Mail Room: Basic Fantasy Collection (and the d4s, for fun)

All these books (minus the d4 sets) for about $30? All of them under five bucks each?

Super sweet deal.

606 pages of adventure that will last us months is an incredible value. Mind you, only about 100 pages of this are character creation material, 154 are monsters, so the remaining 400 or-so pages are mostly all adventures.

Do I care that it is not D&D 5 or Pathfinder?

Not in the least.

Why?

Unlike videogames, pen-and-paper roleplaying games never become obsolete. New games do not necessarily mean better. This is a modernized version of a classic game, and it takes a special set of skills to do well and survive in an old-school game. You can't sit back on a comfortable character build that you are used to or copied from a forum post, and you have little rules protection for your character at all. The strict limits are what makes this fun, because you need to rely on your wits rather than a bonus the rules gives you for a build.

This is old-school. You need to listen, be clever, think, and manage your resources carefully. You need to know your limits. You need to constantly struggle against bad luck. You need to pay attention to room descriptions. You need to use your imagination. You need that diabolical streak in you of how you are going to separate monster from treasure in the easiest way possible.

There are no 'search skills' or 'passive search rolls.' You need to say where your character looks, be specific, and just like that, the referee lets you know what you find - no roll needed. Of course, if you neglect to say 'I look under the drawer for anything stuck to the bottom' you may miss something important, but that is up to your cleverness to say and not your dice to decide.

There are no 'healing surges' and the to-hit modifiers are simple. +2 if attacking from behind (does not combine with thief sneak attack). Two range modifiers, +1 for short range and -2 for long. A -1 to -4 if the target has cover. A +2 to-hit and a -2 AC for a charge. A parting-shot (attack of opportunity like strike) for fleeing enemies at a +2 to-hit. And that's about it for how combat works.

Since this is Basic Fantasy, XP are given for story awards and monsters, so the reward system modern players are used to is in place. There is also an option for XP for GP as an optional rule so you can quicken advancement and get some of the old-school feeling back. That 500 GP ruby surrounded by lizard men? Yeah, that's my next level sitting there. Let's go for it.

I love the old school games. I don't need expensive books (nor do my players), nor do I need computer programs to create characters.

I am probably going to stitch all these together in a large shared world somehow and just play them all together like some huge old-school fantasy sandbox RPG. Morgansfort has a very nice overview map of a north fjords type area, and the rest can fit in wherever I want it to.

Overall, a great box full of fun today, and games we cannot wait to dive into.