I’ve been looking for an rpg that can be picked up and played by people new to the hobby. A lot of rpg’s claim to be introductory, but then assume at least one person has knowledge of what an rpg is, or know how to be a gamemaster. Adventurous is a game that can be played by someone completely new to the hobby. Adventurous is an All-in-one-book that recaptures the spirit of discovery and wonder in a clean, well-written package that is easy to play - see https://www.dawnfist.com/ for more details. The art style is beautiful, full colour and consistent throughout the book. The art for each character is evocative and I want to play every class. The art direction compliments the game but does not draw the reader’s eye from the text, which is concise and easy to read. If you want to see the art style watch this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WzL367ll2XI&t=674s The core mechanics in Adventurous is a dice pool using d6’s. The number of d6’s rolled depends on the attribute total i.e. 5 Strength (STR) equals roll 5 d6’s. The dice can produce a fail, weak or strong success, with advantage / disadvantage adding or removing a die before the roll. The example below summarises the core mechanic:

GM: Ok, the bear starts and it lunges towards Wurd and tries to rend you with its claws. Make a STR test to defend yourself. WURD THE WARRIOR: I’ve got a STR score of 5! rolls. No! I got a 1, 2, 2, 4 and another 1, I failed completely. GM: That’s not good at all. You take 8 damage. WURD THE WARRIOR: You should have used Holy shield on me Pret! I’m down to 2 health. Help me! PRET THE PALADIN: I run up to Wurd and use my ability “Lay on Hands”. I rolled a 5, 6 and another 5 a Strong success, praise the sun! GM: Lucky you, Wurd recovers 10 HP. As any character can have a maximum of 10 health points, Fights will always be thrilling. Even a max level character could die quickly through overconfidence and bad luck. This encourages the party to work together from the start, using a combination of various damage, protection, curative and debilitating spells and abilities to keep the party safe. Or look for alternatives such as sneaking, persuading, intimidation to avoid combat. Class abilities and talents are baked into each class, so a new player can quickly glance at what they can do. The classes do not overstep each other abilities and all offer the choice of unique talents through fast horizontal progression. The 20-page GM section is excellent and by itself is worth the price of the pdf. It offers step-by-step advice on building and running adventures, including how to describe a scene, suggestions for combat, trap design (make it obvious and fun to solve), non-combat encounters, making interesting NPC’s and general GM advice I had to learn the hard way. Adventurous also includes sections for equipment, magic items, social interaction, hirelings, bestiary, dungeon, wilderness rules and a setting. Monster stats are simple enough that old DnD modules could be converted on the fly, though BBEG’s would need some pre-session work. The designer is approachable, and I’ve already made some suggestions, such as including a print-friendly version PDF. This is wonderful as the best roleplaying systems are those committed to incremental improvement over time. Adventurous is a must buy if you are looking for a simple, evocative, and fun system for traditional high fantasy one-shots and short campaigns. The most important feature for me is that the PDF is easy to read and understand, has a table of contents, is searchable and has an awesome combined index/glossary. The core mechanics are solid, and the system can easily be modified to support a grimdark, swords & sorcery or science fantasy setting. I also bought the premium colour hardcover, as it would make a wonderful gift for someone interested in fantasy, but has never tried table-top roleplaying.

TL:DR: Get this all-in-one rpg. I have been looking for a d20 rpg-lite system to run a Westmarch style homebrew campaign, but still close enough to re-skin some of the classic DnD modules. There And Hack Again (TAHA) is a fully fledged rpg that can be played right out of the box. Between the character Archtypes and the Boons, any sort of classic Tolkein character can be played, with options allowing GM-approved characters such as a Spellsword, or DEX-based Warriors, Champions or Rangers. Note there is no classic "Cleric" class in TAHA. The Druid class can heal in a pinch, but there are many other sources of healing that a party without a Druid would not be penalised. The absence of a "healbot" class allows for deeper roleplay and wider tactical considerations. The Faith, Dread and Despair mechanics are a highlight, as players must now consider their mental resilience when facing terrible foes, or dealing with the elements, such as snow storms. This system is simple enough for a one-shot, but also has the meat and potatoes for a fully-fledged campaign. I would encourage the author to consider a version 2 with a comprehensive example of play and a starting adventure, as this would make it more accessible to those with little or no knowledge of OSR-style games. I would personally appreciate the author's take on Character Origins. Publisher follow-up notification clicked for version 2 ;-)

