One old school fantasy game I do not hear much about anymore but I thought was fairly popular in the day was Ysgard. Anyone still have it? Play it?

Quote from: DeadUematsuhere are a crop of old school products that I like: Talislanta, Atlantis, Palladium Fantasy 1st Edition, Tekumel, Wilderlands of High Fantasy, City State of the Invincible Overlord, Undermountain and Greyhawk Ruins (for the dungeon maps), Mazes and Minotaurs, B/X D&D, Castle and Crusades, Fantastic Treasures I and II, Monsters of Myth and Legend I, II, and III. I also like what I saw in Renegade Crowns and would totally use it for a WHQ game.

I can't tell for sure from your list, but if you don't have the AD&D core books, they're well worth getting, and certainly not a complete waste of your money. Especially because you can get most of them for dirt cheap at Half-price Books, online auctions, etc. And if you don't have it, AD&D1e DMG is like mainlining old-school.

EDIT: And if you like the old Mayfair Role-aids stuff, by all means check out their site. They sell bundles of it dirt-cheap now. I can't personally vouch for any of it, but I will probably order some before it's all said and done.

Also permit me to recommend TSR's Marvel Super Heroes Classic and Advanced Games. I have no indication you're interested in that genre, but they're certainly as 'old school' as Top Secret and Star Frontiers (also recommended in this thread.) The best part is that TSRMSH is in copyright limbo so you can find free scans and recompiled pdfs at a number of sites on the web. Just search Google.

Quote from: grubmanIn a nutshell, I find the game an insult, as it's mostly plagiarized from Moldvay basic/Expert D&D.  The "author" is extremely arrogant in all other regards.  The only thing it adds to basic D&D is a conversion table for to hit (compatible with D20)...although I made a similar conversion chart in about 5 minutes.  I also think it's butt-ugly.

Wow.  Ouch.

First of all... to plagiarize, I'd have to copy something.  Copying any text or tables from any game not under OGL would be plagiarizing.  I did no such thing.  Duplicating the die roll probabilities is, on the other hand, entirely legal in the US.  But I didn't do that either.  Compare the AB table to the BX to-hit table... it doesn't match.  Same with the thief abilities table (which I have been accused of copying before)... it doesn't match either.  In fact, it's not really all that close.  As far as plagiarizing text, other than OGL text from the SRD and a few other OGL documents, I've copied nothing.  I've also checked the contributed text (many parts were written by others) and so far as I can confirm, none of that is plagiarized either.

Now, I'm no judge of whether or not I'm "extremely arrogant."  I'd like to see a few examples of this.

Quote from: grubmanThe only reason I downloaded/printed a copy was because I was going to write some fantasy adventures for posting online for basic, and debating using the system...until I read the additions to the OGL in the back, basically saying that the author has to approve everything in your adventure, and everything becomes total open game content, including all your original writing and any original artwork.

Wow.  I can't believe that's how you read it.

The only thing I protect is the name "Basic Fantasy Role-Playing Game."  If you want to create game materials using the BFRPG Core Rules document, you may do so.  You can even sell it... but if you want to use the name "Basic Fantasy Role-Playing Game" or the logo graphic, you do have to comply with the Product Identity license.  This is intended to prevent commercial products from making money from my product name.  HOWEVER, we are now discussing opening this up, over on Dragonsfoot.org where the main project discussions take place.

Quote from: Ghost_FaceWithout any ability bonuses every 1st level character is better at Hiding than the Thief, and equal when it comes to Removing Traps.

In general, nobody can Hide like the Thief (though perhaps I need to explain this better in the core rules) and nobody can remove a trap except a Thief, except if the GM allows it (in which case the Thief should get a hefty bonus).  I'm not sure I'd EVER let a non-Thief open a lock.  Moving silently is the same as removing traps (if I allow it to the non-Thieves, I give the Thieves a bonus equal to the base chance I award to the non-Thieves).  I suppose I need to explain the whole situation better in the core rules; I am making revisions now, and I may try to make this clearer.

Quote from: Ghost_FaceIn fact it seems the only thing a thief is "guaranteed" to be better at than any other character(starting out) is climbing (which makes no sense when compared to his other abilities, and how common knowing how to climb is.).  Of course after a couple of levels...just like in C&C, this goes away.  What I personally don't like is that the Thief's Dex has no bearing on how good a thief he is in BFRPG.

ONLY a Thief can climb a relatively smooth wall.  Another thing I need to explain better.

Gah.  Back to work.