsystems/procedures for camping, hexcrawling, mass combat and light sources. In my opinion, camping can be used pretty much as is even if it could be better, hexcrawling as written is quickly going to be a pain but can be easily salvaged by cutting down on the number of checks, mass combat is going to be boring unless the GM (and the players) are fantastic at describing troop maneuvering, and light makes a simple mechanic more complicated, abstracted in a counterintuitive way, and for no real benefits. Your mileage may of course vary.

A quick note on the included adventure: it’s bad and anti-OSR. Village with no one to get information from and nothing to interact with save buying stuff; quest giver tells you to go 3 hexes away; travel there, get told by the GM that this is a good time to camp; skill checks to continue the adventure and get to a nearby crypt, a small unkeyed map (12 rooms without any description whatsoever beyond the map itself) where the PC have probably a single combat (this one can be interesting, though); skill checks to find/generate treasure, skill checks to get told by the GM that you can try to cover the entrance to the crypt, multiple tough skill checks needed to succeed at the task of putting rocks in front of an entrance, hex crawl back home (but you can skip the hexcrawling checks this time and let the PC travel safely).