CLASSIC FANTASY - A Return to the Dawn of Roleplaying

[Trifletraxor]

A Return to the Dawn of Roleplaying.

Return to the dawn of role playing with Classic Fantasy. Explore dungeons in your quest for treasure, fight terrifying monsters, and cast powerful spells of destruction. Classic Fantasy expands on the core Basic Roleplaying rule book with…

• 7 playable races: Human, Dwarf, Elf, Gnome, Halfling, Half-Elf, and Half-Orc, all with detailed racial abilities.
• 10 character class professions; Barbarian, Bard, Cleric, Druid, Fighter, Illusionist, Magic-user, Paladin, Ranger, and Thief, each with their own unique special abilities.
• Optional rules for multi-class professions. Be a Half-Elf Fighter/Magic-User/Thief.
• Let your actions dictate your Alignment, not your alignment dictate your actions using the BRP Allegiance system
• 150 all new Magic spells divided into spell categories; Cleric, Magic-User, Druid, and Illusionist, featuring such classics as Magic-Missile, Cone of Cold, and Color Spray, just to name a few
• Spot Rules for common dungeon situations such as listening at and bashing down doors, tunneling, securing a room, setting camp, and repairing damaged weapons and armor.

Classic Fantasy is a return to the dawn of roleplaying, when you would gather with your friends in your parent’s basement, bashing down doors, slaying hordes of orcs and goblins, and throwing yet another +1 sword in your bag of holding. In these early days of roleplaying, what eight giants are doing in a 10’x10’ room was less important than what their treasure rating was, and rescuing the beautiful princess isn’t something you did because it was morally right, but because of the 1000 gold piece reward. And finally, the adventures that didn’t have to be anymore detailed then “some giants are raiding the border settlements let’s kill em”, are the adventures you and your group still talk about to this day. So, rip open the Cheetos and pass out the Mountain Dew. It’s time to play some Classic Fantasy.

By Rodney Leary, aka threedeesix from the forum. 196 pages.

If you own Classic Fantasy - A Return to the Dawn of Roleplaying, please consider helping your fellow members by writing a review.

[threedeesix]

For those wishing a little additional information about Classic Fantasy, here is the Introduction in it's entirety.

INTRODUCTION

What is Classic Fantasy?

Classic Fantasy is a return to the dawn of roleplaying, when you would gather with your friends in your parent’s basement, bashing down doors, slaying hordes of orcs and goblins, and throwing yet another +1 sword in your bag of holding. In these early days of roleplaying, what eight giants are doing in a 10’x10’ room was less important than what their treasure rating was, and rescuing the beautiful princess isn’t something you did because it was morally right, but because of the 1000 gold piece reward. And finally, the adventures that didn’t have to be anymore detailed then “some giants are raiding the border settlements let’s kill em”, are the adventures you and your group still talk about to this day.

So, rip open the Cheetos and pass out the Mountain Dew. It’s time to play some Classic Fantasy.

Nothing in this work can truly be claimed to be original, nor would I ever profess this to be the case. Classic Fantasy is truly walking in the footsteps of many great games and their designers that have formed the inspiration of that which follows. This is an homage to the classic dungeon delve and the following games were inspirational in its design, Advanced Dungeons & Dragons 1st edition, The Fantasy Trip, Tunnels & Trolls, and of course, RuneQuest 1st and 2nd edition. The following authors helped to define the way I have spent my weekends for over thirty years, Bob Bledsaw, Warren James, Steve Jackson, Steve Perrin, Ken St. Andre, Ray Turney, and of course Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson. Without these games and their creators having come before, Classic Fantasy would be but a shadow of the game I hope it has become.

Classic Fantasy Vol. I: An Overview

• Introduction: You’re reading this now.
• Chapter 1: Characters: In this chapter you’ll find everything you need to create a player character, including race, alignment and character class.
• Chapter 2: Skills: Classic Fantasy makes some fundamental changes to existing Basic Roleplaying skills while adding a few new ones.
• Chapter 3: Spells: Here you will find new ‘magic’ spells for Basic Roleplaying, as well as a variant of the ‘magic’ powers to represent clerics.
• Chapter 4: Equipment: Weapons and equipment of a mundane nature will be found in this chapter.
• Chapter 5: Spot Rules: Several new Spot Rules have been added to capture the Classic Fantasy feel, including marching order, setting watch, and SOP (Standard Operating Procedure), just to name a few.

Classic Fantasy Vol. II: Game Mastery contains information on running Classic Fantasy adventures, including new spot rules, new monsters, treasure and magic items, several adventures, and The Realm, the bare bones of a default world for those with no established setting.

