Showing posts with label Dark Fantasy Basic. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Dark Fantasy Basic. Show all posts

Saturday, February 24, 2018

Dark Fantasy Basic Review — New School Meets Old School. Or Vice-versa.

One of the things I dislike about the OSR movement is the repetition of OD&D and B/X clones, simply republished with minimal house rules (sometimes not even that). Another thing I dislike is the tendency toward simpler characters with no special powers in the assertion that is more "old school" and how the game should be played. Yet the rapid proliferation of character classes in both official magazines and fanzines in the early days argues to the contrary.

Dark Fantasy Basic from Eric Diaz isn't just a rehash of OD&D or B/X, but takes an old school framework and uses concepts from more modern incarnations of the game, particularly 5th edition, but beyond that, new ideas. The basics are the same, character classes, traditional abilities scores (using the B/X scale for bonuses) but most of the details are quite different, and it allows a good deal of character customization without the bloat or paperwork of 3e.