Dungeonslayers

Oct 10 2012

Not excited about D&D Next? Then check out these cool alternatives…

D&D Next This morning I had a conversation on Twitter about the fact that bloggers don’t really seem to be excited about D&D Next anymore and what alternatives to D&D I would recommend. Since 140 characters are always a bit too short to explain things thoroughly I decided to turn this into a post.

When I read the first playtest rules WotC provided us with I was positively surprised. D&D Next feels more like a retro clone with some 3E elements than D&D 4th Edition, which was a welcome change from my point of few. I was cautiously excited about D&D Next back then. My excitement waned WotC stated that D&D Next was still very far from release and the way they conducted playtest surveys worried me. I felt they just answered wrong and totally irrelevant questions. But that’s probably subject for another post. What matters is that at this moment I don’t need to get my hopes up for D&D Next when there are so many cool games out there to play.

Since we are looking for alternatives for D&D I will talk about games that allow you to run games in the fantasy genre. A list of all possible alternatives would be beyond the scope of that post. Check out the review category here on the blog for some examples.

WR&M Let’s start with some free games. I hope you don’t mind I start with the game I designed myself: Warrior, Rogue & Mage. WR&M is a rules-light roleplaying game that uses the iconic classes of the fantasy genre as attributes. The system itself is actually classless and allows you to create a wide variety of characters. Aside from the 40-paged core rulebook there are a couple of supplements that expand on the rule system. The game can be downloaded for free from my Stargazer Games site.

Another game I wholeheartedly recommend is d6 Fantasy. I fell in love with the d6 System back in the day, when a friend introduced WEG’s Star Wars Roleplaying Game to us. D6 Fantasy is basically a variant of the Star Wars ruleset tailored for the fantasy genre. The d6 System or more precisely “OpenD6”  is now available under the OGL and d6 Fantasy, d6 Space, and d6 Adventure are now available for free on RPGNow. The d6 System is not really that crunchy, but if you prefer your rules to be ultra-lite check out MiniSix, which is also available for free.

I also have to mention Dungeonslayers created by my good friend Christian Kennig. For the longest time this old-fashioned German roleplaying game was only available in German or in the old 3rd Edition. But luckily the 4th Edition which greatly expands on the original game without making the rules more complex (the core rules are still about 20 pages long) are available for free for a while now. If you are looking for an old-school experience using modern rules, you should check it out.

Ok, I wanted to focus on non-D&D stuff but I think I should still mention that there’s a plethora of D&D retro clones out there and usually the PDF version of the rules are free. I am not really an expert in this subject, but I like both Lamentations of the Flame Princess and Swords & Wizardry.

WFRP When it comes to commercial games, there are a few titles I usually recommend. If you have the chance to pick up a copy of Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay 1st Edition (which has been out-of-print for ages now), don’t hesitate. It’s still one of my favorite games to date. The core rulebook really includes everything you need to play (aside from dice of course) and even though the system has its issues it’s perfectly playable. WFRP 1E’s version of the Old World is very grim and gritty and IMHO a welcome change to most squeaky-clean high fantasy settings. Check out this post to learn about the differences between the three editions of WFRP.

I’ve heard a lot of good things about Burning Wheel and Barbarians of Lemuria. I haven’t played either and I only own the latter, but I still wanted to mention both. What I love about BoL is that it’s the perfect Sword & Sorcery game. If I ever had to run a game inspired by Conan I would probably use BoL. Another cool Sword & Sorcery RPG is Shadow, Sword & Spell by my friend Richard Iorio of Rogue Games. The 12° System it uses has its quirks but its definitely easy to play and run. A big plus is the fact that the setting has been clearly influenced by H.P. Lovecraft’s stories.

Cthulhu Dark Ages If you are a fan of percentile dice systems, I can recommend Legend by Mongoose. It’s their latest version of the Runequest system and works pretty well. I have to admit that especially the combat is a bit crunchy for my tastes and I definitely recommend the use of a good GM screen to make things easier for the GM. But if you can handle D&D 3.5E or Pathfinder, Legend should pose no problems for you. The PDF version of Legend sets you back just $1 and all the supplements are pretty reasonably priced as well, so it’s definitely worth a look. I also thought about using Chaosium’s Cthulhu Dark Ages for running a fantasy game. This might sound odd at first, but I definitely think it should work.

Last but not least there are a lot of generic games out there that should handle the fantasy genre pretty well. GURPS comes to mind as well as Savage Worlds Deluxe, and Basic Roleplaying by Chaosium. The latter is actually pretty close to the aforementioned Legend but suited for all genres.

There are of course countless other great fantasy games out there that you could check out while you’re waiting for WotC to get D&D Next done. Listing all of them would be an almost impossible task, but I ask you, dear readers, to post your thoughts on the subject in the comments below. What non-D&D fantasy games do you recommend and why?

