Blood, Death, Satan & Metal

As a huge fan of LotFP and its d6 skill system, I wanted to take a look at one of the other most popular and celebrated skill systems. Third Edition Dungeons & Dragons d20 system was a turning point in game design, in my opinion- it changed most things to d20 rolls, had tight tactical rules, ascending AC, and a bunch of other stuff. Probably most importantly, the Open Game License, without which we wouldn't have the OSR. But the skills. Let's look at the skills. I'll be breaking this down into several categories, comparing the LotFP system to the 3e/Pathfinder system, and awarding points . Spoiler, LotFP wins, big fucking surprise. But this isn't a contest, it's an analysis (with a stupid point thing).  Number and Function of Skills The LotFP skill system has a lean 10 skills, with Refs encouraged to create their own as needed. The 3e system has a plethora of skills (I list 38 here. Pathfinder has 28 according to paizo.com, but that's still a lot ).

This free RPG day I grabbed my stuff and headed out to Black & Read Books  in Arvada, Colorado. I took LotFP and Mutant Crawl Classics, and ended up running MCC after playing a Starfinder one-shot. I'd never played it before, and thought it would be fun. Afterwards, I grabbed the adventure, and I'll be giving it away, postage included, to somebody. The adventure is basically the sci-fi version of those We Be Goblins  adventures they've been putting out. The goblin FRPG day adventure is for level 6 gobbos now, which I assume means it's the 6th year running. Who the hell plays a level 6 one-shot game? Anyway, this is apparently the launch of a new yearly tradition, with these considerably less cute Stitch knockoffs instead of the little green gobbos. Get em, Disney. Make them bleed. Skitter Shot is for 4 first level characters, and pre-gens are provided in the back of the book, with full-color character illustrations. Pretty nice. It would have been better if

So I decided I wanted to make all saves in my game use d6 instead of d20; then somebody pointed out Swords and Wizardry has a simple system that gives each class a single save. It's something I had considered including, but didn't want to destroy the sacred cow of the 5 save system in the same post I destroyed the d20 roll. But it's a great idea! Give each class their save- they all progress at the same rate (1/level) anyway under S&W, which of course fits well with my math. Every 3 levels, they gain a point. Some of the classes get bonuses to certain categories of saves (Magic-Users versus Magic and Magical Devices, Thieves versus Devices, for example). Easy. All I had to do was make sure it was faithful to LotFP's starting values, which I did by finding the average of the 5 saves at level 1 for each class, then adjusting that to my d6 ranges. Also, Swords & Wizardry uses race in addition to class, so Dwarfs, Elves and Halflings don't have a save

When a group comes together to game we all want different things. Some want a story, some want a challenge, some want a social experience. When those needs are met, and more importantly when the group aligns and interacts in a way when they are met for as many people as possible, that's when you have a great game. Much has been said and written about how this happens- but don't worry, I'm here now to solve the entire thing for all time. All games are unified by certain principles. The principles that some people think are completely anathema to certain playstyles are actually not, they just require more thought or more communication about how the mechanics function as part of the game.  Now a game like Ten Candles where burning and putting out candles are the methods of marking time and determining the story's stakes are very foreign to drawing lines on graph paper and rolling funny dice, but there's no reason you couldn't have a hell of a good time lighting c