Lead Adventure Forum
Miniatures Adventure => Fantasy Adventures => Topic started by: constrict on April 18, 2012, 01:09:53 AM
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To get my old friends back into gaming again after 15+ years, (I started painting again last year...) I was thinking of slowly luring them in with a little of old school rpg. Fantasy was what we played the most back in the days, but only pen and paper, never with minis. If I could incorporate some miniature, maybe someday can have a battle with a lot of minis, it would be great. I would like to have a system that urge you to use minis, but in the same time are not so rules heavy. What I have understand newer D&D really point this way miniature-wise but at the same time "oldies" like me are not that keen about the rules. So what's your suggestion?
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We're playing with the Basic & Expert sets from the original D&D. Having a blast.
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I'm currenty preparing a MicroLite 20 campaign in the Dark Sun setting. The rules are really easy and with a small amount of conversion every offical adventure can be made compatible.
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Take a look at "Dungeonslayers"
http://www.dungeonslayers.com/
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I'd also have a look at savageworlds. The rules aren't that heavy, plus it is quite flexible with character creation. On their website you'll even find a test drive document containing some of the rules to give you a flavour of things.
Savage Worlds (http://www.peginc.com/)
Cheers
Andy
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Of the original versions I like the Moldvay B/X version although 1st AD&D is the best over-all although very harsh on the players ;)
Lot's of retro clones of the old editions are available now and most of them are actually better than the versions they clone in terms of layout and tidying up some of the rules. I'd also recommend Microlite20. It's is a simplified "sub miniature" version of 3rd ed and very easy to DM.
Here's a good list of retro-clones http://www.retroroleplaying.com/content/retro-clones (http://www.retroroleplaying.com/content/retro-clones)
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We're playing with the Basic & Expert sets from the original D&D. Having a blast.
Yeah man, simple and fun system :D
Using dungeon floor plans etc for mini placement really brings it to life.
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Thanx for the inputs! Need to do some exploring, quite alot of suggestions... :)
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We got back to D&D after many years, everyone wanted to play! I looked at D&D 4.0 but didn't really like it, so we stayed with 3.5, I had way to much money invested in 3.5 books anyway. You can use minis in 3.5, we use them with Mastermaze from Dwarven Forge. You probably can pick up big lots of the older 3.5 books on ebay. There is lots of D20 compatible modules out there for it also.
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If you like Old school D&D then try Labyrinth Lord - I'm currently crafting a campaign based in 1st Ed Forgotten Realms using them.
http://www.goblinoidgames.com/labyrinthlord.html
Cheaper than trying to source the old D&D rule books and the rules are downloadable.
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I am in a group that is playing Pathfinder. It takes the D&D 3 and kind of makes it into 3.5 (fixing many of the problems from 3.0, or so I am told.) The campaign we are playing has us playing the goblins. Quite funny and exciting. :) In the first scenario, two out of the six of us goblins die. And the DM had nothing to do with it. lol
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Take a look at Troll Lord Games. Their Castles and Crusades is very good, has a lot of support, and the Trolls are good guys themselves. It's really got that old school feel.
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I'm running by-the-book AD&D 1e and lovin' it. OSRIC and Labyrinth Lord with the Advanced companion also do the same thing but you miss out on the nutty-awesome Gygax prose stylings. I recommend getting a set of the AD&D books off ebay (cheap as they are so plentiful, especially the reprints) and having your players print out select chapters of your retro clone of choice. The retro clones present things in a more straightforward way and are more palatable to newbies. But when you want to know the difference in dive ratios of harpy vs. succubus, well, where would you be without your DMG??? Where, I ask you??? ;D
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I am in a group that is playing Pathfinder. It takes the D&D 3 and kind of makes it into 3.5 (fixing many of the problems from 3.0, or so I am told.)
Not quite mate... It's based on the 3.5 OGL, you often hear Pathfinder being referred to as 3.75 or 3.P.
My vote always goes to Pathfinder, I've been playing it since the Alpha playtest and still have my hard copy of the Beta here in my grubby little hands.
Best bet would be to pick up the beginner box, it's designed to get new players into PF so it should work well for your group. Can be used with miniatures if you choose so, but by no means is it required. I just like painting little metal men :P
http://paizo.com/beginnerbox (http://paizo.com/beginnerbox)
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D&D B/X is my engine of choice. Swords & Wizardry (White Box) is a very rules light 0e clone. If you want to go super light try Searchers of the Unknown (download here: http://sites.google.com/site/wizardinabottle/searchers-of-the-unknown (http://sites.google.com/site/wizardinabottle/searchers-of-the-unknown))
As has been said, add dungeon tiles and minis to any of these with ease. Then enjoy.
