What the heck am I doing back with Basic Fantasy RPG on my desk and digging back into that game system? In short, I am looking to run an introductory dungeon game for a newbie player in my face-to-face group and Basic Fantasy is one of the best all-round retroclones of olden days fantasy roleplaying that I know about. It’s also holiday week and I tend to go do weird stuff when I have spare time.
In recent days I have travelled back in time to 1984 and explored Fighting Fantasy, then on into 1985 to explore Dragon Warriors. I took a brief turn back to GURPS and worked a little on an introductory Basic Dungeon GURPS and then, the other night, thought about Basic Fantasy RPG. One of the best things about Basic Fantasy is the open source ethos and the fact that it’s a pretty complete package available at cost in print.
Having re-read the book, I have taken some advice from The Angry GM and decided to plunge into setting up a new campaign powered by Basic Fantasy starting with an initial adventure. I stole the beginning premise that Angry notes and altered it to fit my own vision. I find that treating this as a potential new campaign excites me far more than handling it as a one-shot adventure.
There is something compelling about the idea of returning to a D&D-type game and whole-heartedly delving into the subgenre with abandon. We’ve been watching old movies with Harryhausen animation lately and I found myself nostalgic for traditional quests and a mix of interesting creatures. As Angry notes:
“…there’s some GMs who refuse to use monster stats and traps and treasures and plot ideas that come from their game’s published rulebooks. The rulebooks they paid hundreds of dollars for. The s$&% in the book’s perfectly good. Use it.”
Basic Fantasy might be free in .PDF and only sold at cost in print, but it’s still full of “perfectly good” stuff. Sometimes I feel like I’m so in pursuit of some unattainable high goal of roleplaying bliss that I forget how much fun a simple quest with some straight-forward monsters and a cool treasure can be.
Game on!
Roleplay Rescue’s Blog 
Your last sentence in this post really hit home with me. I feel the same way. One of the hardest lessons I’ve had to learn over my gaming years is not to try too hard to find “perfect.” Great fun can be had in the simpler stories and quests. Glad you’re returning to Basic Fantasy. B/X and its clones are my favorite permutation of D&D (OSE is my favorite rules set, currently), and not just because my love for the hobby started with that rules set. I’ve come back to it because of its simplicity and ease of play. Excellent post, Che! Thank you for sharing your thoughts.
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