Basic Fantasy RPG | Review and Page-Through

[@ChrisGonnerman]

Hey, thanks for the kind words! One comment so far, having only watched part of the video... Amazon doesn't just distribute the books, they manufacture them through the KDP publishing system. It used to be CreateSpace, but they absorbed that subsidiary a year or so ago. We also publish books on Lulu.com, where they manufacture them for us and unlike Amazon, they make hardbacks as well. Finally, we publish on DriveThruRPG, where again they manufacture the books for us. Issues with the editing or our problem, but issues with the manufacturer and shipping are beyond our control.

[@Thegaminggang]

Thanks for clearing up the production and distribution detail Chris! And thanks for leading such a great community! ~ Jeff

[@steeler8643.]

Hi Chris, I have never played RPG's before and I want to try it out with my kids (10 and 15 years old). I've been reading the PDF's and I like what I'm reading but I would like to buy the actual books but I don't want to buy any that I don't need to get going our 1st adventure. Can you recommend the best combination of books to purchase for our 1st adventure? Thank you

[@ChrisGonnerman]

@@steeler8643. Besides the Core Rules, I'd suggest BF1 Morgansfort and JN1 The Chaotic Caves. Those two multimodules can easily be combined giving your players two different home base areas and five different distinct dungeon adventure areas. But if you have never run an old school game before, you may be unprepared for how swiftly such a game can kill off your player characters. I would suggest you join us on the Forum and post the same basic question there, where a number of other people will certainly jump in with useful advice.

[@anthonybernardo2214]

@@steeler8643. While I am clearly not Chris, I would suggest the adventure anthologies. Each one has a ton of adventures with different flavor and for different levels. I have run a few with friends of mine who never played rpg's before and they worked great.

[@finger3181]

I'm with Chris. Morgansfort to start off, then expand into the Chaotic Caves. You can always drop in some low level adventures from the Adventure Anthology series along the way

[@toddrlyons]

Always remember: it's a framework, a starting point, user default settings. Even the author doesn't play Core version Rules As Written (if you're curious, download 'The Glain Companion' from the Showcase page to play it his way). Anyway -- add what you want, throw out what you will, change what you don't like. Spells too complex? Instead of the full descriptions, just give your players a list. In play, spells do whatever the GM says they do. One of the other significant differences of real Old School gaming is: Rulings > Rules. Thanks for the thorough review. I bought a hardcover of the core rules and all the available supplements in softcover and I absolutely love it. What a deal. I also agree it's a great treat to buy extra copies of the Core book and gift them to your group. A wonderful and memorable way to engage players.

[@paulofrota3958]

BFRPG is one of the best things that ever fell in my hands. I loved reading it, loved the innocence, style, attitude. It's great and if any viewers are still in doubt, don't be. Download it for free, try it, then buy it... it's worth much more than the $5 it costs

[@Thegaminggang]

I completely agree! ~ Jeff

[@sunset-inn]

I can't find any players though here in a small Scottish town. Everyone plays 5E, Pathfinder or warhammer 40k war gaming stuff....

[@Thegaminggang]

You might need to take the search online although I would think those playing 5E or Pathfinder wouldn't be too difficult to convince to give Basic Fantasy a try. ~ Jeff

[@agrayday7816]

low cost, easy and fun system to run. + large community that supports it. Thank you Jeff!

[@Thegaminggang]

It's a great OSR system and a great deal too! ~ Jeff

[@Bren71319]

It’s definitely a retro-clone... Feels identical to BECMI in play... I never really played the old “BX” systems, so I can’t compare those... But when I fired this game up, I felt like I had “come home” back to 1989 with my BECMI basic set... I love this game...

[@sketchingjohn1678]

I've been running BFRPG for years and love it. Especially if you play over the internet, it's a great lingua franca for old school D&D. Plus, it is very easy to adjust the rules to your liking without breaking everything. Thanks for the nice review.

[@Thegaminggang]

Couldn't agree more!

[@edwardromero3580]

When I was asked to run some old-school D&D with friends, I picked up a copy of this system as the base for my home brew campaign. It's cheap enough that I could buy several copies and distribute them to the group. It's a great system. I bought the hardcover version for myself.

[@boriscat1999]

I've ran a few sessions and BFRPG worked out great. I was able to bring both people used to Pathfinder and those who haven't played since AD&D 1e together and everyone caught on very quickly. It's an intuitive OSR without being a clone of anything in particular.

[@gohazard4284]

Tbh this has been the best review about a pen and paper rpg I have seen, well done!

