Hey Coach, thanks for the kind words! You know, it never stops feeling weird to hear somebody read my words out loud. 😂 You should wander over to our forum sometime and join us, we'd love to have you contributing material!

I loved this book... then fell in love with the community of fans, artists, writers, and editors behind it. Now I write books for them.

BFRPG is _such_ a good product! Really excited to see it get more coverage

I’ve run BFRPG for over two years and love it.

Basic Fantasy is a great game - truly a labor of love for the game. I also carry my character minis in a holder just like that. I enjoy your enthusiasm for the hobby.

I've been doing this for more than 40 years and your enthusiasm gets me excited all over again!

I ended up buying the BECMI Basic D&D Player and DM Guide (Red Box) and printing them out and putting them in a binder. I don't use the book, but it was primarily used as an educational and inspirational experience. I use Old-School Essentials and Basic Fantasy RPG more than those as they're actually available.

Good as always. You may be relatively new to the hobby, but I appreciated the advice you gave here, too. I still haven't looked much into BFRPG, but I've skimmed it and I love what the project does with free or at cost roleplaying material.

Subscribed! I stumbled across Basic Fantasy looking for something simple and customizable and it definitely fit the bill. Welcome to the hobby, I really dig your enthusiasm!

Oooh, you earned another sub. I will watch your career with great interest

OSR style usually has players starting off pretty weak against a harsh world. Pretty much how all the great fantasy books start. The classic storytelling technique of the "Hero's journey", where the protagonist receives a call to adventure, has some growth or transformation, meets a mentor or receives some aid, faces death and possibly dies, and so on. Human beings love this kind of story, and variations have been retold thousands and thousand of times. And classic D&D and these retroclones and OSR are such a good fit for that kind of "monomyth" adventure.

It's my rules of choice for my own homebrew world. Easy to modify, and tons of free expansions on the community forum.

Its great to get the perspective of a new player on old school games! I really like Basic Fantasy which I use alongside D&D Basic because the modern streamlining is just better. Thanks for the detailed review!!

Awesome video, and that's a cool mini!

You mentioned wanting to check out older D&D editions. What I would recommend if you want a free peek at the older systems are the various retroclones, as they clean up the organization and ambiguities. These three all have free PDFs and try to stick as closely to the originals as possible. OSRIC: AD&D 1st Edition For Gold & Glory: AD&D 2nd Edition Dark Dungeons: BECMI D&D Rules Cyclopedia Just an FYI, they are all going to be very similar. Up until 3rd Edition, all the previous versions of D&D were broadly compatible with each other. Anyway, I just randomly stumbled on your channel, and love to see the perspective of someone fresh to the OSR. I will absolutely be following your videos!

This is where I started. I've moved on to Rules Cyclopedia, but never forget where you came from. Looking forward to more stuff from you! Subbed. God bless!

You mention being interested in the history of D&D. You've got to get your hands on a copy of the 1st edition Advanced Dungeons and Dragons Dungeon Masters Guide written by co-creator Gary Gygax. It is jam packed with this legend's thoughts on, specifically D&D, but also broader fantasy role playing. So many ideas/opinions are impressive and insightful. Also, so many ideas/opinions are cranky old man head scratchers. And many ideas/opinions are transparent efforts to legally distinguish his intellectual property from competitors. It's an artefact of history in this great old hobby. Absolutely love Chris Gonnerman and his Basic Fantasy RPG. His releasing all of his written products for free, or physical copy at-cost, is both truly compassionate and incredibly generous. Chris Gonnerman clearly loves this hobby.

Hiya Coach Key, Loved your Review of Basic Fantasy RPG along with several of the other OSR games you reviewed. I have been playing TTRPGs since 1977 and after a while away from gaming started playing 5th edition. I got turned on to Basic Fantasy and some of the OTher OSR games last year and love their simplicity as I recall from my early days. I just wanted to say keep up the good work on your channel I love your style. HAPPY GAMING...

Hey, good review and glad you came up recommended. I can dig any channel that has passion about OSR systems. I'm also a huge enthusiast for the history of the RPG scenes, and a lot around D&D in general. Playing at the World and Dice Wizards are great books for the history of D&D in book form, and Secrets of Blackmoor and The Dreams in Gary's Basement are great documentaries focusing on the history of D&D and how it rose up. If you're interested in systems from the past, Old-School Essentials is a great update on the old B/X system, basically a word for word clone barring the text and manuscript errors, and some cleaning up on the phrasing. But that's a great look through a modern lens to a very well regarded transitory edition of the game. Definately subscribing, and looking forward to see more videos from you and watching your channel grow. Stay cool!

