Post by Athkethin on Aug 13, 2016 19:19:22 GMT -7
I don't know if anybody else heard about or backed the Dungeonesque Kickstarter, but the first round of PDFs just went out to backers. The basic idea of the product is recreating the feel of the classic red box and white box D&D sets using streamlined 5e rules.
The classes available are basically (Life) Cleric, Basic Fighter (its class abilities most closely resemble the Champion, but it also has some class options and abilities that are feats in standard 5e), (Thief) Rogue, and (Evoker) Wizard. Race options are Human, Dwarf, Elf, Halfling, and Half-elf. None of them seem to exactly mirror any subraces from standard 5e (but I could be wrong on that). It has some reworked Backgrounds and an awesome new aspect of character creation called Backstory, which provides Friend, Family, Foe and Flame; that is, someone you trust, someone very close to you, a nemesis, and a desire.
Warning: huge chunks of this book are copied verbatim from the Player's Handbook. That makes the game runnable without owning the PHB, but also makes a lot of it redundant if you already own that book. Which most people buying this set would. There are also some typos and obvious mistakes (the same table printed in two different locations, a cantrip list duplicated, mentions of a Druid even though no such class exists, etc), though I expect that these will be cleared up in revisions to the documents.
The real value to my mind as a Thule Player is in the GM's Guide, which includes a ton of stuff that is completely different form the DMG. There are a ton of awesome charts and lists of houserules one could implement to make a campaign feel more old-school or Sword and Sorcery-ish (some of which are in the DMG, but whatever). For example, a suggestion for level advancement is (<desired level> +1) sessions, so it would take two sessions to reach level 2, another four sessions to reach level 3, another five sessions to reach level 5, etc. Rules for running big mobs manageably (including a suggestion that is basically the 4e minions), running complex scenes by creating a montage, the list goes on. There is a completely different take on treasure distribution, tips on converting material form older editions, encounter tables (!), an encounter twists table, a hit locations table (which it recommends you use if a character drops to 0 HP but isn't killed an recovers), blah blah blah blah blah.
Anyways, when it hits Drive Thru RPG or whatever, check it out. Seriously, I'd say the DM book is worth the price of admission alone, - and it's only 60 pages long (30 if you remove the Bestiary!).
The classes available are basically (Life) Cleric, Basic Fighter (its class abilities most closely resemble the Champion, but it also has some class options and abilities that are feats in standard 5e), (Thief) Rogue, and (Evoker) Wizard. Race options are Human, Dwarf, Elf, Halfling, and Half-elf. None of them seem to exactly mirror any subraces from standard 5e (but I could be wrong on that). It has some reworked Backgrounds and an awesome new aspect of character creation called Backstory, which provides Friend, Family, Foe and Flame; that is, someone you trust, someone very close to you, a nemesis, and a desire.
Warning: huge chunks of this book are copied verbatim from the Player's Handbook. That makes the game runnable without owning the PHB, but also makes a lot of it redundant if you already own that book. Which most people buying this set would. There are also some typos and obvious mistakes (the same table printed in two different locations, a cantrip list duplicated, mentions of a Druid even though no such class exists, etc), though I expect that these will be cleared up in revisions to the documents.
The real value to my mind as a Thule Player is in the GM's Guide, which includes a ton of stuff that is completely different form the DMG. There are a ton of awesome charts and lists of houserules one could implement to make a campaign feel more old-school or Sword and Sorcery-ish (some of which are in the DMG, but whatever). For example, a suggestion for level advancement is (<desired level> +1) sessions, so it would take two sessions to reach level 2, another four sessions to reach level 3, another five sessions to reach level 5, etc. Rules for running big mobs manageably (including a suggestion that is basically the 4e minions), running complex scenes by creating a montage, the list goes on. There is a completely different take on treasure distribution, tips on converting material form older editions, encounter tables (!), an encounter twists table, a hit locations table (which it recommends you use if a character drops to 0 HP but isn't killed an recovers), blah blah blah blah blah.
Anyways, when it hits Drive Thru RPG or whatever, check it out. Seriously, I'd say the DM book is worth the price of admission alone, - and it's only 60 pages long (30 if you remove the Bestiary!).