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If you can wait until June/July then Wizards are reprinting a special Gygax memorial edition of the 3 original AD&D core rulebooks. This will save having to hunt them down on EBay and paying exorbitant prices. I will be getting these as my originals are tatty as hell.
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Aren't these memorial books supposed to be pretty pricey as well?
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Thanx everyone! I'm having a real dungeon crawl with all your rules of choice o_o Having a blast just exploring this :D About the newprints of AD&D 1ed, from what I can see I can get the old ones for maybe a 3rd of the price then the new ones.
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It's mainly Pathfinder for my group as well although we have tried out a few things Pathfinder is the fantasy ruleset of choice, it has the advantage (like some other systems) that the rules are available online for free, so whilst you may only have one copy of the book in the group everyone can look stuff up out side of the session.
Another system that is popular with some of our group is Traveller, which although the base setting is sci fi with planet hopping has rules for tech levels and has I believe even been used to represent Imperial Rome by Mongoose.
I am in a group that is playing Pathfinder. It takes the D&D 3 and kind of makes it into 3.5 (fixing many of the problems from 3.0, or so I am told.) The campaign we are playing has us playing the goblins. Quite funny and exciting. :) In the first scenario, two out of the six of us goblins die. And the DM had nothing to do with it. lol
Revford ran a module recently where we played goblins, moments of note included the grabbing of potions (folded up post it notes) thrown into the middle of the group of players and finding out what a potion was when you drank it - This did lead to one player drinking alchemists fire when what he needed was a healing potion.
Best moment though had to be entering the big bad bosses room, who we had alerted to our presence by being full of fail. I opened the door and promptly got blinded by a firework and stood there dazzled whilst one of the other players decided to steal my weapon (which I had stolen from him earlier after he had been knocked unconscious by a dog). Then when he got dazzled by a firework, ignoring the bad guy I attempted to steal my weapon back. This went on for a couple of turns until the bad guy summoned a horse indoors and a giant frog swallowed one of the other goblins, at which point the fight got serious. lol
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<snip>
This went on for a couple of turns until the bad guy summoned a horse indoors and a giant frog swallowed one of the other goblins, at which point the fight got serious. lol
"Serious" ???
Right. ::)
Seriously? ;)
Gracias,
Glenn
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Well, when I say serious I mean we actually started trying to fight the horse, giant frog and bad guy* and not each other, but being goblins we weren't very good at it. lol
*In that order if I recall as Pathfinder goblins are consider dogs and horses terrifying mortal enemies and obviously more dangerous than a goblin sorcerer armed with fireworks.
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I'd suggest trying Swords & Wizardry Core Rules (4th printing), it's a very neat retroclone, very streamlined system if this term can be applied to the old school games. Labyrinth Lord is also a good choice, however seems to be a bit crunchy(YMMV of course). Oh, and it's free.
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If you can wait until June/July then Wizards are reprinting a special Gygax memorial edition of the 3 original AD&D core rulebooks. This will save having to hunt them down on EBay and paying exorbitant prices. I will be getting these as my originals are tatty as hell.
FYI the DMG can be had for $5 for a fine/near mint copy. The Monster Manual $5-10 and the player's guide $10-20 (more players than GM so more demand for them in what I figure). That's for the original printings. The reprints with the alternate covers go for $3-5. I assure you the new Hasbro printings will cost you many times the price.
edit... hehe, wrote that before I saw:
Thanx everyone! I'm having a real dungeon crawl with all your rules of choice o_o Having a blast just exploring this :D About the newprints of AD&D 1ed, from what I can see I can get the old ones for maybe a 3rd of the price then the new ones.
Anyway, yes is the answer. :D
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Hi constrict, I personally like the old Basic set (from the 80s and comes in a box) with the original module B2 The Keep on the Boaderlands (the adventure where you explore the Caves of Chaos); we are talking really old school here but can still be found pretty cheap on ebay (boxed set and module for around 20$).
Another suggestion and I don`t know if this is too far from your original concept but you can introduce your friends to Song of Gold and Darkness (an expansion to Songs of Blades and heroes) but the rules are used for dungeon crawling.