By • Advice, Call of Cthulhu, D&D Next, D&D4e, D6, Dungeonslayers, GURPS, Other Systems, Random musings, RPG, Savage Worlds, WHFRP, WR&M • 11

Jul 2 2012

New “Fanworks” for Dungeonslayers

imageZombieslayers It’s a great time for Dungeonslayers fans right now. Just a few days ago the English version has been released as a free PDF and now there are already two new fan creations available.

The first fan creation is Zombieslayers, a 10-paged PDF, that provides players and GMs with new rules to run modern day zombie games using the Dungeonslayer core rules. It even allows you to easily convert zombies from your favorite movie, TV series or computer game to DS. The original concept was actually by Christian Kennig himself, but Daniel Vallée brought Zombieslayers into it’s current form.
Look and layout are similar to the other DS supplements and it’s definitely worth a look, especially if you are into the Zombie Apocalypse genre.

The second fan creation is Valngress – City of Ruins, which is a 16-paged sandbox setting for Dungeonslayers. The setting has been first announced back in 2010 but obviously it has been in development hell for quite some time. Luckily Marcus Bone finally finished the setting recently. Even though the booklet is only 16 pages long it contains pretty detailed descriptions of the ruined city of Valngress and even some guidelines on how to adapt existing Dungeon-2-Go adventures to run them using Valngress and a fully-fledged introductory adventure.

Both “Fanworks” can be downloaded for free from the official Dungeonslayers site.

By • Dungeonslayers, Freebies, News & Reviews, Other Systems, RPG • 4

Jun 27 2012

Dungeonslayers 4th Edition out now!

newsds4outnow It was in November 2008 when I first wrote a short post about a German RPG I stumbled upon. This game was Dungeonslayers and I guess Stargazer’s World may actually have been the first English-language RPG blog that noticed the game at the time. The fact that I am German myself may of course have played a role in this. ;)

Alas there was no English version at the time, so I offered the author Christian Kennig to start the translation myself. Quickly a few other community members jumped onto the bandwagon and in March 2009 we were able to release the English version of Dungeonslayers 3.5.

Over the next months DS had been translated into several other languages and finally in 2010 Christian Kennig and the German Uhrwerk Verlag released a 160-paged print version of DS 4th edition. The softcover books were quickly sold out, and a few months later a second printing was released – this time as a boxed set that contained the rule book, a tutorial for new players, and a huge map of the setting.

The 4th edition was a huge improvement on the 21-paged 3.5 edition. Even though the page count increased by almost 8 times the core rules aren’t much longer than in earlier editions and the game is still 99% compatible to its predecessor. But aside from that a lot of improvements have been made: the 4th edition includes three introductory adventures, new hero classes, new mechanics, more detailed spells and monsters, awesome artwork and even a complete setting to play in.

Alas it too almost two more years until the game was finally translated into English. And the new publishing studio Chronicle City which is lead by Angus Abranson will release a print version later this year (you can preorder the book here). The PDF version is of course free and licensed under a Creative Commons license.

The translation team did a great job with the translation. From my experience with the translation of DS 3.5 I know how hard such a job can be. Alas there are a few things that can cause issues when you switch from DS 3.5 to DS 4. The new translation team decided to change a few attribute and abilities. What was Toughness in DS 3.5 is now Constitution. Agility is now Mobility and Reflexes is now Agility. I am sure they had their reasons for these changes, but I fear it may lead to some confusion at the game table. From what I’ve seen these are the only major changes from the old translation. But this is just a minor quibble.

If you enjoy modern games with an old-school flair you definitely should check out Dungeonslayers 4th Edition!

By • Dungeonslayers, Just my two cents, News & Reviews, Other Systems, RPG • 0

May 22 2012

German Roleplaying Games

DSA Repeatedly people have asked me to write an article about German roleplaying games. I have to admit I avoided to write this post for a long time, mainly because I don’t feel that closely connected to the German RPG industry. In the last twenty years or so I mainly played English-language RPGs or translations of English-language RPGs. I played Das Schwarze Auge (aka The Dark Eye) once and I never played Midgard, even though I own the books. The only German RPG that I play often is Dungeonslayers.

Ok, let’s start by the most successful German pen & paper roleplaying game: Das Schwarze Auge. It’s first edition has been released in 1984 and was written by Ulrich Kiesow. I think it’s safe to say that DSA is in Germany what D&D is to Americans. The vast majority of German players have played DSA and in many cases it’s the only RPG they ever played.

DSA is currently available in it’s Fourth Edition which is supposedly much more flexible in terms of character creation. But from what I’ve heard the rules are also much more complex. But far more complex than the rules is the official setting of DSA: Aventurien (aka Arkania).

