Wednesday, February 15, 2012

Searchers of the Unknown, Impressions

Ok, how many of you have checked this out? I think I'm in love. I pulled out pages 5, 8, 9, and 13, and combined them into a new pdf. That is my basic fantasy SotU, and it fits on both sides of a single sheet (printed in booklet).

See, I often jump the fence that separates rules-lite from rules-medium (I rarely dabble in anything heavier than medium anymore). They each scratch a particular itch for me. Lite demands more system work, things like monsters, spells, etc. Medium leaves me more free to do campaign work, settings, etc. But, Lite doesn't place its own demands on setting work. And so it goes.

For now, though, I'm really digging this little game. It's not simply a distillation. The author seems to have said "If a stat line is good enough for monsters and NPCs, why can't it work for PCs, too?" This required some changes to mechanics and subsystems. These changes are simple, and dare I say it, elegant. That is a word that is currently much overused, but in this case deserved.

I love what I've seen here. It makes me want to extract the stat line from every OD&D monster I can get my hands on. It makes me want to create books of spells, waiting to be found. It makes me want to create rare and mysterious NPC classes to tease players with. It makes me want to create. It makes me want to imagine the hell out of things. And that, my friends, that inspiration, is a rare and marvelous gift.

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