Whatever you decide, let us know what rules you get and post up some pics of your gaming sessions.
Cheers
Damien
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We play both D&D 3.5 and Pathfinder. As noted above, Pathfinder is really a tweaking of 3.5. If you go in that direction, go with Pathfinder (the main reason we still play 3.5 is that we have a well-established group under that system and we are too lazy to make the relatively minor changes to port them over). The 3/3.5/Pathfinder generation of D&D is much more intuitive, and therefore lends itself to bringing in new players.
Alternatively, you could take a skirmish game like Mordheim and fix up some role-playing elements to spice it up even more.
Whatever you choose - hope you and your friends have a blast!
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Rules Compendium here. It's chock a block full of all sorts of stuff that I'll probably never use, but it's got everything I need and plenty of stuff that I can bolt onto the game on an as-needed basis, and all in one book.
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Well, when I say serious I mean we actually started trying to fight the horse, giant frog and bad guy* and not each other, but being goblins we weren't very good at it. lol
*In that order if I recall as Pathfinder goblins are consider dogs and horses terrifying mortal enemies and obviously more dangerous than a goblin sorcerer armed with fireworks.
lol OMG! That's great. :-* ROFLAMO. I know too many anal-retentive FRPGers who would be totally mesmerized in shock/horror o_o at the scene. Who says Grognards are anal-retentive? ::) Logically button counting is therapeutic...
Too bad you don't have video! :D
Gracias,
Glenn
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Rules Compendium here. It's chock a block full of all sorts of stuff that I'll probably never use, but it's got everything I need and plenty of stuff that I can bolt onto the game on an as-needed basis, and all in one book.
Ooh I remember that one. It was the first D&D book I bought. A really nice tome with loads and loads and then some information. Though for a 14 year old non native English speaker with no experience in role playing games at all, it might have been a bit too much. Still have the book in storage and will probably never use it, but keep if for nostalgic reasons.
Most of my experience is with D&D 3.0/3.5 but I've read soem Pathfinder and D&D 4.0 as well. Love how pathfinder feels, hate D&D 4.0 :)
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We're playing with the Basic & Expert sets from the original D&D. Having a blast.
Is that basic basic, from 20+ years ago of the reprint?
There are some classic basic dandd mods out there Skarda's Mirror, Night's Dark Terror and or course Slavers (htough are they ADandD). I remember playing and enjoying Hollow World Too
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Ooh I remember that one. It was the first D&D book I bought. A really nice tome with loads and loads and then some information. Though for a 14 year old non native English speaker with no experience in role playing games at all, it might have been a bit too much. Still have the book in storage and will probably never use it, but keep if for nostalgic reasons.
I can definitely see that. Funny thing is, the RC that I play doesn't really look any different from the B/X or AD&D games. As DM, I tend to forget or hand wave away all the same stuff regardless of which book I'm ostensibly using. It would probably make a lot more difference to the players, but my latest campaign is a first for my son and his (12 year old friends) so they don't know any different. It's all new and grand and exciting adventure for them.
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For roleplaying I'd go for WFRP because it has the best fantasy roleplaying campaign ever and the whole system is more based on roleplaying, after that I'd stick to basic dandd for esay hack and slash for a more skirmish based gaem...
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For roleplaying I'd go for WFRP because it has the best fantasy roleplaying campaign ever and the whole system is more based on roleplaying, after that I'd stick to basic dandd for esay hack and slash for a more skirmish based gaem...
Enemy within, right? How hard is it to find that game these days?
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Enemy within, right? How hard is it to find that game these days?
It is very much out of print. However you can still hunt around and purchase the individual books on ebay.
Mistake Identity
Shadows over bogenhaffen
Death on the reik
The powerbehind the thrown
Something rotten in kislev (optional)
The empire in flames.
Personally I'd go for the softback hogshead editions every time as they usually feature an extra introductory adventure. However its worth noting that eif was never reprinted by hogshead and so can go for £40+! One of the WFRP writers has rewrote the final section, changed the name to the empire at war, posted it on his website http://www.madalfred.com/.
I've never played eif or eaw but eaw is considered superior by the majority of the fan base. This is a campaign that I'd love to run
Cheers
Andy
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Ah, yeah that's right esp Power Behind, I'd say it's worth £15 a book if you can get it for that on ebay plus that's what a mod costs now).
