It's our newest banner ad. Apparently this is a newer edition, but the game itself has been around for a while now.

Anyone played it?  How does it do, as far as being an OSR game set in cave-man days?

Love the concept.

Never heard of it. The concept sounds fun.

I did check out the first edition and thought it was too close to conventional D&D without enough changes and flavour to match the setting and concept. Perhaps this new edition does that more.

Oh sweet, my game got a thread!
To answer Voros, the game is mechanically basically the same (there are a few tweaks to how you roll characters and morale rules). Most of the new stuff is GM-side so you can run the setting easier.
Really, it started out as LotFP houserules but sort of spiraled out of control from there, so yeah, it's very much DnD mechanically. And, in terms of theme, I very much wanted 'ice age DnD' rather than to veer into dramatically different territory: games like Wurm do that very well alread. All the stuff that's changed (such as flesh and grit, the stuff that gets you XP, the saves, the way preparing spells is handled and so on) got changed to reflect the way I wanted the game to play, but at the same time, I didn't want to reinvent the wheel.
I think there's a certain value in having structures like the six attributes, levels, spell slots and so on. It means (in theory) that you can go through the game and see what's different to the standard skeleton which makes the focus of the game easier to spot. Plus, mostly, the structures used in D&D work fine.
So, yeah, that's really my thinking. Your mileage may vary, of course.

I'll take a look at the new edition. It wasn't the base D&D mechanics that I was referring to, levels, hps and spells slots are fine, I just didn't find the magic or flavour was distinct enough. It is a great idea for an OSR setting though.

It reads well, and I had the opposite reaction to Voros, I thought it was very well suited to the setting and quite unique in flavor.

However, I have not had a chance to run it.

Are there any changes to the magic system? Are the spells different?

So, the spell list is modeled on the one from LotFP with a few additions and then massively trimmed (12* at each rank rather than 20). Quite a lot have been tweaked (either mechanically or in flavour) to fit a stone-age setting better, and a few have lotfp-esque 'weird fantasy' fluff as well.


For magicians (your MU equivallent) spells don't have a spellbook and are instead recorded as cave-paintings or similar. When in their sanctum (the place with the cave paintings) the magician can spend a turn to cast a spell recorded there. They can also mostly-cast it and leave it memorised to finish casting later, which uses traditional vancian spell-slots.
Magicians can do experimental magic, using spells to do weird things that aren't in the normal spell mechanics, but that carries a risk of something going horribly wrong. There are a few random tables for exactly what goes wrong, ranging from 'it starts raining honey' to 'the magician's head explodes, 2d6 damage to everybody nearby'.
Researching spells, binding spells into items (which work like scrolls) and so on don't use 'this many GPs worth of ingredients'. Instead, there's a random table of different specific ingredients, such as animal parts, types of stone and so on: you roll up which ingredients you need and then getting them is an adventure.

Mystics (your cleric equivalent), don't use this system. Instead, they make a Charm roll to see if their prayers are good enough to convince their patron to help them: if it is, they cast their spell. If not, their patron makes demands of them. There is a random table, with results such as 'you can't cast spells until I get a blood sacrifice' and 'I need you to perform ritual ablutions every day from now on, or else no spells for you'. In this way, the more spells a Mystic tries to cast, the more restrictions their deity will place on them and so the more religious they will get.
Mystics know a finite number of spells that are the only ones their patron grants them. Spells known are randomized; the idea is you work out what your patron is like based on what spells they're granting you.




*to avoid confusion, spells have ranks, characters have levels. More games should do this.

Well, it's one of my all-time favorite OSR RPGs. Stylish, elegant, flavorful; filled with all the rules you'd need at the table; laden with random-generation tables to dynamically build your setting. I just can't praise it enough. My only "criticism" is that they based it on LOTFP rather than ACKS, but it's just because I'm envious

Quote from: amacris;988352My only "criticism" is that they based it on LOTFP rather than ACKS, but it's just because I'm envious

The tribe rules are totally nicked from ACKS thieves guilds, tho.

Ever since I read Patrick Stuart's read-through review I was smitten by this game, I bought it immediately. Haven't yet managed to get it to the table.

I've been curious for a while, what inspired you to make this?

Well, that's certainly high praise!

It was a combination of having a big pile of b/x houserules I'd been tinkering with, and being frustrated at not having a stone-age RPG I could really get into.
The thing about basic D&D as an engine is how flexible it is; you can basically hack it to run any setting with a bit of thought.

Quote from: cavegirl;987279houserules but sort of spiraled out of control from there, so yeah, it's very much DnD mechanically.

Since D&D itself started as houserules that spiraled out of control, I love this!

Quote from: cavegirl;989039The thing about basic D&D as an engine is how flexible it is; you can basically hack it to run any setting with a bit of thought.

YES!  Sweet Crom's hairy nutsack, that was the idea all along.

And I'm intrigued by this, mostly to have a "different" region for my OD&D world.  After all, who says everything works the same all over the world?