[@joshjames582]

I love that anyone who wants to run this game can get the pdf for free from the official website, Basicfantasy.org, but if you want a paperback copy you can get one from Amazon for like five bucks, and the core book is an entire system. It's playable for five bucks at most. If that's not a sales pitch for an RPG system in 2021 then I don't know what is.

[@SomeGuyHowGoesIt]

Especially with the prices of core DnD 5e books. Like, Jesus...

[@kevinthorpe8561]

Ya gone a made me buy it

[@Thegaminggang]

Hahaha! At least you're not stuck emptying your wallet! ~ Jeff

[@VAHelix]

I just bought all my 5e players the BF book for the holiday. Love the book and starting a new game using BF soon!!

[@Thegaminggang]

Excellent! I hope you all have a blast!

[@MSaxton1]

Great video. I picked up a BFRPG book a while back and really liked it. I generally play AD&D or C&C but any of this stuff will work great with them. I am going to have to pickup some more books.

[@Thegaminggang]

Good stuff!

[@willburton6622]

Thanks Jeff - looks like a great syatem. Just ordered the whole lot on Amazon!

[@Thegaminggang]

Very cool! Not a bad deal either for around $70.00US! ~ Jeff

[@willburton6622]

@@Thegaminggang I paid $65 CDN for 12 books total, which is a smoking deal - especially with Prime free shipping!

[@garyclarkson5246]

I picked this up hoping to get my kids to try some RPG

[@MastertheGamerpg]

I have been considering ordering all of the Basic Fantasy books on Amazon because of the pricing. Honestly a lot of things you mention here sound good to me. I hate alignment myself. I also am not a fan of THAC0 at all.

[@Thegaminggang]

There are a dozen Basic Fantasy books available through amazon and all together they total around $50.00. That's a lot of gaming for around the cost of most RPG individual corebooks. ~ Jeff

[@anthonybernardo2214]

I know you run a BECMI game on your channel(which I always try to watch) but if you ever ran a BFRPG game I would definitely tune in as well.

[@finger3181]

I got the paperback with Morgansfort from Amazon. I was so impressed, I bought everything available, plus the hardcover from Lulu (which was of a very good quality)

[@midnightgreen8319]

@@finger3181 Morgansfort is absolutely wonderful. So much gaming for under 4 bucks

[@joshjames582]

There's a concise three or four page Ref Screen in the free downloads section at the website, by the way, and also a Quick Start for players. Finding stuff in the rule book is indeed GM facing and old school but at the table there are easy, free resources to solve some of your specific gripes.

[@Thegaminggang]

Well it scored a ten out of ten so I wouldn't consider my comments to be gripes. :D ~ Jeff

[@chadband9860]

Thanks for the review!

[@Thegaminggang]

Thanks for watching!

[@finger3181]

It you're looking to get into the OSR, this is the perfect introduction. Cheap, easy to learn/run, easy to house rule and a lot of fun. All for 5 bucks. The adventures are only a couple of bucks in print, and they're really good. Morgansfort is a great starter module.

[@Thegaminggang]

You really can't beat free if anyone is on the fence. ~ Jeff

[@finger3181]

Very true. Many OSR rules are free on pdf, but with BFRPG having all the adventures for free too, it's a huge plus.

[@lostworldcomics]

Love this game. I have a ton of old D&D and new osr books but I keep coming back to this game. Simple, good, and easy to run.

[@Thegaminggang]

Couldn't agree more!

[@zonegamma8197]

I went for the hardcover, very nice game

[@blamp666]

I am a new dm dad and solo player, just got into this a year ago with 5e... been great and got to know/play solo bfrpg, symbaroum and forbidden lands. So got in pretty deep and all this to say i keep coming back to bfrpg.

[@paulofrota3958]

I'd love to see an ICRPG review :D I believe it would match much of what you said here. Spells are one or two lines long - and because of how the system works, that's all that we need.

[@Thegaminggang]

I always let people know if they'd like to see me review something, reach out to that publisher and let them know about The Gaming Gang. Since I don't ask for funding from viewers/visitors i can't just go out an purchase items for review. ~ Jeff

[@paulofrota3958]

@@Thegaminggang Good to know. I'll talk to the community and see what we can do (yep, it's THAT kind of open/helpful community)

[@lilyblossom3409]

Nice review! Definitely convinced me to give it a try

[@Thegaminggang]

Please do!

[@xenofett7008]

This might be the ticket! I've been looking for a D&D alternative. Pathfinder seems too complex and Index Card RPG I'm not totally sold on yet. This might be a happy balance.