But it's the career system too!
PS have a look here (187 hours): http://warhammer-enemy-within.blogspot.co.uk
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EIF was a let down at the end but still good
We did it all, starting with Oldehaller Contract from the WFRP book. Great Stuuf and the character develoment is just top.
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should def add in a rough night at the four feathers from WD it's great!!!!
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Try to track this ones down
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Warhammer-Battle-Book-Fantasy-Roleplay/dp/1872372228/ref=sr_1_7?ie=UTF8&qid=1334997710&sr=8-7
But you can get it for a LOT less that £400 :o :o :o, probably £30 on ebay.
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I like both WFRP and D&D (Pathfinder). However, they are completely different from their setting and intention. The Warhammer world is a world doomed to be overrun by chaos, players might be heroes but ultimately will only be pawns in the game of various powerful groups trying to get more powerful the competition. It's more a detective, conspiracy kind of setting. Keeping that in mind, if you have the right players for that - great. If you look for some heroic adventuring where you explore old dungeons or fallen empires, grab buckets ful of gold and sqander them on booze and chicks and easy living, Warhammer is not really the right setting for you. Plus the technology level and the fashion look a lot more like the early modern times (16th century) than medieval times (which I personally find more satisfying for a fantasy setting).
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I like both WFRP and D&D (Pathfinder). However, they are completely different from their setting and intention. The Warhammer world is a world doomed to be overrun by chaos, players might be heroes but ultimately will only be pawns in the game of various powerful groups trying to get more powerful the competition. It's more a detective, conspiracy kind of setting. Keeping that in mind, if you have the right players for that - great. If you look for some heroic adventuring where you explore old dungeons or fallen empires, grab buckets ful of gold and sqander them on booze and chicks and easy living, Warhammer is not really the right setting for you. Plus the technology level and the fashion look a lot more like the early modern times (16th century) than medieval times (which I personally find more satisfying for a fantasy setting).
I'd say that's acurrate!
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Dragon warriors here. Best british FRP system ever made and reprinted recently. Simple system with a late darkages early medieval feel to the setting.
Great memories for me, first ever RPG!!!
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Hi everyone. First post from a new member here.
I have played RPGs since Mentzer's red box D&D was translated to my native language around mid 80's. Since then I have played every edition of D&D and numerous other fantasy, horror, sci-fi, you-name-it games. My game of choice at the moment is the new version of Hackmaster. Here is a quote (with some links) from their webpage.
So, what's so great about HackMaster? What makes it different? Just read the Foreword (http://www.kenzerco.com/hackmaster/foreword.html) to get a sense of how the game plays and the Introduction (http://www.kenzerco.com/hackmaster/introduction.html) for more specific examples of key game concepts. Download the "Illustrated Example of Play" (http://www.kenzerco.com/hackmaster/downloads/HMPHB_illustrated_example.pdf) to get a more viceral idea of how HackMaster is played.
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Ha, I've always wanted to get a hold of Hackmaster, but when I had the money for it it was out of print. Is there a new edition out?
And Dragon warriors is cool as well. A friend of mine used to play it a lot. Unfortunately, I was at that time not too much into it but from what I remember there was a lot of potential in it.
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Hackmaster Basic (http://www.kenzerco.com/product_info.php?cPath=25_94&products_id=670) has been out for a few years already. It has everything you need for the first five levels of play. Hacklopedia of Beasts (http://www.kenzerco.com/product_info.php?cPath=25_94&products_id=751) came out of printers last year and the new Player's Handbook (http://www.kenzerco.com/product_info.php?cPath=25_94&products_id=779) is being printed as I write this post. I believe you could still make a preorder of it and receive a pdf version of the book right away on top of the printed book when it arrives from the printers.
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Thanks for the info. I'll look into it.
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I must admit it changed my view of RPG's. I ambushed a party with 5 goblins on the first game. Party was cut to ribbons requiring a rethink of playing in the bash n loot style of FRPG's like basic D&D. Goblins in Dragon Warriors were supernatural creatures rather than wimpy orcs. The use of religion it it was really well done too. A saints finger bone in the pommel of your sword was a deadly additive if you were one of the faithful.
That relinds me of the first time I ran Pendragon for DandD players one knight charged the giant which hit him destroying his armour, flattening him, crushing the horse and leaving a massive dent in the ground!!!!
