Morgansfort, A Campaign Setting for Basic Fantasy RPG

Morgansfort: The Western Lands Campaign is a setting for the Basic Fantasy Role Playing System. It contains a number of nods to both "The Keep On The Borderlands" and "The Known World" from Cook's Expert Set.
Best of all, you can download it for FREE.
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Time Stamps ##
00:22 About the Book
02:14 The Setting
07:21 The Adventures
11:45 Book Design
15:15 Conclusion

[@Joshuazx]

How to make a your own game / system based on D&D: 1. Reference the open license 2. Don't make a profit 3. Change things slightly 4. crowd-source assets and resources 10/10 product!

[@DMTalesTTRPG]

I used to run Linux as my primary OS for a very long time. So BFRPG’s open source nature holds an appeal for me.

[@Joshuazx]

@@DMTalesTTRPG Open source stuff is fabulous

[@DMTalesTTRPG]

It’s how I learned.

[@Bogrin]

I think I’m going to use this as the bones for a solo campaign I’ve been wanting to do!

[@DMTalesTTRPG]

Let me know how it goes!

[@kentuckyrex]

Mr Gonnerman also has his Glain Companion in the showcase section on the website. He stresses these are his PERSONAL group's materials and therefore not "official", but it does include the druids and other classes and a few extra races. It's excellent just as an extra resource.

[@DMTalesTTRPG]

Yup. The project as a whole is managed very well as an open source concept.

[@Aaron-mj9ie]

Morgansfort is the core of my personal campaign setting. I have scattered other various modules around it's map, but the most experience I've had running it is within the M1 module. My players seemed to love that olde fort island, they probably knew it more than any other dungeon I've ever run. They had names for every area in that thing.

[@DMTalesTTRPG]

It really is a ton of fun.

[@mlo51987]

I bought the book I can’t wait to run it for the first time. BFRPG looks really fun

[@DMTalesTTRPG]

Been running a BFRPG campaign for almost three years, it’s a blast.

[@saigancat]

Great review, and well-spoken. I've been DM'ing most of my life and Morgansfort is the first module that I've had players actually complete (27 deaths across 25 open table sessions... I collect dead character sheets now). The Old Island Fortress is a modern classic and the Nameless Dungeon is infamous in my group (wandering monsters caused a nasty encounter that left the party fleeing down a hole, causing them to become lost in the lower levels for several sessions (only 3 of the 8 made it back out). The final dungeon is certainly the most polished, least Gygaxian and had an epic battle with the Zombraire Necromancer. I would recommend starting a new party off with Tomb of the Serpent Kings (worth checking out if you haven't already).

[@DMTalesTTRPG]

I have a lot of the BFRPG modules, but not that one, THANKS!

[@MemphiStig]

The party meets a kid somewhere who tells them his secret: "I see dead pc's. All the time. They're everywhere."

[@BolofromAvlis]

I'm truly a little amazed at how good many of these BFRP adventures are. Looking over Morgansfort, I am really wanting to run it with Castles and Crusades, and have it be the bones of a new campaign. I love it, the feel of it, the general tone, and the idea of including tick boxes along with monster stat blocks is simply brilliant. I can't believe no one else has used that idea.

[@DMTalesTTRPG]

They are a VERY good emulation of old modules, with some nice innovations. Chris has said Battletech sheets served as some of the inspiration for Gonnerman Boxes. And they are, indeed, brilliant.

[@QuickSaveF5]

Happy playing. Look forward to more videos.

[@DMTalesTTRPG]

Happy playing!

[@EmptyKingdoms]

Excellent channel, didn't know you before. Very glad I've found you. I'm running my own ruleset, a 15-pages extreme simplification of the OSR feel in general, mostly based on LL, OSRIC, DCC, LotFP, and BFRPG, with a custom magic/spell system _not_ based on spell lists, but on _nouns_ and _verbs_ that combine to form formulae, which create the casting (difficulty) check, and the effects, etc. Cheers from Brazil.

[@DMTalesTTRPG]

Sounds fun. Thanks for sharing!