Congrats on your mini! I just started taking another look at this game since i first looked into it a few years ago. I didn't really get into it back then because I had a full plate of OSR already. I'm curious though about how it has changed what's in B/X and BECMI D&D. I personally enjoy a mixture of randomly allocating starting equipment and getting to buy some in addition. I used to love buying weird equipment in character creation but I'm both more lazy and enjoy more randomness nowadays 😅 Thanks for another great rpg review! I'm gonna start reading the BFRPG book right now. Good luck with your 5e game!

Great video - I recently have started into OSR style RPGs. Waiting for my copy of Basic Fantasy to come in the mail. Going to check out all your other videos - fun stuff, keep it up!

Enjoyed your video. Wish you the best of luck playing RPG’s.

Great video. Love your presentation. Subbed

Thanks for covering Basic Fantasy RPG!

I love Basic Fantasy but have not yet had a chance to play, though I have played many similar games like Old School Essentials, which is really the same thing. These are all modern takes on B/X DnD. Anyway, I love your videos and am excited to see what you explore next! Especially any live play games you might run!

Great channel. Much appreciated! BFRPG is brilliant.

I've been playing and running for around 25 years now. D&D and it's related games (Pathfinder and the OSR) are not really my cup of tea as I'm not really into level/class based games, but if I were going to run something in that vein it would definitely be Basic Fantasy! If you want to check out some other open and old school games of other types, I TOTALLY suggest Cepheus Engine (sci-fi, a open license recreation of Traveller) and OpenQuest (fantasy, an open license recreation of RuneQuest, sort of). Both are based on some of the earliest competitors to D&D (both hit around 1978ish) and both have completely different ways of doing things. I also recommend Shadowrun (4e is my fave, but a lot of folks like 3e), World of Darkness (my preference is for the 2004 edition, specifically Vampire the Requiem or Mage the Awakening), or the old West End Games Star Wars for some cool systems that use yet a different type of system, called a dice pool. No cheap options on those, however.

Another good overview. There are many cheep/free adventures for Basic Fantasy.

If you like old school D&D, then check out BECMI. Aside from the usual types of adventures, it also includes mass combat, maintaining a stronghold, attacking and defending a stronghold with seige combat, and pursuing immortality.

Your comment about finding out the DM path is for you is a tale as old as the game. People like you and me and all the others who are passionate enough to go out and make content about these games will always lean towards game mastering. If your anything like me, you pour over the pages of these books everyday you can and without being the DM, it would feel like your only experiencing 10% of what these games offer.

Dig your mindset and style

Basic fantasy is a real good game. Layout could be better, old school essentials is better organized. You cant beat the cost of basic fantasy.

I hope you are diving deep into this game. IMOHO it is way better than DND 5e.

What I love about basic fantasy is that you can get all the books for almost the same price as 1 5e hardcover book so about 15 to 1 ratio..😂

Basic Fantasy 3rd Edition vs 4th Edition is almost nothing. 4th edition was mostly created to change the license for copyright reasons, not gameplay. The games are the same. D&D tried changing their "Open Game License", which allowed other writers to use their game rules without owing D&D anything since the year 2000 when D&D created the Open Game License. Well, they tried changing that early in 2023, but later did a full 180 after a few weeks due to a whole bunch of hate thrown their way. However, trust was lost, so the Basic Fantasy writers (and a lot of others as well) decided to cut ties with D&D, so they had to go back over their rulebooks to get rid of anything that could get them sued for "plagiarism" for terms that D&D invented. FYI, nobody can copyright rules, just how it is written using terms like "Dungeon Master" or "Beholder" monster. Other games can use Game Judge and Evil Eyeball instead. That sort of thing.

I haven't played this yet but to me it seems a bit stuffy. I love the idea of open source gaming and old school rules but it is missing something. It seems to be missing that heart and soul of the original D&D classics. They have a few adventure modules out there but it doesn't seem to me that any of them work together as far as world building. I know they want to keep it basic and simple so that it is adaptable with other systems but they have been around many years now and they should really think about moving things forward over there. Think about original D&D and they were in this same funk for just 4-5 years when they realized this and started Greyhawk and Dragon Magazine and stuff like that to move the product forward. BFRPG has been around much longer and only have a few simple modules to show for it. I hope in the next edition, a bunch of them sit down together and hash out some detailed World Building sessions to get some movement with the game. I like how they started out with The Western Lands. Now, where is the Eastern, Southern and Northern? Add some more details, cities, regions, and lore to the game. GMs don't have to use that stuff but it is nice to have for some sense of cohesion between modules before too many independent modules are created. It is like a small company that has a great product but they struggle when growing from small to medium sized company. When you do that, you have to bite the bullet and just plow forward. It is time for change and to grow a little. They been around nearly 20 years now.