I am not any kind of expert on gaming. I love to game and rules lite rpgs that enhance player freedom instead of bogging things down with lots of fiddly, crunchy rules. That's just me. BareBones Fantasy is exactly that kind of game for me.

I like the way that BareBones gives you have the freedom to create much more rounded characters as well as the standard types (fighter, cleric, mage & thief). But that does not mean you can create a maxed out, superhero character. On the contrary, one would be wise to do some planning before you take your character into combat - not because the rules are heavy or anything (they are not) - but because combat can be fast and deadly.

I think BareBones is great for historical, cinematic and episodic campaigns. It would work very well for Star Trek, X-Files, Stargate, Babylon 5, 13th Warrior, The Kingdom of Heaven, etc.

I love Dungeon Crawl Classics RPG for gritty, old-school gaming and X-plorers for old school scifi, but BareBones Fantasy is now my go-to-game for cinematic and episodic gaming.

If you are looking for a rules lite rpgs that enhance player freedom instead of bogging things down with lots of fiddly, crunchy rules, then I highly recommend BareBones Fantasy.

Originally posted at: http://diehardgamefan.com/2012/12/06/tabletop-review-barebones-fantasy/

Today’s selection is Barebones Fantasy a collaborative effort by two self-styled game designers with lots of ideas: Larry Moore and Bill Logan. The book is not huge but it does manage to cover a lot of topics and important points. The production is very nice, with a nice layout and typesetting, even illustrations nicely interspersed and situated beside the text. This core book contains little fluff, because it tries to create a whole fantasy RPG in less than 100 pages. Does it succeed?

Is It Really Barebones?

The main point I’m going to look at is right in the name: is this really bare-bones fantasy? Or is it just another fantasy RPG but with a selling point? Let’s go through a few things together and I’ll tell you my thoughts.

1. Character creation involves this:
   • Rolling up four stats, picking a race (one of four basic races), selecting a skill set (a class basically) and calculating certain scores based on your choice
   • Giving your character some descriptive words or phrases to help define what makes him/her unique, choosing a moral code (or ethics)
   • Picking some equipment, then calculating a bunch of little numbers and recording them (like Initiative, Weapon Damage, MOV, Body points, etc.)

I condensed it a bit, but there are still several steps to making a character and lots of little numbers to calculate. I would say character creation is not barebones. It’s probably going to take 30 minutes to make a character, a bit less if you know exactly what you are doing. As far as I can tell, this isn’t too far from 1st ed. Dungeons & Dragons, so I would say the skinnied-down rules are not really found in character creation. It’s straightforward and there are not too many choices, but it is not barebones. However, read on, for the bones will show soon.

The Shortest Combat Section Ever

1. The combat rules are very short. Here are the key points of the 1/3 page that the combat section takes up: attacking, damaging, damage reduction. There you go, it doesn’t get much more barebones than that. You roll to hit, if you hit you roll to damage, and if the defender has armor it rolls to absorb damage. Done. I mean, what else do you want? Fancy moves and tactical maneuvers? Pssh.

What is interesting is that magic rules and descriptions of spells and scrolls and magic items still manage to take up a lot of real estate. It’s amazing to me that in nearly every game there are pages and pages of descriptions for any combination of gear, spells, special abilities, magic items, chants, and what-have-you. I mean, I guess this stuff is necessary to some degree, but even a game like Barebones Fantasy is waterlogged with lists of just stuff. Couldn’t GMs and players pretty much make up anything that can be owned or cast or purchased? Maybe as players and GMs we have to be “allowed” by the game to get ahold of certain things. In one way it makes sense, in another way it does not. But I digress. I should note, though, that the spell section is pretty small and focused, which is great. So many classic RPGs have these sprawling spells lists, it gets a little ridiculous.

Tables! Oh How I Love Tables!

1. Adventuring: I was pretty excited when I read through the adventure generation section. There are some awesome tables that would be good for just about any GM looking to pull some ideas out of thin air. This section even has a step-by-step process (as do most things in the book) for making an adventure seed. First you roll for the number of areas in the place, then roll for what those specific areas are (e.g. ruins, castle, desert), then roll a descriptive word for the area (e.g. dusty), an area objective and an area obstacle. Done! Pretty cool right? I must say, that is pretty pared down. Especially when compared to taking lots of precious time to think up whole campaigns, this can really get an adventure kickstarted if the GM has a knack for making stuff up or just does a small amount of work beforehand. Oh, there are also tables for random dungeon generation, trap generation, and other stuff.