[@icantafford]

That magic system piques my interest greatly

[@robbabcock_]

Nice summary. Morgansfort is pretty basic, just a skeleton, but it does provide a good framework for a DM to build and expand upon. My group has had a good time exploring it.🗡🏹⚔🧙🧝

[@DMTalesTTRPG]

Yah, it’s a nice skeleton to build from.

[@paavohirn3728]

Thanks for the informative review! Very pleasant to watch as usual. Gotta check this out and take another deeper look at the system as well.

[@DMTalesTTRPG]

I am a big fan of this system.

[@gstaff1234]

Appreciate your take and insights. Hope all goes well with you. 😊

[@DMTalesTTRPG]

Thank you very much, to you as well!

[@mykediemart]

Pdfs are nice. I upscale the maps and print them so they are about 1inch squares, multi page and you have to tape them together but it served it purpose the few times i have dome it.

[@DMTalesTTRPG]

Cool. I’ve not run an in person game, but I have remade a couple of maps in dungeon draft and that’s been fun. I will probably do some of the Morgansfort stuff at some point.

[@JeffsGameBox]

Thanks for the link. Love this idea.

[@DMTalesTTRPG]

Enjoy.

[@user-ci1wg5gh2t]

Great stuff!

[@DMTalesTTRPG]

Thanks

[@carlwoods4564]

Great review. Thanks.

[@DMTalesTTRPG]

Thanks for watching.

[@MrBubbydoo]

Take a look at Tales From the Laughing Dragon my favorite BFRBG adventure. Would like you to do a review of that

[@DMTalesTTRPG]

Oh it’s on the list.

[@DustinDustin00]

Check box ticking in 1st ed AD&D with Ancient Red Dragon: 88 boxes... I suppose that's gonna work. 5th ed with 546 boxes: lulz! (the groups-of-5 spacing is going to be critical)

[@DMTalesTTRPG]

5e just gets ridiculous with hit points.

[@matthewconstantine5015]

Hmm. Might need to grab this to port over into my Dungeon Crawl Classics game.

[@DMTalesTTRPG]

It would be easy to do, and it’s a terrific start campaign with a lot of things to build from.

[@jbloodwo]

I hope it does well. And I am hoping to get a group of people from my apartment complex together on he 25th and I am planning on running portal under the stars but in Basic fantasy.

[@MrSteveK1138]

Morgansfort...homage to Morgan Ironwolf?

[@DMTalesTTRPG]

You know… I do not know.

[@shockerck4465]

That's what I always thought. Only way to know is to ask the creator.

[@ChrisGonnerman]

@@shockerck4465 You rang? Answer: A little bit. Halden Rathwynn (the current baron) was a character of mine "back in the day" who I repurposed for this adventure; I needed a name for his father, and well, there you go.

[@VMSelvaggio]

I think people who quibble over whether there are things like slavery in your world are being ignorant of history, and need to be aware that you are providing an anachronistic simulation of an ancient world, where these offensive and atrocious things existed. One job of the Game Master is to provide a place for the characters to be heroic. If there is nothing that offends the character's (not the player's) moral compass, then how are they supposed to adhere to a set of prescribed principles? -- and act according to those bonds?

[@DMTalesTTRPG]

Pretty much the whole concept of a fantasy role playing game is an anachronistic fictional mash up. If there’s things that break the enjoyment of the fiction for the table, then I don’t include it. There’s even some concepts in actual history that I don’t want to deal with as a GM because it’s not fun for me-so I don’t include them. Your table may be different from mine. And that’s fine. People may be rather cognizant of history, and want to dump things because it wouldn’t be fun for them and that’s also fine.

[@user-pg3pe4gx4p]

You get what you pay for. Some real contradictions and illogical parts of this dungeon. Like a giant scorpion in a locked room. How did it get there? How is it still alive?

[@DMTalesTTRPG]

It’s old school mentality fun house dungeon, by design. Things are obstacles to navigate, not necessarily parts of a larger story. Like it or not is fine. The fact that it’s open source has nothing to do with its actual value.

