In appreciation for and great admiration of a great roleplaying game that does a lot of awesome stuff for the OSR community, I hereby kick off my own BFRP Appreciation Day!
Erik Tenkar over at his blog Tenkar's Tavern had a great idea a bit back, an appreciation day for a little discussed OSR style game Basic Fantasy Role Playing Game (BFRPG). I of course being the person that I am and my general love for all the OSR games floating about decided I would join in the celebration.
I came across BFRPG not because I was looking for a D&D clone, I happen to be doing a search at the time for Chaosiums Basic Role Playing system, and well because of the nature of Google, BFRPG came up in my search.
I was surprised by not only the amount of work put into BFRPG but also the dedication to the game. I was excited by the fact that the game was and is free and that the art contained in many of the books, not only has its shining moments but some of the art is better than alot of the "pay for" OSR games out there.
I am amazed by peoples dedication to putting things like this together, current readers of my blog know that I am cursed with gamer ADD and bounce a lot from one project to the next, sometimes without finishing any of them. So when I come across these labors of love I am literally floored at times.
BFRPG does just that, it blows my mind. It was not long before I shelled out the cash to get a hardcopy from lulu.com because well I like to have a hands on copy and I'm just like that with stuff anyways. However like I have stated BFRPG is free and so is everything else on their site.
BASIC FANTASY ROLE PLAYING GAME...go on right now and download everything...and if you are really kewl buy the hardcopies...
But if you think that they are just lining their pockets by selling the rules read this...quoted from the site...
"What Does It Cost?
Nothing. You can download the PDF files or the original OpenDocument (i.e. LibreOffice or OpenOffice.org) files from the downloads page at no charge. Or, you can purchase a print copy from our storefront at Lulu.com, where I have published the rules at cost. That's right... I don't make a single penny of profit from the sale of the printed copies."
That's right they do this all at cost...That's love.
But we are not done not only have they done a fine job with the core rules, they continue to support the game with supplements and modules...dont want to use BFRPG for your Clone of choice? No problem because like most OSR games the BFRPG Modules and Supplements work fine mixed and matched with other OSR clones. Which begins me asking why I need a 5th Edition of the Worlds most Popular RPG when I can pick and choose from great games like BFRPG?
Which of course leads me to suggest that if one wanted to jump back into gaming or are new to gaming the great stuff to download from the BFRPG site is perfect.
Morgansfort is an AWESOME intro module with many sites and ideas for kicking off an awesome Old School campaign as well as the follow up module Fortress, Tomb and Tower.
BUT ERIC! How can free be of good quality, I'm mean come one buddy, they are just churning out crap, right?
WRONG!
Not only is the stuff they release a very impressive level of quality, but it is playtested by their very active community and even after a release the material is updated from input folks have on the material. And once again it is free, a true labor of love and something I am quite jealous of.
I won't go into details on how upset I was over the collapse(?) of a publishing co-opt I was to be working with, but this is something we could have modeled ourselves off of...sad if you ask me. I have a huge desire to be apart of something like this but being the Internet introvert I am...well...maybe later.
ANYWAY if you have not been there yet of have not heard of it go NOW and check it out.
If you are one of my few odd Followers that seemed to have chosen to read my blog because...well I don't know why any one would read my blog, but if your one of the folks that read my blog and have never experienced a RPG I challenge you to download BFRPG and try it out!
ERIC!
Agreed x 100
ReplyDeleteEric.. come on over the water is fine! I've thoroughly enjoyed writing adventures for BFRPG. The community is awesome, from proofreading to helping work through an idea, there is tons of help. And Chris can be a hard task master but thats what I appreciate most about him. He loves the game he helped create and he makes sure our work matches that quality.
ReplyDelete"I have a huge desire to be apart of something like this but being the Internet introvert I am...well...maybe later."
ReplyDeleteOne of the best things about BFRPG, beyond what a perfect game it is, is that the community is as open as you want it to be. Some people come in with fully thought out supplemental material and jump right in and have a finished product in no time. Others come in with ideas that end up starting a group project that takes on a life of its own. And there are plenty of projects in the workshop that started out then just lost steam. There is no requirement that you have to come in and be and integral cog in the works to become part of the community. Many of us just review, playtest and help fine tune other peoples work and rarely if ever provide a workshop project of our own. No muss, no fuss, no stress, and no deadlines other than the ones you put on yourself.
Absolutely!
ReplyDeleteBFRPG is a great game at any price.
ERIC!, I'd like your permission to use an excerpt of this article (with a link back here) in the random quote engine on the main BasicFantasy.org page. Here's the part I want to quote:
ReplyDelete"I was surprised by not only the amount of work put into BFRPG but also the dedication to the game. I was excited by the fact that the game was and is free and that the art contained in many of the books, not only has its shining moments but some of the art is better than alot of the "pay for" OSR games out there.
"I am amazed by peoples dedication to putting things like this together, current readers of my blog know that I am cursed with gamer ADD and bounce a lot from one project to the next, sometimes without finishing any of them. So when I come across these labors of love I am literally floored at times.
"BFRPG does just that, it blows my mind."
If you agree, it will go live right away.
YES! Of course!
DeleteERIC!
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