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I have Warhammer FRP first ed and I personally would not play it. Too many rules and tables. Not quite roll monster by ICE but right up there with it. Anything with a crit hit/fumble table should be burned at the stake of imagination. Though I did like the way in roll monster the characters slowly lost fingers toes eyes and ears as they developed. GM- "You come across an evil black knight blocking the path, he is a limbless torso with a head attached missing one eye both ears and nose what do you do?" Players - "We run for it! he must be at least 15th level with that many bits missing!"
Easy, easy! ICE is my RPG bible. Nothing beats the crit tables. So cool. Here's a chance for a 1st lvl character to really be heroic. And vice vera: I remember a friend's character (around lvl 12) got knocked out by a measly 2nd lvl orc due to a lucky (or unlucky) crit. And once you understood the rules ICE wasn't really that difficult. Roll your D100+your attack value, subtract the enemies defence and look up the result on the table. If you got a critical hit, roll on that table. A maximum of two die rolls, no more than D&D. And after a while you knew where which table was found (or add a little reading sign). So the fighting was fairly quick and very vivid. I still play it after over 25 years...
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I have Warhammer FRP first ed and I personally would not play it. Too many rules and tables. Not quite roll monster by ICE but right up there with it. Anything with a crit hit/fumble table should be burned at the stake of imagination. Though I did like the way in roll monster the characters slowly lost fingers toes eyes and ears as they developed. GM- "You come across an evil black knight blocking the path, he is a limbless torso with a head attached missing one eye both ears and nose what do you do?" Players - "We run for it! he must be at least 15th level with that many bits missing!"
I could disagree more he system is easy, % to hit and d6 damage for combat, the rest is % based. The tables are optional and the sudden death is an option, the crit table is for flavour and player development esp when insanity is added in. I remember the "unoffical" dandd table being much worse 20/20 death 20/19 triple damge plus bonus minus shoe size. WFR is a real roleplayig game and nothing I have played outside of cthulhu has a roleplaying campaign any where near as good as EWI.
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Whats EWI?
Enemy Within
With WHFRP one look at the book and it was shelved. Just not my sort of game. Too many professions ect.
For me that is the beauty, you aren't hopeless tied to being a fighter etc, rather a real person who can decide what he/she wants to do. The profressions are the real beauty of the game...
My tastes are more rules lite systems with strong role playing elements.
The depends on the group, but for my moeny the strongest roleplaying games are Pendragon (though you have to play to the "characters rules/social position"), Cthulhu and Warhammer. You can't get much easier than % system like WFRP or Cthulhu, the rest of the rules are simply a guide... and with Pendragon the est way to advance is to aviod combat because you die easiely, in the EWI we played about 5 sessions with no combat for the Power Behind the throne.
DW is another one with a simple system and strong RP.
Agreed I love it!
I think its a case of different strokes for different folks. I only played Roll Monster and only a few times. After it took 2 hours real time to kill an orc sentry I bailed. The orc sentry was for all intents and purposes a throw away 'goon with gun' and not worthy of 2 hours of my life.
Absolutley right, I have never play Role Master, but I can advise steering clear of Sky Realms of Journe (?) the character gen took about 5 hours!
Cyberpunk 2020 was a good system as well. Except for netrunning, better running that as just like any other skill as opposed to something that takes that player into their own mini game and chews up hours of game time where everyone else just drinks all the beer and gets bored.
Other people might think all these systems are simplistic and direly need crit tables several thousand character archetypes and all the rest. Fair enough too, As I said different strokes.
I only played the old Box Set of cyberpunk but liked it, I read but never played Shadow run.
Re the crit tables, in WFRP we only used the big tables for Characters and big NPCs
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I you want a nice alternative to Pathfinder or D&D 3.5, have a look at Fantasycraft from Crafty Games. It has the 3.5 vibe, but it has a few ideas that I find appealing ( like Magic users having as many hit points as other classes and classes getting bonus dice to spend like fate points to help with failed rolls ). They also divide encounters into scenes. The group can replenishes hits and magic between the minor fights and be rested and ready for the grand finale. overall I like the feel of the rules and am dying to try them out with a group. Did I also mention that you can play a Dragon as a character and it balances out in power with the rest of the party.
Ciao
George
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With profession tables I personally would prefer not to have them. Either have a loose character archetype or an open system where you custom build the character you want. Foresight by T Leowald (you will never find it anymore) allowed you to build any sort of person you wanted. Very good system apart from it being a bit sheldon cooper in places. (Tony the guy who wrote it had a big science based brain and it showed.)