2. Setting information: This is usually the part of a book that gets me, because it is long and full of so much information I do not necessarily care about. Most of the time it is good stuff, inspired and all that, I just don’t want to read it all unless I know I’m running a game in the setting and I need to be up on my lore. This book has just 7 pages of setting information, including two pages of maps. It’s like a tour guide who has just beer-bonged two Red Bulls is taking you on a Lear jet tour of the Keranak Kingdoms.

Tell Me What I Am Thinking

This looks like a great candidate for a beer-and-pretzels game that does not want to be known as a beer-and-pretzels game. Once you get through character creation, you just listen to the GM and go along for the ride. Play your character using the little tidbits of personality that you may have given them at creation, swing your sword at this and cast a spell at that, have a good time fighting things and taking their stuff. I’m just going to be straight because this game does not pretend to be something it is not: this is a standard fantasy game in the same vein as any retro-clone, except with a lot of stuff very streamlined. If you want a game that can take your character to standard monster hangouts where you fight baddies and laugh about the loot you grab from their bodies and tombs and dungeons and grandmother’s crawlspaces, then this is probably the game for you. If you want social mechanics, combat tactics, detailed settings, nuanced play…you see where I’m going with this.

Ten bucks gets you a .zip file with some nice stuff in it: a well-produced core rule-book, a player aid for character creation, character sheets, a development tracker, the Keranak map (one with hexes, one without), and an introductory adventure module. Not bad! You could do a LOT worse on DrivethruRPG for the same money. Still, the game is not for those looking for something deep. It’s going to be great for those looking for something nice and easy that they can play with others who aren’t going to be interested in a really deep or crunchy RPG, and it’s excellent production makes me give it a hearty recommendation for that crowd. It doesn’t interest me much at all, but if their target market is the more casual RPGer, then I would say they are more or less hitting the mark

Lean and intuitive, BareBones Fantasy is an excellent rules-lite system. I can't say that I've seen an rpg that packs so much goodness in so modestly priced a package. DWD is aggressively supporting the game with three modules and a campaign setting available now with more goodies in the pipeline.

Short and sweet.

It plays amazingly.

I never want to touch D&D again.

BareBones Fantasy is easiest and most in-depth lite rules ever.

If I could give it 10 stars I would.

Great addition to BBF. Love the simplified maps that allow GMs to add their own detail to the broad-stroke Keranak Kingdom.

Let’s get this out of the way up front: Barebones Fantasy RPG is awesome. If you’ve read accolades elsewhere, BBF deserves them. After a single reading of the BBF rules I immediately converted my home campaign from Labyrinth Lord to BBF, and I’m not looking back. Here’s my review. This review is based on my reading of the game, and also my playing of the game both as DM and player, both online and offline.

The first thing to know is that for $9.99 you get “the whole game”. This one book includes the player’s rules, the DM’s rules, the monsters, the magic items, some cool tables and tools for randomly generating endless adventures, dungeons, traps and treasures, and even a mini-campaign setting. It’s like a mini-Rules Cyclopedia. Compared to the sort of investment you’d have to make to get the equivalent level of completeness from most other RPGs, BBF is a great value.

What sort of game is it? Well, there’s fighters, thieves, wizards, clerics, rangers, elves, dwarves, Halflings, magic swords, spells, and dragons. And there’s rules for making dungeons. I’m pretty sure you’ve played a game very similar to this at least once. The races are very Tolkien. Thematically there isn’t a lot that’s new here, but the presentation and rules simplicity make it worth it.

Obviously for a game of this pagecount, the rules are compact. All the rules for all four player races is on one 6x9 page. I love it. All the extra “fluff” has been taken right out, and the DM is free to interpret that as suits his campaign setting. There’s just rules here, presented in a few bullet points. Classes are similarly compact. All the basic game engine rules the player needs to know for playing the game (in addition to his race and class stuff) is on 3 – 4 pages. The DM’s section is of a similar size. This makes it incredibly easy to learn all the rules you need to know to run this game.