TL;DR: Advanced Fighting Fantasy (AFF 2e) assumes that players are familiar with tabletop roleplaying games, or the Fighting Fantasy books. The rules are written in a very British conversational style and is not a game of hard and fast rules. AFF 2e is about a traditional fantasy adventuring party, collaborating to achieve a shared goal in an adventure or a campaign.
After procrastinating for many years, I decided to invest heavily into Advanced Fighting Fantasy 2nd edition. I wanted a simple, robust and hackable rules-lite system, a large bestiary and well supported by official adventures, that can be used for solo play, introduce novices into our hobby and support long campaigns. I also prefer systems which support a bell curve, like the 2d6 task resolution used by AFF 2e, providing swingy dice rolls. AFF 2e offers only four characteristics, SKILL, LUCK, STAMINA. A fourth characteristic, MAGIC, is only for those who are magically inclined. SKILL represents the general ability of the character to do things and is enhanced by special skills. STAMINA represents health, the physical punishment a character can take, and is also used by Sorcerers to power their spells. LUCK is used for situations outside of the SKILL characteristic, such as testing for fear, resisting magic, avoiding traps, and stumbling over clues. These characteristics are supported by special skills and talents to uniquely define a character. The mechanical simplicity of AFF 2e would be an advantage for solo gaming, or GM-less play with an oracle, but I am interested in a dungeon, city, wilderness, naval, swashbuckling medieval to renaissance low magic fantasy campaign. AFF 2e requires a GM to play (called a “Director”), and depending on the output of our group brainstorm, we’ll either use one of the official campaigns, do a point crawl campaign, or a cooperative hex crawl using the random generators and other resources found in the AFF 2e system. To cover all these options, I decided to purchase the following books: Deluxe Edition – includes the AFF 2e rules, Out of the Pit (250 monsters) and the Titan official setting. The AFF 2e rules cover character creations, archetypes, special skills, talents, social actions, encumbrance, perception, hazards, combat, minor magic, wizardry, sorcery, a small selection of monsters, and treasures and a dungeon adventure. The Titan setting has aspects of Stormbringer, Conan and Lord of the Rings with detailed history, continents, major factions, the underwater kingdoms, major points of interests, personas, a calendar, coinage, entertainment, and food. One can easily run a dungeon delving campaign with minimal preparation just using the Deluxe book which has a dungeon generator, adventure hooks and optional rules. The Titan setting also provides travel rules to get the party to those dungeons. Between travel, food, board, entertainment, magic shops and taxes, there are lots of opportunities to keep the party poor, and hungry for more adventures and loot. Heroes Companion – includes rules for the hirelings, dominions, mass battles, and afflictions (i.e., Lycanthropy). This also includes a simple system for creating running wilderness campaigns, including random tables for terrain generation, encounters, weather, resource management, and options for heroes and magical styles. The Hero companion and Deluxe rules combined would allow Wilderness and Dungeon areas to be pre-built together, or randomly determined during campaign play. Blacksand – includes rules for black powder weapons, naval sorcery, sailing, seafaring, and naval combat. Rules for settlement generation (hamlet to large city) and detailed descriptions, organisations and personas for the infamous port of Blacksand, perfect for a Lankhmar style campaign. The details of how the “legal system” operates in Port Blacksand are very characterful, and funny for those not on the receiving end of judgement. Blacksand combined with the Deluxe rules and Heroes Companion would provide a GM with the dungeon, wilderness, and settlement generators, allowing minimal preparation, or cooperative build on the fly, hex crawl campaign. Combat Companion – includes expanded mounted combat rules, monster templates, new equipment, martial arts, and alternative rules for combat including critical and fumble tables. Finally, a checklist to record options chosen for campaign play. It also supports creating less or more powerful characters. My Evil GM persona believes this could provide a fun campaign start, where each player has 4-5 civilians, defending their village from a band of goblins, and choosing a survivor to start their adventuring career. Beyond the Pit - This is another 250 monster, treasure, and random encounter tables. Note that this book, Out of the Pit and Return to the Pit all have an A-Z monster index, allowing quick access during a game session. Return to the Pit – another 250 monsters, treasure, and encounter tables. It also has rules for Familiars, named days of the week, Monster lore and archetype characters (i.e., a Beastmaster). Lastly, it has a consolidated, searchable alphabetical index of every monster in the three “Pit” books, by page number. With these books, one could run a lifetime of fantasy campaigns without needing anything else. AFF 2e would also be suitable for solo or cooperative play using the wilderness, settlement, and dungeon generators in the books. The Encyclopedia of Arcana Vol 1 book was not purchased at this stage, because my preference is to keep a campaign low magic, with players receiving consumables, access to rare knowledge and growing reputations which in turn Evil GM thoughts will attract the attention of more powerful antagonists… There are good, evil and neutral gods present in the Titan setting, but it is a perilous enough place that all characters are implicitly good, as the evil gods seek the utter destruction of the known world, and this simplifies party composition and the reason for adventuring together, allowing novices to concentrate on the action. However, local laws would still need to be obeyed, and murder hobo characters defying the law can be quickly dealt with in-game by using the court system found in Blacksand. While AFF 2e has rules for social standing, there are no rules for a lifepath, edges/flaws, or alignment, as these are unnecessary complications for a system originally designed for dungeon delving. A GM craving an alignment system could import one, use the old-school Law, Neutral and Chaos rules, or enforce a core behaviour through character archetypes. The special skills / talents can neatly represent edges, but GM’s will need to look outside if a rules-based flaw system is desired. However, if the goal of a flaw is to drive characterful play, then a character or party losing to a recurring, powerful, and insufferable villain, will provide those dramatic moments. Those GM’s wanting a life path system in AFF 2e could start the characters as civilians and channel their development through special skills, talents, and archetypes, to create a rich history worthy of journalling, throughout a campaign game. Those groups wanting to live dangerously, and forever remember fondly a glorious (or ignominious) character death, then the Combat Companion options can give that gritty feeling. AFF 2e would be an easy pathway for new GM’s (“Directors”) and players to start with a few published dungeons, before graduating an official campaign. However the system does not offer GM advice and so the Director would need to be someone who already has some roleplaying experience. But a novice group, working together, could muddle their way through the rules. The quality of the PDF’s must be commended and shown as an example to budding game designers. Every book has an index (where applicable) and appendices, with charts & tables consolidated for easy reference and printing for player/GM use. All the books are white pages, using a two-column layout and a black text font. The layout is well spaced for easy reading, with the highly detailed, black and white art, giving the eye a sumptuous and evocative rest from the lines of text. It also means less ink used when charts, tables etc are printed out for play. Most PDF's have a detailed outline with links to each chapter and section, and everything is searchable. This is excellent for finding stuff quickly, either by searching, or just clicking on the relevant section in the PDF outline. Every monster in the three “Pit” books is rendered in beautiful black & white art, a description, and a stat block. Monster attacks and armour are thoughtfully consolidated into the weapon and armour tables, whereas monster special abilities are in the descriptions. If you desire a single, well-supported rules-lite system that can do anything from one-shot dungeons to long campaigns, then AFF 2e could be your game. While AFF 2e may not have the coolness factor of modern OSR games, its 2d6 resolution system would support hacking for any game you desire. I've also heard on the grapevine that an official solo expansion is being developed for AFF 2e.

