[This has been sitting in my drafts forever, and I updated it a while ago to mention newer products. Rather than leave this hidden in my drafts, I thought I’d let it see the light of day.]
Low Fantasy Gaming (LFG) is a free OSR Clone that takes a bit of the original RPG and adds in various tweaks to game mechanics with advantage/disadvantage, skills, exploits (feats?), etc. and limits the availability of magic.
It focuses on humans as the only player race, but has options for other races. Each class is a sort of template for a general idea that has the ability to tweak it to the player’s preference. Some things are left open for new levels to work out between the player and the GM, inviting looking at other RPG’s for ideas. This section acknowledges that this part of the rules is in a perpetual play test state.
There is both a table of contents and an index, but neither is hyperlinked. Still nice to have the basic features in a free product. If the rules are ever for sale, I suggest links in contents and index.
In the credits, several of the artists’ websites are linked. I like that, in case I ever manage to have a project that needs art. It also helps the artist by letting others see their other work.
It is the type of ruleset that is in some ways a setting, but there is no defined setting. One can easily take Robert E. Howard’s map of Hyperboria and place their campaign in it, or develop their own campaign world from scratch.
There are magic user characters, but their access to and use of magic is limited.
Levels are capped at 12th level. Each class gets some sort of base and followers at the appropriate level.
Overall, this gives one an interesting combination of mechanics and options. If you want a simple set of rules, or like collecting free RPGs, check it out. At 188 pages, roughly 80 pages are for players, and the rest for the GM.
As I look at the draft of this post I started in 2016, I am reminded of Knave [Affiliate Link], the new rules light RPG from Ben Milton, creator of Maze Rats [Affiliate Link]. The older I get, the less patience I have for fiddling with and arguing over rules. Let the GM make a ruling so we can get on with the game.