Some Useful Information

This section is for those new to Basic Roleplaying and experiencing it for the first time, and those familiar with Basic Roleplaying, that may want to have an idea what the deal is with some of the changes in terminology.

From the beginning, this product was imagined as a nostalgic return (for this writer anyway) to what used to make getting together with you friends on a Saturday night and sitting around a table for eight to ten hours, fun.

So if you’re a long time player of Basic Roleplaying, I hope you’ll understand some of the liberties I’ve taken with your game, and if you’re new to Basic Roleplaying, I hope you’ll find things new and exciting, but still familiar enough to feel like home.

For additional information on some of the classic terms of fantasy role playing see page XX.

The Realm: Classic Fantasy assumes you are using your own setting or an established setting produced by some other company. There are many fantastic settings out there, and the makers of Classic Fantasy would never expect you to leave the worlds you are already familiar with and have grown to love. With this in mind, Classic Fantasy will refer to the game world in the generic form of, The Realm. However, for those GMs who may not have an established setting, Classic Fantasy Vol. II: Game Mastery briefly describes The Realm as a default setting.

Charisma: In a standard Basic Roleplaying campaign, the attribute that reflects your attitude, demeanor, and appearance is appropriately called Appearance. Years ago, Chaosium called this characteristic Charisma, as did other games of the time, and many do to this day. In an attempt to capture that nostalgic feel of the earlier days of roleplaying, Classic Fantasy will replace Appearance with Charisma. Because the characteristic roll for Appearance is currently called Charisma, to avoid confusion, this is now, Reaction (CHA x5). When converting anything from another Basic Roleplaying product, simply replace Appearance with Charisma.

Alignment: Basic Roleplaying uses an innovative and unique system for handling a character’s moral stance called an Allegiance system, and in Classic Fantasy all characters are allied to a set of moral values. Other games have used a similar system to represent this called an Alignment system. This system was and is very rigid and defined how you were supposed to roleplay you character. The difference is that in Basic Roleplaying, how you roleplay your character determines your allegiance, not the other way around. Classic Fantasy will use the more intuitive and flexible allegiance system, but in the interest of nostalgia, will refer to it as Alignment.

Character Class: Under normal circumstances, Basic Roleplaying does not use a character class to define a character’s role, instead using professions. The designers of Classic Fantasy have instead chosen to utilize the more nostalgic term for two reasons. First, as previously mentioned, character class is a more fitting term for a game designed to pay homage to the classic dungeon delve, second all character classes in Classic Fantasy possess special abilities. So rather than change the established format and give professions unique abilities within a Classic Fantasy campaign, we thought it would be better to create a new term that can be used right alongside normal professions. On a final note, some players may be concerned that the term character class will mean they have lost the freedom to have their characters advance as they wish; rest assured that a character class has all the freedom of advancement given a profession, just with cool new abilities.

Levels: Some games have used a level system to track character progress. This is a very inflexible and restrictive system that Classic Fantasy is not attempting to recapture. Rather than having your thief get together with his buddies and then going out and hacking through a lair of goblins so that he can get better at climbing walls, Basic Roleplaying uses a system where if you want your thief to get better at climbing walls… go climb some walls. In Basic Roleplaying, if you want to improve a skill, use a skill.

I hope you enjoy your stay in The Realm.

[threedeesix]

Errata and changes

Because of a miss-communication between Chaosium and myself, some changes to Classic Fantasy that I had intended did not get included before it went to the printers. They will be included in the second volume, but until then they will be noted below.

Here is the Table of Contents that should have been included in the book. Sorry for the inconvenience. http://basicroleplaying.com/forum/do...do=file&id=303

Page 42: The Fighter's Weapon Proficiency is a hold over from a previous version. It should be that of the Barbarian, Paladin, and Ranger. Here it is in it's entirety.

"Weapon Proficiency: Fighters are naturals with every class of weapon, possessing an intuitive understanding of their use. They gain a +10% Attack bonus with all attacks, natural or otherwise. In addition, combat skills improve at a rate of 1D8 points per skill increase instead of the normal 1D6."

Page 45: The following special ability should be added to the Magic-User list. Additional playtesting has showed that because of the fact that a magic-user has to build up all his spells with skill points in addition to purchasing other skills as well, it was almost impossible for him to be good at anything. This applies to the Illusionist special ability list on page 43 as well.