The current version of Traveller, from Mongoose, has a points-buy character creation system, as an alternative to the usual career method.
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Only just saw the thread. As to AD&D, it's first edition all the way. A wonderful toy chest that any group can use to make a fantastic game. It's loose enough that not every rule has to be used, but robust enough that one can make it as crunchy as they like. Every edition after 1st was either nerfed (2e/4e) or made ridiculously complicated (3e/pathfinder). If you like a Tolkienesque world, it's the way to go. If you dont have the books, you can get OSRIC for free.
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Outside of AD&D, WHFRP is a great game. Very different flavor than AD&D. DCC is also nice as a simplified version of 3e.
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More than four years gap between responses is some serious thread necromancy. Still, gives me an opportunity to plug 13th Age from Pelgrane Press, which wasn't even out back in 2012 and is arguably all the best elements of D&D 4E without the rules bloat. The setting alone is worth the price of admission, and many of the core ideas (the Icons and character relations to them, the escalation die, and your One unique Thing) are readily adaptable to any set of rules.
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More than four years gap between responses is some serious thread necromancy. Still, gives me an opportunity to plug 13th Age from Pelgrane Press, which wasn't even out back in 2012 and is arguably all the best elements of D&D 4E without the rules bloat. The setting alone is worth the price of admission, and many of the core ideas (the Icons and character relations to them, the escalation die, and your One unique Thing) are readily adaptable to any set of rules.
LOL I realized after I posted the second time :D
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Threadomancy has the benefit of bringing old absent LAFers back. Hi Doomhippie, nice to read you again! Hope you'll start visiting and posting again...
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Well, since the dead are now undead...
For me, were the wife to become interested again in FRPG, I would take white box OD&D, with supplements; bolt on the colorful/more logical elements of AD&D 1st, and resurrect our old Seattle years campaign.
Probably will win lottery first. And I don't gamble with my own money.
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I've got a couple of recommendations. First, Dragon Warriors. It's terrific - simple (character creation takes perhaps five minutes), smooth and terrifically evocative in its background.
Another great game - and a somewhat different one - is Ganesha Games' Tales of Blades and Heroes. Its huge strength is that it builds on a very successful skirmish-gaming engine. So, although the system is very simple, it works just as well as Song of Blades and Heroes when a fight breaks out. And I think that's actually quite unusual for RPGs - very often, their combat is more complex than a skirmish wargame but much less compelling.
The other thing that's a very strong mark in TBH's favour is that it's explicitly designed to be played with miniatures. That's not for everyone, of course, but it's probably very much for everyone on this forum! Character creation involves designing a PC using a simple points system, and it's suggested that you use a specific miniature as your starting point. That's the reverse of the norm, but it's a nice innovation - "I want to be this guy," rather than "Have you got a miniature that looks like this?".
If I were going for an optimal RPG experience, I'd probably use TBH with something very like the background of Dragon Warriors. Games, I find, improve immeasurably when a goblin is a tricksy, spell-weaving sprite rather than a Tolkien knock-off with the flavour drained out (as in many default RPG settings).
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The other thing that's a very strong mark in TBH's favour is that it's explicitly designed to be played with miniatures. That's not for everyone, of course, but it's probably very much for everyone on this forum!
That's true, but it's hardly unique to TBH. D&D 3.0, 3.5, and 4E all made minis (or at least maps and counters of some kind) effectively mandatory due to the nature of their combat systems. Pathfinder (which is pretty much D&D 3.75) is just as minis-oriented, with the same "combat becomes a tabletop sub-game" design philosophy. 4E was probably the peak of this style of thinking, and 5E has been a big step away from it.
13th Age (which I recommended earlier, and which might be considered D&D 4.5 in a lot of ways) goes back to a freeform combat system that doesn't require maps and minis but can benefit from them. Which is probably the best approach for an RPG in my book.
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Seeing as this thread has resurrected!
For retro clones I like Labyrinth Lord. Quite reasonable to buy from Lulu.
For more modern games Barbarians of Lemuria is a great system, based on a sword and sorcery setting. Cubicle 7s recent Lone Wolf game seems great, particularly for newcomers to roleplaying.