But don’t let the simplicity fool you! Although there aren’t rules for mass combat or ship-to-ship fighting or anything like that, all the rules you really need to run a dungeon crawl campaign are here. There wasn’t anything left out. The BBF book is just really efficient, and also assumes that the DM can apply the rules given in novel situations. For instance, there’s no specific rule for taking cover from missile fire, but there’s a general rule for creating advantages in combat. Is taking cover an advantage? Great, have a +20% to your roll.

Speaking of the mechanics, I will describe them briefly. BBH uses a d100 or percentile system. Most everything in the game has a percentile associated with it. So you might have a Strength of 60% and a Melee Fighting skill of 70%. Need to lift something heavy? Roll under Strength. Need to hit someone with an Ax? Roll under Fighting. Easy. The DM can assign a +/- modifier to the Roll if he deems it appropriate. All rolled doubles (11, 22, 33, …) are “critical”; either a critical success or a critical failure (depending on whether they are above or below the number you’re trying to beat). The exact results of a critical roll depend on what you’re trying to do.

BBF uses a “skill based” PC advancement, but the skills are really, really broad. In fact the skills are called Warrior, Wizard, Cleric, Thief, Scout, etc. Those sound a lot like classes, don’t they? That’s because in effect they are. Although BBH calls them Skills, you could also say that BBF has Classes and no restriction on multi-classing. Semantics. Pretty much any class you might be used to playing in Dungeons & Dragons you can play in BBH by combining the Skills in some fashion. Want to play a Bard? Easy. Just take Primary in Scholar, Secondary in Thief, and dabble in Warrior and Spellcaster. Done. (Or you can take Secondary in Warrior and dabble in Thief, if you want to play a more warrior-poet type Skald. The flexibility is fantastic).

Spellcasting is similarly simple and flexible. There are only 17 spells in the entire game, but each one scales in power from Rank 1 to the top end of the game. Further, the spells are very open-ended, so Summon can summon a demon or an undead; Make-Things-Dead (not the actual spell name) can be selected on the fly to be an exploding ball of fire or a self-propelled ice javelin. It’s a nice system.

One of my favorite parts about the book provided are the tools for generating random adventure seeds, random dungeons, and random traps. As with any procedural generation system, this system cannot produce a finished, game-worthy adventure without the DM doing any work at all. But it provides a great place to start. I’ve used the tables a couple times now, and they helped me make a nice adventure and dungeon that I’m sure I would not have thought of on my own. These are really good tools, and practically worth the price of admission on their own.

Game play itself is fast and fun. I’ve run a few sessions of BBF now, and we never get bogged down looking up rules or trying to figure out what to do. Traps, exploration, roleplaying, and combat were all fast-paced, but also unpredictable and exciting. I haven’t had any PC deaths yet, but honestly, they got lucky. A couple rolls going the other way would have been the end. Fun!

The game play experience, to me, is similar to Basic (or Classic) D&D. It’s much faster and smoother than Advanced Dungeons & Dragons, let alone the clunky and rules-heavy modern editions. The only downside of this, from a DM’s point of view, is that players will move very quickly through your prepared adventures, so you’ll have to speed up the rate at which you build the world around them. This is a good problem to have though.

There are three weak points however –

1. The included campaign setting is so high-level and broad-strokes that 95% of the work of making a campaign world is left to the DM. It’s really not too helpful. But if you like what you see, DwD Studios does sell a separate book that covers the setting in more depth.

2. The two areas where you really feel the shortness of the book are the monsters and magic items sections. Especially the monsters. BBF provides monster templates that let you quickly build new monsters, but the templates are kind of limited (there’s no list of special powers, for instance), and many of the classic monsters you would expect are left out. Same for magic items. BBH would definitely benefit from a supplement book here.

3. I feel like some of the magic items what were included are “too good”, and also would drastically change the feel of a campaign. For instance, the difference between a campaign where PCs have “Sleeping Bags of Healing” and ones where they don’t would be enormous. Any adventurer would consider it a no-brainer to buy one of those. And I don’t like no-brainer choices, as a rule.