[@Alex-cq1zr]

It seems like including slavery in settings is usually viewed as bad cause it's easy to fall into problematic stuff with it. Plus, some people really don't want such stuff in their games. So... such stuff usually needs content warnings and a lot of care if you are going to represent it. Like, Hadozees caused an uproar due to a lot of problematic themes combining interlapping... Like, i wouldn't include Mongrelfolk in a game i would run, cause... they are basically ultra problematic. Mongrel is used as a racial slur against mixed race people. Combine that with "they can breed with anyone and are deformed and such" and it's huge yikes. I probably wouldn't have noticed this connection if LegalKimchi didn't point it out in his video about playing dnd and being mixed race. So yeah, such stuff can be hard to do well unless you are researching the topic a lot to avoid problematic stuff. Although, of course, most people won't care much as long as your setting doesn't get near or dtraight into glorifying slavery

[@DMTalesTTRPG]

I’m not sure what the context of the comment is in relationship to the video-though I made it a while back so I could not be remembering something in it. Do I highlight any of these things as central to the setting? I’m vaguely aware of the Hodozee dust up WOTC inflicted on itself, but I was already not paying attention to 5e at that point so I’ve got limited context-only that they ticked off so many people they had to do a reprint. Where do mongrelfolk come from? As for slavery. If its presence in a setting is not central to the concept and is limited to, “the people who do this suck, if you encounter them you stop them.” Then I don’t find it to be a red flag. At all my tables, though, I list slavery as one of the things I won’t highlight, along with sexual assault. Just. No. There IS a series of classic adventures about taking down a ring of slave traders and liberating their captives. Were I ever to do an adventure where slavery was a concept that would be the idea-there is something cathartic about burning a corrupt and dehumanizing system to the ground in a fantasy setting. Content warnings aren’t going to be included in Basic Fantasy modules any time soon, though. Mostly because the stuff is available for free, and GMs can literally download the word processing file and scrub anything they want to fit the needs of their table. Its one of the genius features of an open-source project, if I find something I find problematic (and I have found things I find problematic, see my review of Monkey Isle), I can literally rewrite those portions to better fit the game I’m running.

[@Alex-cq1zr]

@@DMTalesTTRPG ah, there is a mention of how slavery is a thing in the setting, but, if i understood correctly, not presented positively. Mongrelfolk come from Curse of Strahd... just like some different offensive racial thing. I think wotc re-released Curse of Strahd for 5e after criticism, but kinda half-assed it only cut out the latter thing, keeping Mongrelfolk. Content Warnings would certainly help, although free content does make it less of a problem. Still would be nice, cause reading through stuff takes time and such stuff can be too big to easily cut and such. Hadozee... while not very terrible at a brief glance, become quite bad after you hear the context why people dislike the. Slave race, which liked slavery? Depicted as monkeys (racists depicted black people as monkeys in the past iirc)... and given a bonus to Constitution. Kinda just a bunch of things which become very bad once you learn bad irl association of it (and slave race which liked slavery is kinda yikes... although maybe i am misremembering something too at this point) I am thinking about trying out Basic Fantasy RPG and overall retroclone stuff... it's interesting, although also has stuff i would cut (make an ancestry system more similar to how 5e handles ancestries maybe idk).

[@DMTalesTTRPG]

I think there’s a bit of a different expectation about the size of content. We’re talking maybe three (?) references in the book…maybe in a couple of paragraphs. Honestly, I re-watched my review, I highlighted the slavery aspect BECAUSE of the Spelljammer kerfaffle…from what I can remember now. But, yah, content warnings aren’t coming to BFRPG any time soon. Since the adventures are GM facing, free, and short the GMs are expected to read stuff and determine what’s good at their table.

[@DMTalesTTRPG]

And, it should be noted. BFRPG isn’t a company that developers things in private. Their entire development process is done in the open, on the project forums. Stuff that’s way far out of bounds tends to get weeded out in the process.

[@DMTalesTTRPG]

Sure, and there’s Chromatic Dungeons which has a form of heritage/culture split for retro-clones already there to be used! I like BFRPG better, but Chromatic Dungeons is very good.

[@morecringe89]

lol I knew "safe space" will hunt games that are not real because people can't see the difference between what is real and what is a game. Parents failed terribly lol

[@DMTalesTTRPG]

Umm. Huh?

[@dominikg2743]

I think it's about topic of slavery

[@DiscoBarbarian]

I have this and have wanted to run, thanks for the review.

[@DMTalesTTRPG]

Thanks! Have fun!