[@Thegaminggang]

Basic Fantasy has a new edition that just recently came out too. I'd say another TTRPG with a classic take which also has a more modern mechanical approach is Castles & Crusades. You can score the Players Handbook (which has all the rules) for free too. ~ Jeff

[@coragibson8062]

OMG I love this!!!!

[@MarkMcMillen2112]

It's interesting how different people play the game differently. I grew up with THAC0, so I never questioned it's validity and to this day ascending AC just seems unnecessary. When it comes to alignment, I pretty much insist that players role play their characters consistent with their alignment. LG characters better not be killing other people for no good reason and CE players shouldn't be offering their help just for the good of the group. I expect characters of vastly different alignments to clash.

[@kevinerose]

I don't like alignment either. It just doesn't make sense for RPG. Any PC delving into the caves or wilderness killing and stealing from random people is not going to be Lawful Good. I'd say most adventurers would be Chaotic Neutral. They may not be evil but definitely are not good. Also their actions tend to be more random or chaotic than structured and lawful. Why does the Paladin go into a cave to kill a family of peace loving Kobolds having dinner late in the evening? Another thing I'd like to see them get rid of is experience points. The DM should have full control of when the PCs level up. PCs should level in stages as they reach certain milestones. I remember back in the old days, they encouraged you to build a castle and attract minions and townspeople to your settlement. I think it would be neat to have the ultimate goal for the PC to establish a settlement, have land cleared, then design and build their castle, tower, temple, etc.

[@Thegaminggang]

I don't mind the XPs so much but there should always be a way to streamline the process; a sum total for successfully resolving an encounter (with or without combat) rather than sitting there calculating every last HD of all the creatures and each gold piece. I'm just not a fan of leveling players up by GM fiat though. ~Jeff

[@consecrated2718]

I’m curious. How often do you get to play games versus how often you read through the books and review them? I struggle having the time to even scrounge 1 campaign of WFRP session consistently and I just was gifted D&D 3.0 books too with the Forgotten Realms campaign setting book. It’s overwhelming!

[@Thegaminggang]

Most nights I read RPG books before going to sleep. I tend to roll up characters and run through a combat encounter or two to get a feel for mechanics before doing a review of something which features something mechanically new. ~ Jeff

[@garyclarkson5246]

What do you think of the DM keeping track of alignment specific decision? For the purpose of affecting specifically clerics and paladins? Paladins are supplement on their website.

[@Thegaminggang]

That's completely fine; if a class carries alignment type requirements, by all means use them for that player character or NPC. :) ~ Jeff

[@anthonybernardo2214]

Maybe someone can explain this to me. I have been playing RPG's for a while now. I have run games with OSE and BFRPG. I also have S&W along with rulebooks from 2nd,3rd, and 5th edition. Based on that, I really don't see what so many people have said, which is that BFRPG is based heavily on 3rd edition. Yes, I see d20 mechanics, but nothing so far off of B/X. What am I missing? Is it the AAC? The attack bonuses? I ask because S&W and OSE both have those options but are never linked with 3rd edition. It seems like most of the mechanics are very similar to B/X. if someone could explain, that would be a big help. Thank you kindly.

[@estelaplateada4]

I think this claim is due to the OGL version used for BFRPG, right?

[@Thegaminggang]

That's pretty much what I understood. ~ Jeff

[@ChrisGonnerman]

The claim that the game is based on the d20 3.5 SRD for legal reasons is correct. But the claim made by many reviewers that the game uses "d20 mechanics" isn't really accurate; other than ascending AC and attack bonus replacing descending AC and combat tables or THAC0, BFRPG uses no proper "d20 mechanics" at all. Thief abilities are percentile rolls, doors are opened with d6's, and there are no DC values anywhere. But I'm so used to this claim that I rarely challenge it anymore.

[@Thegaminggang]

I mentioned d20 simply because most people who are going to watch this review probably aren't going to be old school grognards but people a lot newer to Fantasy RPGs so that term should give them a quick understanding. A know a lot of gamers get scared off by older D&D with its descending AC and THAC0. Plus, as someone who reviews a lot of RPGs (and board games) and isn't firmly in any camp, I provide an overall feel as opposed to breaking down all the mechanics. :D ~Jeff

[@ChrisGonnerman]

@@Thegaminggang I see your point. I just never had anybody explain it to me before.

[@GenuineMattyC]

What is an SRD?

[@Thegaminggang]

A System Reference Document. It's essentially the core mechanics and rules of a roleplaying game without the extra fluff or setting background. ~ Jeff

[@MrRourk]

I prefer Iron Falcon but this works well.