But that’s it! Minor shortcomings, and easily fixed. The main game engine, races, classes, and spells are just brilliant. As I said at the top, I immediately converted by home campaign from Labyrinth Lord (a clone of Basic D&D) to BBF rules and I’m not looking back. Conversion of the PCs was smooth and painless. Give it a try!

It isn't very often that an RPG system or supplement completely takes me by surprise but the authors of Barebones Fantasy have done just that....and in a good way :)

Keranak Kingdoms supplies a 30,000 foot view of a well thought out fantasy setting. The artwork is excellent and both full page art and printer-friendly versions are provided. There are some great settings out there but what I like about KK is that just enough detail is provided to really get the creative imagery rolling....it is definitely not a "details dictated" supplement, and that is exactly what I was looking for. With this setting, you can draft an adventure idea, look for a cool place to plop it down and off you go. DWD Studios understands the delicate balance between quick and easy rules and granularity.

You just cannot go wrong with this.....5 bucks is a steal for the quality that's provided.

Good Show :)

Buy it! Read it! Play it! You'd be a fool not to. Don't be fooled by the title. Bare bones, this is not.

A D100 lite system.

Adventure creator, Dungeon creator, monster creator, Magic item creator, what more could you want? There's a good bestiary included. The magic system is adaptable. At £6.26, you get a fantastic fantasy RPG, that you can even play with the kids and beginners, it's that easy.

In the download, you even get printer friendly versions of the files as well (brilliant!).

The website (dwdstudios.com) is well worth a visit (a must-do).

A 'brush stroke' campaign world for you as well. No need to buy huge amounts of books.

Once again, brilliant. These are the same people who brought you the Star frontiersman emag.

I am so looking forward to their Frontier Space RPG :-)

Bare Bones is worth every penny.

The Fantasy RPG genre is certainly one filled with choices. Some might even say that it is getting overpopulated at this point. I think that is all the more reason to check out the new games that are coming out. Each author and publisher is looking to give us a new way to experience the genre and I am always eager to take a look at what might make them stand out from the pack.

Enter Barebones Fantasy from DWD Studios.

Barebones Fantasy fits within the rules-lite category as far as RPG systems go. It offers an easy to learn rules system that keeps character creation quick the game moving along. I was surprised to find out that Barebones Fantasy (despite the name) had quite a bit under the hood. So let's crack it open and see what's what.

-The Cover-

Sometimes you want to judge a book by the cover. In this case I was greeted with some traditional Fantasy RPG fare: A party of intrepid adventures about to battle the big bad Red Dragon. In my eyes this is a good thing. If you're selling a new take on traditional fantasy, why not open up with some familiar imagery to get the reader's head in the right place.

-The System-

The basic dice mechanic is a simple percentile. You roll a d100 and compare it to your Ability or Skill. If you get equal to or below your score you succeed. Simple and to the point.

There are four Abilities that make up your character. They are Strength, Dexterity, Logic and Willpower. These are used to do the normal attribute stuff that any RPG player is used to with some slight differences. Strength lets you lift objects and influences melee weapon use but also determines how much damage you can take (something a Constitution or Endurance stat usually does). Dexterity is used to shoot, jump and dodge out of the way of incoming harm. Logic is used for perception and deduction and Willpower is used for persuasion, bluffing (borrowing for traditional Social or Charisma stats) and some spell resistance.

There are eight different Skills that a character can learn and they range in rating from 1 to 6. They are: Cleric, Enchanter, Leader, Scholar, Scout, Spellcaster, Thief and Warrior. These function as areas of expertise that a character has as opposed to singular skill specialties that some games rely on. Scout, Thief and Warrior are Skills that all characters can use. The others require training (meaning points must be invested in these) for a character to use them.

-Character Creation-

Making a character in Barebones Fantasy is a pretty straight forward process. First, you roll Ability Scores. To roll up a set you roll 5d10 and add 30 for each score. Once you have four of them you can assign them to the four Ability Scores. You then pick your Race (all the standard fantasy races are included). Then you assign a primary and secondary Skill (which boost your starting score using it) and then assign one Skill rank to a skill.