The Keep is a very useful tool. the fact that you can have everything in the same place while running a session, and that it integrates with other NBOS products such as Fractal Mapper, Screenmonkey, Inspiration Pad and Character sheet designer makes it worthwhile to get the whole set. viewing PDF's within the application makes it a breeze to look up rules, and you can also have links off to Internet resources as well. Where this tool shines is the creation of a concise adventure world, and then the running the adventures. One caveat - export the database regularly. I lost two hours work because I accidentally deleted and item through my own stupid fault. it also runs perfect on Vista 64.

I have been looking for a rules-lite fantasy system to play with my kids but also real-time online play with my old gaming group. I have downloaded and have read and/or trialled BASH, Broadsword-1PG, Barbarians of Lemuria, Iron Gauntlets, Quick20, Tri-Stat, Legends RPG, Labyrinth Lord, Hack-n-Slash, Swords and Wizardry and even the Fantasy Trip; but nothing really clicked. However QUERP clicked very quickly within 3-4 pages with its simplicity, but also its hidden but programmed expandability with the Player's Companion and the Bestiary.

The Team at Greywood Publishing have done a great job providing an RPG system with simple mechanics using 2d6 that is very easy to understand for kids and newcomers. After players and the game master have mastered the basics, they then can utilise the additional supplements for deeper character creation, skills, spells and bestiary options. I am looking forward to the upcoming GM's Companion and the Hammerax campaign setting to round out this fine game system.

My suggestion is that if you are interested in this system get the bundle that includes the Prisoner of Zontar, as you will find the supplements very valuable, especially if you are porting DnD/OGL adventures into QUERP as I am.