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That's true, but it's hardly unique to TBH. D&D 3.0, 3.5, and 4E all made minis (or at least maps and counters of some kind) effectively mandatory due to the nature of their combat systems. Pathfinder (which is pretty much D&D 3.75) is just as minis-oriented, with the same "combat becomes a tabletop sub-game" design philosophy. 4E was probably the peak of this style of thinking, and 5E has been a big step away from it.
Sure - and, apart from hearing that "recent" versions of the game have been more miniature-based, I confess to complete ignorance of any D&D systems apart from OD&D, Basic and first-edition AD&D (I only recently became aware that there was more than one edition!).
I suppose there might still be a distinction, though, along these lines: SBH is, for many people, the skirmish game of choice. But is any version of D&D the go-to game for many people for pure skirmish wargaming? I can't imagine that Otherworld Skirmish (and indeed SBH) would be so popular if those versions of D&D worked as well as miniature games. I could well be wrong, though!
13th Age (which I recommended earlier, and which might be considered D&D 4.5 in a lot of ways) goes back to a freeform combat system that doesn't require maps and minis but can benefit from them. Which is probably the best approach for an RPG in my book.
I've heard very good things about 13th Age. I gather it's being used - officially - with the Glorantha setting.
I tend to agree with you on the best approach. I've been thinking for a while about posting a topic here to ask people what they tend to do in practice. The obvious problem with the "pure" miniatures-based approach is that they tend to limit the imagination (even if only subliminally: "Hmm, what can I see in the cabinet to stock this dungeon with?"). Conversely, the problem with miniature-less gaming is that complex fights can be hard to manage, envisage and - most importantly - enjoy.
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One issue with minis in RPG's is they essentially remove lots of wiggle room for the GW while also tending to make the background setting for the action somewhat bland. (unless there is a trove of beautiful scenery and terrain painted up.)
It is a bit hard to have some handy hard cover the player can dive behind as a GM when the map and minis show no such thing.
Yes - that's exactly it. And that starts to dictate - and constrain - the adventure. The rooms are empty ... because ... because ... they were all looted centuries ago. Or because orcs disdain furniture ... or ... or ...
Of course, that sort of thing can sometimes be the mother of invention. But more often it makes things duller.
Last time we played TBH, we used the D&D dungeon floorplans, which worked pretty well, because there were lots of 2D furniture bits to be placed. But they're easily overlooked and are a sort of unsatisfactory aesthetic halfway house.
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I suppose there might still be a distinction, though, along these lines: SBH is, for many people, the skirmish game of choice. But is any version of D&D the go-to game for many people for pure skirmish wargaming?
Well, no, but it might have happened. The 2000-ish (was it 2001?) version of Chainmail from WotC was explicitly a minis skirmish game that used a simplified variant of the brand-new 3.0 rules, and it was launched to enormous critical acclaim and had a very good reception locally. Won best new minis rules of the year at GenCon (or was it Origins?) on release. And despite that, WotC cancelled the game and its metal minis line and replaced it with an even more streamlined rules set and the plastic prepaints of the D&D Miniatures line. And those sold in phenomenal numbers, and the rules were popular for years to come. Certainly reached a far wider audience than SBH ever has, and that wasn't entirely on the strength of the license.
I've heard very good things about 13th Age. I gather it's being used - officially - with the Glorantha setting.
Yes, there's a licensed Glorantha version, although I haven't had a chance to try it yet. From what I've heard (and what little I've seen in previews) it's doing a way better job of staying true to Chaosium's version than any of the other licensees have (looking at you, Mongoose). The Icon & relationship rules certainly fit the setting well, at least for heroquest level play.
You can read the mechanical parts of the core 13th Age rules here:
http://www.13thagesrd.com/
Regrettably that misses out on the setting and the designer notes and commentary, which is a big chunk of the coolness of the game as a whole. Still gives you some of the good stuff, and a fair idea of how the crunch of the game works. It is very much akin to an evolved D&D 4E, which may be a negative for many folks, but IMO it trims out the worst elements, touches up the good stuff, and adds some really clever innovations. Worth a look for use in D&D style dungeoncrawling with a bit more heroic gameplay (ie low level characters aren't super fragile).
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Another one I've been enjoying is Basic Fantasy you can download all the PDF's for free at http://www.basicfantasy.org/ (http://www.basicfantasy.org/) or buy them already printed dirt cheap via Amazon (at cost price). The Laughing Dragon scenario is a great scenario for a new party at Level 1.