Basic Fantasy RPG Forums

Their is another way to put together a party. Thrown together during a zombie apocalypse. Good thinking Joe!

Fighting for survival, gotta get someone to 1xp so someone can turn cleric and wail on the zombi- oh crap they have ghouls?!

Plus you've got a narrative reason for not just getting the [carhorn] out of Dodge - Fantasy Zombie Apocalypse means Evil Necromancy. Find the source and stop the zombie horde from spreading across the world.

That sounds like fun. Who knew the character funnel would have such a siren call?

Wow! Didn't expect this kind of response when I posted this! Thanks guys!

To the questioners, I don't dislike DCC RPG particularly. It's more that I have a stock of old-school modules which I can run in Basic Fantasy off the top of my head, and that I'm familiar with the Basic Fantasy system. And my players don't like buying books.

Updated the initial post with a fillable character sheet and a slightly clearer and prettier version of the rules.

I think this is honestly the fastest run up to 3 pages I have seen on this site.

It looks like a fun method, but then again, first level in BFRPG (or BX or other old school editions) is already a meat grinder for survivability.

I generally play with ability score arrays so that players can arrange and play the kind of character they want. Nothing more frustrating for me than rolling over and over, and ending up settling for a sub-standard character of a class that I really had no real desire to play anyhow. I guess I could just play extra-bold leading to an early death, so that a new re-roll session can occur... but I would just rather be able to play immediately with my preferred choice. I know others have different opinions.

But, for what you have here... I definitely think you need to include the tables for occupations and a race table. Nobody can copyright a list of pseudo-medieval occupations, so long as you make some effort to rename and/or reorder/reorganize it so that it is not a direct lift from their documents.

when using table 1-1 how many d20 rolls do you get?

Do you just get to pick a weapon or do you roll for it? If either, how many items from that list? Or do you buy it which would be bad since rolling 5d12 for copper pieces isn't going to buy you anything except a club or a staff. Also, you have dagger listed twice and a sling stone is only d3. Dart, sling stone/bullet and anything else thrown/slung would get the Strength bonus to damage.

SmootRK wrote:I generally play with ability score arrays so that players can arrange and play the kind of character they want. Nothing more frustrating for me than rolling over and over, and ending up settling for a sub-standard character of a class that I really had no real desire to play anyhow. I guess I could just play extra-bold leading to an early death, so that a new re-roll session can occur... but I would just rather be able to play immediately with my preferred choice. I know others have different opinions.

Instead of playing around with the score arrays why not a point buy on the stats. I use that very regularly and most of my players get to build characters they want but none of them are uber characters either.

Metroknight wrote:

SmootRK wrote:I generally play with ability score arrays so that players can arrange and play the kind of character they want. Nothing more frustrating for me than rolling over and over, and ending up settling for a sub-standard character of a class that I really had no real desire to play anyhow. I guess I could just play extra-bold leading to an early death, so that a new re-roll session can occur... but I would just rather be able to play immediately with my preferred choice. I know others have different opinions.

Instead of playing around with the score arrays why not a point buy on the stats. I use that very regularly and most of my players get to build characters they want but none of them are uber characters either.

Arrays have the benefit of being both 'fair/equal' (as is point buy systems), as well as being about the easiest to use... unlike point buy where one must do calculations and various choices to finish using up any points in an efficient way. I don't hate point-buy, but just find a simple array to be much easier to use. My children (max age now is 9), even though very advanced academically, do not do well with the process of assigning ability scores via such methods.

Thanks for all your interest! To the questions:

Hywaywolf wrote:when using table 1-1 how many d20 rolls do you get?

Do you just get to pick a weapon or do you roll for it? If either, how many items from that list? Or do you buy it which would be bad since rolling 5d12 for copper pieces isn't going to buy you anything except a club or a staff. Also, you have dagger listed twice and a sling stone is only d3. Dart, sling stone/bullet and anything else thrown/slung would get the Strength bonus to damage.

You get d2 rolls on Table 1-1, as explained in the instructions. Characters gain a weapon from the Occupations Table (1-3, not included in this .pdf). I'm working on an OGL occupations table, hopefully should update the first post with it in the next few days.

Thanks for the rules corrections and typos; I'll incorporate those into my next revision!

SmootRK wrote:

Metroknight wrote:

SmootRK wrote:I generally play with ability score arrays so that players can arrange and play the kind of character they want. Nothing more frustrating for me than rolling over and over, and ending up settling for a sub-standard character of a class that I really had no real desire to play anyhow. I guess I could just play extra-bold leading to an early death, so that a new re-roll session can occur... but I would just rather be able to play immediately with my preferred choice. I know others have different opinions.

Instead of playing around with the score arrays why not a point buy on the stats. I use that very regularly and most of my players get to build characters they want but none of them are uber characters either.

Arrays have the benefit of being both 'fair/equal' (as is point buy systems), as well as being about the easiest to use... unlike point buy where one must do calculations and various choices to finish using up any points in an efficient way. I don't hate point-buy, but just find a simple array to be much easier to use. My children (max age now is 9), even though very advanced academically, do not do well with the process of assigning ability scores via such methods.

I think all these score generation methods are perfectly fine, but I think rolling works best for this system. One of the advantages of a character funnel is rapidly generating a wide variety of characters, many of them distinctly sub-optimal, and then testing them out. Point buy would slow this down a great deal (tho arrays might be faster).