The Argyle Lorebook is one of the best campaign settings I've seen in a long time (back to the 1980's!) for any genre. The Land of Argyle is obviously a labour of love - a lot of work and passion has gone into this product, and it shows. The world setting is logical, the geopolitical situation is well thought out and magic takes a back seat. I haven't played in this world yet, but my feeling is that this low-magic campaign setting can lend itself to "neo old-school" play; that is players ask questions and use their wits, and the game master weaves the story instead of everyone relying on dice rolls.

Although the book is targeted at DnD/D20, it can be easily be adapted to any system. I intend to use it with QUERP by Greywood Publishing, along with Dungeon Crawl Classics: Saga of the Dragon Cult by Goodman Games to run a very simple hack 'n' slash campaign. However any adventure campaign that involves the player characters foiling the return of a great evil (especially if that evil wielded great magic or was undead) would work well in this campaign setting. Throw in the historical, political and economic tensions between the various races and city-states, and deep and complex roleplaying experience is possible as well.

If Silver Oak Studios can keep up the exceptional quality, I will eagerly look forward to more products. My only suggestion is to keep the current format of the campaign setting, which is relatively system neutral and/or easily modifiable.

INTRODUCTION I recently purchased Barbabrians of Lemuria (BoL) after trying several other simple roleplaying games. I won't talk about the mechanics or advantages of BoL, as this has been well covered in other reviews.

COMPLEXITY BoL sits between Deep7's 1PG Broadsword and DnD in terms of complexity, but it has a clean and new system that add a lot of atmosphere to a 1970's genre, without adding complexity. BoL would be suitable for introducing a new people into the roleplaying (including kids), or for one shot adventures with veteran gamers, or a serious campaign. The rulebook covers most situations that the characters could get themselves involved in, and the task system becomes second nature after a few games. This game does require a Gamemaster.

WHO WOULD LIKE THIS PRODUCT This product would be suitable for those who are just starting out with roleplaying games, and those who are just too busy to prepare and/or play adventures for hours and hours. BoL allows players to start as heroes, not some level 1 who could die from a stepping on a rat. The action is fast and furious, but while the game is about Barbarians and big swords, it does neatly accommodate those players who wish to be a magic user, rogue, cleric or any other type of character or background. This is a good buy for a single, comprehensive rulebook. If you want three or more rulebooks, colour art, and lots of "realism", then this game is not for you.

PRESENTATION This is a PDF download with lots of black and white artwork. However you won't buy this game for the artwork, you buy it for the rules! The rules are well laid out and include a table of contents, but no index. The campaign setting provides plenty of fluff (such as regional character traits), but does not go into detail. I actually like this, as it leaves plenty of room for interpretation (and the players can't metagame buy secretly reading about the campaign setting).

WHAT I AM GOING TO USE THIS PRODUCT FOR I love swords & Sorcery, but I suck as a GM when I'm trying to run adventures in premade worlds. I'm actually not going to use the default campaign setting, but rather localise the campaign in the Broken Isles setting. I am going to keep it low magic and develop a sandbox campaign, along with a few plot hooks. Then we'll drop the player characters into and see how long they last! I am also thinking of creating some adventures for my kids.

After spending three hours trying to get DunDjinni working on my Micrsoft Vista machine, I gave up. I followed all the advice in the forums and more, and still no luck. This is frustrating as I read some great reviews about this product and was keen to give it a go. I would advise if you have Vista, stay away from it until the developer brings out a truly Vista compatible version, or you have access to a MacOS or winXP machine.

Thoroughly disappointed.

I purchased this product because there are very few offerings for use with skirmishes around villages or small forts. The houses are also small which allows everything to stay on a normal sized table. The houses are roofed - there are no interiors. This is fine by me as interiors would make the skirmish map far too busy. Overall I am very satisifed with this product except for one small niggle. It appears that for some reason my printer has printed out the tiles at a slightly larger size. Therefore I recommend that you experiment by locking the aspect ratio and reducing the size to 95% to get true 25mm.

I only noticed this issue because I was combining this product with Skeleton key game's Wilderness tiles, and I place all the tiles on a Crystal Caste rubber grid map. Unfortunately the Village tiles don't fit on the map that well.

This product is also not up to the same cartography standard as Skeleton Key gamers, but it is colourful, functional and applicable to any genre. However don't let this discourage you buying this product, as it fills a welcome niche away from the 1001 tileset offerings about caves and dungeons...