so I made a mini "basic D&D"

taichara.smol.pub/ttrpg-lindwyrm

Last weekendish I decided hell with it, I'd try to smush a take on "Basic D&D" into one 16-page minizine format (1/8-letter pages).

After a lot of scribbling right onto a blank mockup minizine, and tweaking some things here and there, I got one. Spent the middle of the week typing and formatting, and here we are: Lindwyrm.

It's pretty loosey-goosey but I'm okie with that, lol.

Posted in: s/Tabletop-RPGs

😺 taichara

Mar 15 · 2 months ago · 👍 murdock, november, TKurtBond, dozens

2 Comments ↓

🚀 blah_blah_blah · Mar 20 at 11:01:

Just want to tell you your gemtext mockup ruleset looks really good. When rules get too big, when nobody can grok them all, and "homebrew" is just another name for winging it, D&D can get really mushy and unsatisfying. Why did something happen? The DM willed it. Or a player lawyered their way through it. At the other end of the spectrum are games like yours, which are perhaps too simple to have real legs, but nevertheless provide a good time at the table *because they simple enough to be well understood*, and each class provided its own unique experience. I view cantrips as wizard mush, for example. Half the fun of old D&D was keeping the useless low level wizard alive!

😺 taichara [OP] · Mar 20 at 12:41:

@blah_blah_blah I'm very familiar with older A/B/D&D editions, yes. Cantrips (for example) were never on the table for Lindwyrm to worry about, because it's based on Moldvay B/X via Old-School Essentials (borrowing the optional ascending AC from OSE) and a slurry of other O/BD&D and retroclone inspirations. The extended class additions are inspired by an article for basic Fantasy, for example.

The base classes are tweaked for space, personal preferences, and because there's no domain rules so the fighter gets more toys; the goal of only one sheet of paper required short example lists of critters, magic, etc.

But, being the tinkerer I am, I just may do an expansion someday.