We've all been there. Character creation time - what those young whippersnappers call "Session Zero." You have 1d4+2 players and only one corebook. What's a Referee to do?

Print a couple copies of this file. It's got everything you need to pass out to the players to create characters without quite so much jostling over who gets the darn rulebook. What you get here are the class writeups on more or less two pages each. You have some ideas for initial gear for each class, helping speed up character creation so you can get on with the Total Party Kill. The only thing you're really missing is spell lists... wait, what? Spells are their own printable handout? You don't say?

Mythmere knocked it outta the park with this set of PDFs. I fell in love with the printable spellbooks for B/X D&D in the New Big Dragon Games GM Screen, this gives us an equally useful resource for our White Box-flavored OSR games. Swords & Wizardry is the 1970s OSR Mothership, and this newest edition is absolutely smashing.

First - let me get my one gripe out of the way. This book needs bookmarks. Badly. I've created several characters now, and jumping back and forth between chapters would be a lot easier if it could be done with some bookmarks. Thankfully, this version (as opposed to the version Kickstarter backers have had for a couple of weeks) allows the purchaser to add their own, which I have.

OK, so, the good stuff. Basically everything else.

I loved d20 Modern. The basic idea of building the type of character you wanted based on their "schtick" rather than their job was so simple, yet innovative when the original d20 Modern dropped. It was immediately used by my gaming group for all kinds of things - we even tried to use it for MechWarrior, and that's where the creaky bits showed. The skill system with its ranks, half ranks, various bonuses from dozens of feats... Yeah. It was a bit frustrating to convert a small range - Green, Regular, Veteran, Elite - to a possible range up to 30 or so.

Everyday Heroes uses 5e as a core, which means it benefits from the bounded accuracy ethos, including the Proficiency mechanic that takes out the frustrations many people developed with unequal Base Attack Bonus progressions, ridiculously variable skill ranks, and tons of +2 bonuses from all sorts of sources. Now, it's much simpler, and if a feat does modify a skill or Proficiency, it tends to add Advantage rather than outright bonuses. Much simpler, and more streamlined. In addition, the game is explicitly designed for levels 1-10, and if the Escape from New York preview is any indication, 5th Level is solid enough for an action hero.

The sheer customizability of this game cannot be underemphasized. The authors give you a look under the hood for everything - you have the math to create balanced Backgrounds and Professions, NPCs of all sorts, and the descriptive text on weapons and armor to be able to create your own additions. The variety of licensed settings planned for Everyday Heroes should show how versatile the game is, I'm already tinkering with several possible campaigns using these rules.

All in all, I think I'll be using this rules set for quite a few games. For quite a bit more of my thoughts on Everyday Heroes, check out the third episode of the new Retro Arcana Podcast.

Back in The Day I was a huge fan of d20 Modern. I loved the idea of building heroes based on their abilities rather than on the traditional "class" roles of D&D. I felt the individual menus of schticks assigned to each ability score class were evocative of action films and fast-paced adventure. I loved almost everything about it- almost. Skill Points got fiddly. The feat trees were frustratingly complex in some cases, especially as they applied to ranged combat. The ranged combat rules had issues- holy crap was automatic fire a pain. Base Attack Bonus was also an issue- with "fast" heroes not quite as good at martial arts as one might thinkk... Fast forward a couple of decades and we have Everyday Heroes. Boom.

Everyday Heroes fixes my issues with d20 Modern, and does it with its' own flair. It's not a direct clone, with classes closer to roles than the ability score-based classes of the older game. That being said, each class has a very similar set of abilities unique to itself, and three subclasses to further differentiate characters. A dazzling array of team roles are possible with this structure, each fine-tuned by choices. With the 5e mechanics for skills and attack bonus some of the fiddly nature of the old d20 system is streamlined by almost 20 years of game development. Combat now runs smoother, character management is easier, and the game maintains or exceeds the flavor and excitement of the previous incarnation.

This Quickstart Guide is enough to get a feel for how Everyday Heroes runs, though some of my comments are based on the playtest draft of the full rules with all the intended classes and options. This is well worth a look and a download, and an afternoon's one-shot or two. If you like what you see, and I certainly did, the full version promises to be the spiritual successor to d20 Modern to handle all sorts of modern action film games, and perhaps more. With the licenses for modules based on things like Rambo, The Crow, and The Highlander you can get your action film on, sure, but they are also planning modules for things like Kong: Skull Island and Pacific Rim, showing that this game can do sci-fi mecha/kaiju action and pulp/horror as well. This game has the potential to be my go-to set of modern rules.

Wow. I have owned RuneQuest products for three decades, since the Avalon Hill boxed set. That game came with a mythic version of Europe I used- I just couldn't get the hang of Glorantha. I've read many books since, but nothing has immersed me in what the world of Glorantha would be quite like this book did. Seeing the armor and equipment was one thing, but reading about regional foods, currencies, trade, and even seeing examples of shelters and an idea of what I can do with my ill-gotten loot helped me switch gears from bog-standard D&D-style fantasy into the Mythical bronze-age fantasy of Glorantha. It's not just a gear guide, it really does help wrap your head around Glorantha. Well worth the purchase.

I am fairly new to DCC, but I've been a fan of XCrawl for a decade. I was a big fan of the Dream Park novels by Larry Niven and Steven Barnes, the idea of LARP on camera wasn't new to me, but the surprising history of the North American Empire put a great twist on the idea. The "games" for for keeps - full-on lethal with live steel and live goblins. Oh, and I think I am contractually obligated to say if you die, YOU DIE. So XCrawl is televised dungeon crawling by competitive teams through wholly manufactured dungeon environments. A person known as a Dungeon Judge, or DJ, creates the dungeon layout, recruits, enslaves or purchases monsters, stocks with treasure... And then the crawlers run through the course. Teams are isolated from one another, and they're scored on various criteria, like party members surviving, treasure secured, total time elapsed, etc. Vegas-style statisticians even keep track of the action for wagering purposes.
So, televised X-Crawling meets Dungeon Crawl Classics. DCC is a rules set designed to "feel" like the 1970s are said to have felt. Now, here's my take on this. I've read things various old timers have said about gaming in the early days. I've sat down with a lot of the first generation authors, and rolled dice with Frank Mentzer and Zeb Cook, and eagerly questioned Ernie Gygax. I believe the truth lies in the following analogy: Dungeon Crawl Classics is to gaming in the 70s as John Boorman's Excalubur is to the actual Arthurian period. That is, it's an idealized, distilled, and purified concentration of all the awesome that is then turned up to eleven and served up on a Molly Hatchet album cover. DCC is made to feel like the side of a van decorated with Vallejo artwork, and that makes it a thing of beauty. The way in which arcane magic works, the ability of Clerics to anger their deity, the crit and fumble tables... All of it. It makes for a great gaming experience that is just like all those stories of 70s gaming. So, put DCC and XCrawl together and what do you get? A Reese's Cup of awesome. You get the experience of a potentially super-lethal televised dungoeon run with all the bells and whistles that makes DCC unique from bog-standard D20 3.x mechanics. Things that set DCC apart are a perfect natural fit for XCrawl, such as the Deed Die, which allowes Warrior and Dwarf characters to declare special moves and attacks that are generally the stuff of Feats in 3.x. With the Deed Die, these characters can declare all sorts of showoff mayhem for the cameras. The variable nature of spellcasting means chances for high drama with the crowds. It's a natural fit.