Players then get to define one positive and one negative "descriptor" to their character. These are roleplaying quirks that will reward the character with bonus Development Points (XP) if they portray this during the gaming session.

Next is Moral code which steps in and takes the place of an alignment system. This is a cool change of pace as it gets rid of the tried and true Good vs Evil distinction. Instead you decide to what degree your character displays certain aspects. There are three levels: Somewhat, Very and Totally. These are used to describe how Kind or Cruel, Forcus or Unfocused, Selfless or Selfish, Honorable or Deceitful and Brave or Cowardly they are. After these guidelines are set, the GM can call for a WIL checks when the character is acting "out of character" and wishes to act outside their personal moral code.

After that you buy some equipment and determine all your derived stats (Body Points, Initiative, Damage Reduction from Armor and so on).

-Magic and Spellcasting-

Like most actions in Barebones Fantasy, Spellcasting is easy to execute. Usually this is just a test of the Spellcasting or Cleric skill. What is worth noting though is that spells have a toolbox approach that can change from casting to casting. You might have a buff spell that can improve an ally's ability score. At the time of casting you can change which Attribute is the one to get boosted. The same goes for some of the damage spells. Fireball one turn and Lightning Bolt the next. It allows for quick rules but different trappings for each casting.

-Combat-

Combat is a straight forward affair. You roll a d100 and compare to your ability or skill. If you get equal to or lower you succeed and deal damage. You'll notice that there is no "defense trait" like Armor Class or anything factored into the equation. This is because defending counts as an action. Each action after the first you take in a turn results in a -20 percent penalty to all skill and ability checks. So it creates a simple tactical decision of whether you want to defend (and make any subsequent attacks suffer the increasing penalty) or do you take the hit and hit them with your full skill rating. It also allows for multiple attacks per round, making higher ranked characters able to dish out some punishment to groups of bad guys.

-GM Guidelines and Setting-

The rest of the book is all for the GM. You have a chapter that goes into more detail on running a game. It has guidelines for bonuses and penalties to rolls as well as rules for all kinds of conditions (dazed, immobilized, prone, slowed) and different ways to get hurt (falling, starvation, fire, environmental exposure). This alone gives Barebones Fantasy a little more meat than a traditional "rules-lite" game.

There is also an included setting that is presented in a very "broad strokes" fashion. It requires the GM to fill in most of the details but the inclusion is a nice starting point for new comers.

-The Verdict-

I think that DWD Studios have a great rules-lite game on their hands. Barebones Fantasy gives some comprehensive attention to areas that most rules-lite games simply skimp on. This is especially welcomed in the areas of Spell utility, equipment lists and character statuses. The rules are simple and easy to learn and teach. I think for $10 it makes a perfect game for teaching beginners the hobby or for anyone who is looking to throw some of the crunch to the side and dive right into the game.

Barebones Fantasy is a really simple system for GMs, but it does not mean it lacks depth. There is crunch in what DwD Studios call the d00lite system.

The book comes in a whopping 84 pages, but it pretty much has everything you need to run a game. The rules for magic impress me the most as it is always the stuff I hated to read because it can contain a lot of rules. This game manages to give you 17 spells, but still have variations for each spell without weighing me down with a lot of rules. It also gives rules for magic item creation and rune magic.

The Rune magic is pretty much you write a symbol but you have to decide what it takes to activate the magic. You can say the rune is activated by stepping on it like a landmine, or you can need to say a certain words or gestures.

This game has something close to levels and something close to classes. Classes and skills are the same thing in this system. For example the cleric skill lets you perform blessings, detect aura, smite a chosen enemy with a weapon, and perform miracles which are just spells.

Skills are based off of 4 abilities scores which are strength, dexterity, logic, and willpower. These abilities are rolled using 5 d10 and adding 30. Again, back to the cleric skill, the cleric skill is based off willpower/2 + 10 * level.

The skills and abilities are percentile base with the double zeroes being considered zero. When you roll equal to or under you skill you succeed, but if you roll any double numbers it is a critical. For example a skill of 45, rolling 00 to 45 is a success and the numbers 11, 22, 33, 00, and 44 would be a critical. A critical can mean double damage or ignore armor which is treated as damage reduction. Rolling above your skill would be a failure, and rolling a doubles are critical failures. For example the 45 skill again, rolling 46 to 99 are failures and the numbers 55, 66, 77, 88, and 99 are critical failures.

