Tuesday, April 14, 2020

Castles & Crusades - D&D Alternatives, Episode 4

In Episode 4 of my D&D Alternatives series, I talk about Castles & Crusades which is an old-school hommage to Advanced Dungeons & Dragons but with cleaned up modern game mechanics The C&C the Player's Handbook is also currently free to download right now from the Troll Lord Games web store, so this is no reason not to check it out.

Castles & Crusades was one of the first old school games published in the modern era under the Open Game License. It uses a single d20 mechanic for all attribute checks across the game, so it eliminates a lot of the messy mechanics sometimes associated with D&D and AD&D retro-clones.

In addition to Castles & Crusade, Troll Lord Games published numerous 5th Edition Adventure modules for Dungeons & Dragons 5th Edition, which are absolutely fantastic and worth checking out, especially A1 Assault on Blacktooth Ridge (also part of this awesomely inexpensive bundle).


Wednesday, April 8, 2020

Adventures in Middle Earth and The One Ring - D&D Alternatives

2022 UPDATE: The One Ring is now back in print with its second edition. Adventures in Middle Earth is currently still out of print, but may be coming (somewhat) soon.

In the 3rd episode of my impromptu series, I explore two RPGs set in the Tolkien's Lord of the Rings universe -- The One Ring and Adventures in Middle Earth

Both RPGs are low fantasy / low magic to match the narrative feel of the The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. The One Ring has a mechanic based on d6's and a d12, while Adventures in Middle Earth uses the familiar D&D 5th Edition / d20 mechanics. Both systems are wonderful, although The One Ring has a bit less power creep than its 5th Edition translation. Adventures in Middle Earth has many ideas and mechanics that can be adapted to your standard D&D 5th Edition game or other d20-based low fantasy game.

If you're a fan of the Lord of the Rings and D&D-style fantasy, you absolutely need to pick these offerings while they are still available at retail prices (they are now out of print). See the video for what I love about these two games and how they differ.

The One Ring RPG - Books / PDFs
Adventures in Middle Earth - Books (currently out of print)

Other Owlbear musings