Recently purchased (or received) a number of RPGs and have downloaded a number of free ones (this is about open gaming, after all), so wanted to do some quick reviews on each. Not going into any depth on any one of them, but wanted to at least note what my initial impressions were. I should note that all games, where appropriate, were purchased with my own money (0r given as a holiday gift by friends/family) and no publisher is buttering the bread, as it were.

For the most part, I look at games in my favorite genre (fantasy) and I pick things up so I can get insight into what’s out there, either for ideas or inspiration, to see something I’ve been meaning to look at, or simply to support our industry. I’d talk about looking at the competition, but I’m not planning on making money at this (at least not initially), so that’s not foremost on my mind. Still, it’s good to know what’s out there–like when I realized that d20’s base mechanics were the same as mine and I’d been using them for years and now there was no chance I could stick with it in its current form.

Savage Worlds Fantasy Companion

This was one of the books I wanted since I wanted to see, with more detail, how a fantasy setting played out in Savage Worlds. I’ve had the Savage Worlds book for a while (mostly to support Deadlands), but I’ve always kind of liked the system. The book was a lot smaller than I intended, but overall quality and artwork was good. It’s not especially detailed and doesn’t spend a lot of time with a setting (implicit or otherwise). It gets down to the “here’s the fantasy tropes you’ll need to deal with” and gives you a good idea how to implement it in your Savage Worlds game. Overall, not bad, but less interesting than I’d hoped.

Pathfinder Core Rulebook

I’ve been looking at Pathfinder since a friend showed me some of the beta PDFs. I’ve since lost interest in 3e/3.5e due to some of the system flaws, but I really liked the fact that Paizo is working to keep the game alive (OGL!) and I’ve never bought in to the 4e style. I also liked some of the core system changes (especially the class changes) they implemented in Pathfinder. While it upped the power level a bit, it also balanced out the classes a bit more and added some nice flavor. I haven’t yet looked through the book in detail (mostly because it’s 80% known material), but after the first impression (“my, that’s a large book”) it looks to be everything you’d want in a game book. Well-written, good artwork and layout, attention to the craft, and full of crunchy bits. If we ever go back to playing 3e in some form, it will definitively be with the PFRPG as our system.

Burning Wheel Fantasy Role Playing System / Character Burner

Burning Wheel is one of those games I’d heard good things about and it’s one I wanted to look at more closely. I finally received my copies of the Fantasy Role Playing System (core book) and the Character Burner last night. Unlike the two games above, I actually gave this one a cursory read through. Overall, the books are pretty basic in layout and art, but the writing is, for the most part, clear with reasonably good examples.

I’m a fan of crunchy, rules-heavy systems…to a point. There’s just too much detail here. I like the intent of the system, but I don’t really like the execution. Some things just feel like they could be simpler to get across the same concepts. It may play differently than it reads, however, but I’ve played a lot of games over the years. What I did like, however, was the implicit setting and especially the lifepath character-building. Potentially complicated and limiting, but you’d get a well-rounded, logical character when you finished. The setting and color elements were nice, though, and gave a lot of flavor to the characters and world in ways that a lot of games don’t.

Regardless, since fantasy magic in RPGs is one of my core interests, I’m still looking at picking up the Magic Burner and giving that a whirl. I’m also planning on looking at the character elements more closely in the core books; some of it is very well done (as mentioned above).

Swords & Wizardry

Wanted to make a quick note on this one. This is the first of the OSR products that I’ve taken a liking to. It gives me a similar feeling to the one I got when I ran myself through the sample game in my old D&D red box. There’s an extended White Box boxed set printing on 20 January that I’m actually considering looking into.

Others

There were a number of other PDFs I’ve looked at, but as I write, none of them have made any significant impression. Then again, I still have a large “pile” of them with which I want to spend some more quality time.