Certain skills can be done without training, but other skills need training. By having a rank level on a skill not only do you give yourself a bonus to that skill, but you are also trained in the skill. Train skills include cleric, enchanter, leader, scholar, and spell caster. Skills you can use without training, no need to put a rank on them, would be scout, warrior, and thief.

You choose at character creation you get a choice of 2 skill and you need to decide which one is a primary skill at 20 percent bonus and a secondary at 10 percent bonus and one rank to place in a skill which gives another 10 percent bonus per rank. So remember if you pick a skill like cleric to be a primary skill or secondary but don’t train/put a rank in it, you can’t use it.

Now for the DMs stuff. You have a list of 47 monsters to choose from, and if those monsters are not to your liking then you have 8 monster templates to alter into what you see fit. One of my pet peeves when preparing a level base game is finding the right creature to use or re-skin to throw at the party. This game makes it easy to make a monster, and I don’t have to slow down the creativity to look for the right creature.

There is an adventure and dungeon generator. You also have traps table, creature by rank table, treasure, and a rewards table. The rewards table is a different take on treasure for RPGs that I don’t see done a lot in a main rule book. The rewards can be anything from fame to blessings from gods.

Finally there is a map with brief description of Keranak Kingdoms along with a history and the gods.
I purchase this from Drive Thru RPG, and it came with the core rulebook and character sheet, a two page player’s reference which contains the skills and character creation summary, and the adventure Maidens of Mordoth all in PDF format. All PDFs come in printer friendly versions as well.

There is also a color map jpeg of the Keranak Kingdoms at 3300 x 2550, 96 dpi horizontal and vertical resolution, and a bit depth of 24. Oh, and the same map with hexes.

I think the main rulebook is supposed to printed in pocket size, but I had it printed in US legal size 8 and ½ by 11 inches paper, and the font looks very large.

There is not enough good things I can say about the game.

Bare Bones Fantasy is a relatively new rules-lite fantasy rpg from DWD Studios, better known as the awesome people behind the Star Frontiersman. Given the overpopulated Fantasy gaming genre, I’m very interested in seeing just what kind of innovations they’ll be applying in order to make Bare Bones Fantasy stand out from the rest.

I suppose I shouldn’t be too surprised to see some Star Frontiers DNA hidden in the rules. For one thing, the basic resolution system is straight up percentile. Roll d100, compare result to your Ability or Skill. If you roll equal to or below your Ability or Skill score, then you succeed. Otherwise you fail.

Skills also exist in Bare Bones Fantasy, but rather than being the large list of skills that most games have, BBF has only eight of them: Cleric, Enchanger, Leader, Scholar, Scout, Spellcaster, Thief and Warrior. These are more like skill packages and determine if a person can or can’t do something. One thing to note is that anyone can attempt actions associated with the Scout, Thief and Warrior Skills. The other five skills require that you have at least a level in them in order to perform such actions. Skills are rated in both a level and in a score. The score is calculated based on the Ability score associated to the Skill as well as the skill’s level.

So far, so good. It’s nice and tidy, and with minimal fuss.

—

Character creation seems to be fairly straightforward as well. Ability score generation can be done via rolling or by spending a predetermined spread of ability scores. Selecting a race applies a template to the character, bestowing a bonus to an Ability, bestows a movement score and race-specific advantages and languages.

Picking a skill comes next, with the player choosing a primary and secondary skill, and then selecting which skill starts at Level 1. Abilities are then re-calculated with bonuses from the skill choices.

The next step is specifying descriptors, which are phrases or words that describe prominent details about the character. Players must specify one positive and one negative descriptor. These are important because characters gain Development Points when their descriptors come into play in the session.

A character’s moral code is the next to be defined, with a few behavioral traits and ethics. Note that these are different from Descriptors as they deal with the question of why a character does things.

Equipment, money and Derived attributes make up the rest of the character. The process is fairly painless, and I can imagine someone going through this in about 15 minutes or so. Less if they’re used to the system.