"Lore Proficiency: Before magic-users even learn their first spell, they must study numerous mundane texts about the world around them; because of this they receive a +10% bonus to all Knowledge (lore) skills. This includes Academic Lore, Blasphemous Lore, Earth Lore, Folklore, Poison Lore, Religious Lore, Spell Lore and Wilderness Lore. These skills may all exceed the starting skill maximum. In addition, lore skills improve at a rate of 1D8 points per skill increase instead of the normal 1D6"

Page 50: The paladin write-up was missing a page reference in the section on alignment. The second sentence was inadvertently deleted and should have read "See Cleric on page 29 for details on maintaining your alignment".

Page 55: Under Becoming a Paladin, the very last sentence should read "A character that becomes a paladin in play may retain his or her prior Status level, or raise it to 55 if lower".

Page 56: The Thieves special ability Subterfuge, should have been Subterfuge Proficiency, and like all proficiencies it should have added a +10% bonus to the noted skills.

Page 58: The skill Pick Pockets should be added to the list of optional Thief skills.

Page 58: The skill Thieves Cant should be moved to optional, and Spot should instead be one of the mandatory core skills.

Page 163: Chapter 4: Equipment: I inadvertently left helmets off the Armor Table and Chaosium inadvertently left the Missile Weapon Table out of the book completely. They have been uploaded to the Downloads area. Here is a direct link. http://basicroleplaying.com/forum/do...do=file&id=301

[threedeesix]

Freebies and New Stuff

For those looking for a sample of the newly revised version of Classic Fantasy, I suggest downloading the following...

Classic Fantasy (Revised) Sample: http://basicroleplaying.com/forum/do...do=file&id=304

Character Sheet (Original): The Classic Fantasy Character Sheet can be downloaded from the Chaosium website at the following link. You will have to sign-in to access it.
There have been changes to it from the one included in the book, in addition to being at a much higher resolution.
http://catalog.chaosium.com/fdm_file...hp?file_id=224

The above is the original Character Sheet. What follows is the new Character Sheet as found in the revised version of Classic Fantasy.

Revised Character Sheet: http://basicroleplaying.com/forum/do...do=file&id=305

[b-dog]

A very good outline for how to do dungeon delving with a skill based system would be GURPS Dungeon Fantasy 2 Dungeons (the other GURPS DF books are useful too).

I also recommend the Lejendary Adventure books which were written by Gary Gygax. The rules system is absolutely terrible but there are tons of great ideas for monsters and so forth. Anyway, good luck with the second book.

[threedeesix]

A very good outline for how to do dungeon delving with a skill based system would be GURPS Dungeon Fantasy 2 Dungeons (the other GURPS DF books are useful too).

I also recommend the Lejendary Adventure books which were written by Gary Gygax. The rules system is absolutely terrible but there are tons of great ideas for monsters and so forth. Anyway, good luck with the second book.

I own all the GURPS Dungeon Fantasy line. I think its very well put together and consider it a worthy addition to my GURPS collection. I also own all of the Lejendary Adventure products as well, with all of the rule books signed by the late, great Gary Gygax.

Rod

[Thrallking]

Bought this just the other day, I like it!! Very good job keeping the old school flavor with the BRP rules!! Trying to talk the kids inot a campaign now. I know I will buy the second book too when its available. Keep up the excellent work.

[threedeesix]

Bought this just the other day, I like it!! Very good job keeping the old school flavor with the BRP rules!! Trying to talk the kids inot a campaign now. I know I will buy the second book too when its available. Keep up the excellent work.

Thanks for the encouragement.

[b-dog]

I own all the GURPS Dungeon Fantasy line. I think its very well put together and consider it a worthy addition to my GURPS collection. I also own all of the Lejendary Adventure products as well, with all of the rule books signed by the late, great Gary Gygax.

Rod

Great! I have all of the GURPS DF books too. I will say that I feel you have better captured the old school feel of AD&D than the GURPS books have. As far as the Lejendary Adventures go, I have quite a few books of them. I was very interested in the Utiss (the dinosaurmen) but there was never too much info. I would say though that there sure are a lot of cool monsters in Lejendary Adventures that would fit in well with Classic Fantasy. Stormbringer is one game that I really liked but I don't know how it could be incorporated into Classic Fantasy. Anyway, I can't wait until the next book.

[b-dog]

One thing I think you should include with the Classic fantasy book is to have a lot of mythical creatures, items and other noteable heroes. For instance having lillatu (children of Lillith), items like Excalibur and maybe some demigods or immortal heroes like Chiron (the centaur sage from Greek myth). If there is more connection to myth then you can add a lot of other monsters from other source books. For instance you can many different types of vampires from different myths so that players don't know immediately how to kill them. This really adds mystery and excitement to the game. There are many different types of nymphs and some like the lampades who serve Hecate who have torches that make mortals go mad. Just my 2 cents...