Over the years countless supplements have been released that provide the GM with a ridiculous amount of details. As someone put it on Google+ recently: You can actually look up the name of the pets of every innkeeper in Aventurien if you wish to do so. This might be a exaggeration, but it’s really a slight one.

This could actually be a good thing, but in reality it makes it very hard for new gamers get into the game. From what I’ve gathered a majority of DSA fans actually cherishes that level of detail and changing anything to fit your campaign is frowned upon. Most published DSA adventures also made railroading into an art form. Players are not meant to influence the story too much and obviously the majority of DSA fans is happy with that.

Again I have to admit I am no DSA player myself and some of the things I wrote may come from my skewed perspective. I’ve talked to a lot of people that actually played DSA (sometimes for many years) and I am just repeating what they said. Perhaps someone with a deeper knowledge of the game can help to clear up some misconceptions in the comments below.

Cover of Midgard 4th Edition The second most well-known German RPG is Midgard. Even if the name suggests it, it doesn’t have anything to do with Norse mythology or Wolfgang Baur’s upcoming campaign setting for Pathfinder and AGE. Midgard actually predates DSA by 3 years, which actually surprised me. I always thought DSA was the first major German RPG. But that shows how much I know. ;)

My love affair with Midgard was a very short one. A friend of mine loves the system and kept telling me about his Midgard gaming group. So one day I caved in an ordered the three core rulebooks. A few days later I got three very nice-looking hardcover books. Alas my joy ended when I started reading the rules. Midgard – even in it’s 4th edition – feels like a very old game. And it is pretty complex. What makes things even worse is that the designers love to use abbreviations before explaining them.

Some time later I made the mistake of buying the Perry Rhodan roleplaying game based on the Midgard rules. If you are interested to learn how this worked out, check out this post. Let’s just say that Midgard is not my cup of tea.

Cover of DS 3rd Edition A game that I actually like a lot is Dungeonslayers. Yes, the name sounds a bit weird, especially since you don’t slay any dungeons in that game. Dungeonslayers was created by Christian Kennig only a few years ago and is available for free in PDF format in various languages. I stumbled upon it in 2009 (check my playtest report from back then) and immediately fell in love with it. It has an old school charm even though it’s a modern game and even though the name implies a focus on hack and slay it’s a fully-fledged roleplaying game that allows everything from dungeon romps to a campaign focused on mystery or intrigue.

The current 4th edition was the first one to be released in print and was a smash hit. The first printing was sold out in no time. The second printing was actually released as a boxed set that includes the softcover rulebook and additional materials like an introduction for new players.

While I doubt that even Dungeonslayers can topple DSA from it’s throne as Germany’s most successful RPG, I think it has good chances to make second place if it hasn’t reached that position already.

Of course these three games are only the tip of the iceberg. In recent years the German RPG scene has been quite active. But for some reason it’s still not as vibrant as the English-speaking RPG community. But from what I’ve seen in the past years this might be about to change.

By • Dungeonslayers, Other Systems, Random musings, RPG • 6

Mar 13 2012

Chronicle City to publish English edition of Dungeonslayers

mapbreaker For some of you this might already be old news, but I thought it would still make sense to share the news here. Chronicle City, the new British games publisher set up by Angus Abranson (formerly of Cubicle 7), will be publishing the English edition of Dungeonslayers 4th Edition.

As with the German original, the PDF version will be available for free, and there will be a softcover print-edition in the next few months. In the press release Chronicle City, the German publisher Uhrwerk Verlag and Dungeonslayer’s author Christian Kennig also mention a soundtrack CD which is obviously in the works.

If you want to learn more about Dungeonslayers check out the official site.

By • Dungeonslayers, News & Reviews, Other Systems, RPG • 0

Feb 1 2012

Dungeonslayers: First sneak peek at the 4th Edition

DS4 Characters Reports that the English version of Dungeonslayers 4 is vaporware are highly exaggerated. DS 4 is alive and well and Christian Kennig has released the updated character creation as a teaser today!

The 10-paged PDF contains the character creation rules, hints at the new hero classes that you can pick after reaching level 10 and gives you the opportunity to check out the artwork and layout of the upcoming book.

By the way, the German version of the game is available in a very cool boxed set, or as a free PDF version. So if you can speak German, why not check it out now?

By • Dungeonslayers, Freebies, Other Systems, RPG • 1

Aug 1 2011

Updated Dungeonslayers website

It seems the English version of the 4th edition of the old-fashioned role-playing game Dungeonslayers is finally nearing completion and to properly celebrate this, Christian Kennig has updated the DS website accordingly:

dungeonslayers.com

If you haven’t done so yet, you should definitely give DS a try. Although its name might be a bit weird, it’s a really interesting fantasy roleplaying game with an old-school charm.

By • Dungeonslayers, News & Reviews, Other Systems, RPG • 1

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