—

Combat is plain and simple, and is treated as a simple attack roll. A success on the roll means that you hit and roll damage. Damage Reduction is applied after this, possibly negating all the damage from an attack.

Spells are also pretty simple with a spellcasting (or cleric skill) check to see if it activates. One interesting thing here is that the player may choose to change the special effect of a spell from one to another per casting. So a lighting bolt one turn might be a fire blast in the next. I can see a lot of happy wizards in this game.

—

While Bare Bones Fantasy is certainly simple and easy to learn, it is also remarkably comprehensive. From a robust listing of spells, to a weapons and equipment list that will make old-school chart loving types weep for joy, BBF is not a game with a short lifespan. There are rules for nearly everything, including the situational ones that every GM will probably look up only a few times in a campaign (like say, acid damage rules) and a healthy bestiary of monsters that will keep a game going for a very long time.

The book even contains a broad-strokes setting called the Keranak Kingdoms, which is a perfect place for new GMs to set their game without having to spend too much time trying to build a setting form scratch. There’s a map and regions described, along with the local pantheon of gods and plenty of empty space for the GM to make up his own things in the setting.

—

Bare Bones Fantasy is aptly named, but don’t let the title fool you into thinking that the game isn’t capable of going the whole nine yards. It’s a good game for groups who don’t have that much time to pour over books, and optimizing characters, and definitely one I’d recommend for the overworked time-scarce GM.

Simple and fun, Bare Bones Fantasy deserves to be part of everyone’s collection on RPGs.

Honestly I don't have that much of an expendable income. This is the first RPG that I am actually going to play (tomorrow in fact). I own lots of RPG books that I have accumulated over the years that I have perused but never sat down to play. But for some reason BBF stood out for me. I stumbled across it a few days ago while browsing DriveThruRPG's top 20 Indie products listing.

I read the product description and it caught my attention. I immediately Googled up some reviews and was very impressed with what people were saying. I had $10 bucks in my pocket and took the plunge. I read the book cover to cover the next day and unlike just about every other product I have come across over the last four years, of on again off again pen and paper romancing, I felt compelled to play it. I had my wife read the book yesterday, we bought materials to build out own battle mat today, and tomorrow we are going to run Maidens of Moordoth.

I read that you will be releasing Trouble at Karam's Claim on Nov 12th along with the Keranak Kingdoms setting book. I also read you have some spell cards in the works for a DTRPG release. My wife gets paid tomorrow and I'll be setting some money aside to buy all three of these products. I guarantee you that if you release additional BBF P&P cards that I will snatch those up as well. I don't know what it is about this product but it has my complete attention.

Beyond reading every post made at these forums and tracking new ones daily, I'm compiling a list of all the player submitted content others are sharing. I hope that I have some affinity for the game once I get the ball rolling and will be able to make my own contributions. I am really digging the feel of a concerted community effort with bettering this game. It feels like it has future, a bright future full of both crunchy and fluffy goodness. I look forward to watching the game evolve and being a part of that process.

Keep up the great work and please, PLEASE, keep those new products rolling out. My income may be limited when it comes to recreational expenses, but both my wife and I are committed to supporting your hard work and future community contributions. I have found a winner in BareBones Fantasy. Coming from somebody like me, that is not a statement that should be taken lightly. Viva La BBF!

This is a great game. Lite yet still detailed. Its a streamline percentile (%) system That is classless and instead uses skills as class. It really has an old school sensibility to it while being innovative and quick to play. I thought I had enough fantasy games. I diffidently have room for this one.

Having seen this being crafted from its very genesis, I can tell you that this has been a labor of love for Larry, Bill, and the rest of those involved. It's a light, flexible, scalable system which is exactly what I like. It's family friendly, and easy enough for those that have never rolled RPG dice to learn to use those d10's! Buy it, read it, play it! (and invite some kids in on the fun!)

The mechanics of this game were inspired by the 1980's TSR RPG Star Frontiers, but the authors of this game have found new ways to really bring the system alive. It's been simplified, streamlined and retooled for a fantasy setting. This is one of those systems you can sit down and run with little or no prep. The book itself looks good, the layout is clean and easy to read. The artwork is adequate, but not spectacular. I look forward to seeing what comes next! An excellent value for the price.