I think it’s a universal truth that every OSR enthusiast eventually writes their own game. Sometimes this takes the form of a title sold at a retail store, but more often it takes the form of a large packet of homebrew rules. These games are often highly derivative, taking ones favorite edition of D&D and simply adding the more intriguing or engaging rules we find in our massive pile of RPG’s we’ll never actually get to the table.

I’ve been compiling notes on the wonderful mechanics and ideas I’ve stumbled upon from blogs, reddit, google+, discord and every RPG I’ve read, run or played. It’s not a very organized compilation and it’s certainly not conducive to use at the table. It’s time to sit down and sort through it; decide what can be used cohesively with the rest and what can be cut.

In computer programming we have this wonderful approach to development called, “rubber duck” programming. While designing a feature or working through a problem, we talk about it to a rubber duck sitting on our desk, (I use a skull named Bob). The act of trying to describe the problem to someone as you work through it is often all that’s needed to spark that epiphany or highlight the glaring errors in your thought process. This blog can serve the same purpose, a means of working through this massive list of ideas and turning them into something cohesive.

It’s a large undertaking and it needs to be taken in small steps. Let’s start with the primary inspirations for this project.

This is hardly an exhaustive list, but as I sort through this pile before me, these are the systems or idea spaces that jump out at me as primary inspiration.

• Castles & Crusades: AD&D 3E in all but name. I’m not a great fan of the SIEGE engine and it’s primary/secondary attributes, but I love it’s consistent and GM friendly approach to setting target numbers for rolls. Additionally, I love how it’s treasure tables are keyed to monster HD rather than the more handwavy approach that B/X has taken.

• The 13th Age: Icons! The Icons! I love the idea of replacing the traditional alignment system with a positive and negative Icon relationship. This is the kind of thing that can generate adventures and campaigns.

• Dolmenwood: This is what I’m currently running for my weekly group. While there are plenty of mechanics and ideas I want to steal here, my biggest takeaway is how player facing options need to be married to the setting and just how hard it is to make a “generic” system that handles multiple settings. I feel that TTRPG’s in the OSR space would benefit from moving player facing options to a “Setting” section of the PHB, while also including the data necessary to create custom Races, Classes and Spells as part of a DM section.

• Savage Worlds: This is probably my favorite system, but it’s not the only system I love to run. The biggest inspiration for me here is the player facing Hindrances. I’ve found my players really love to lean into them for roleplay purposes. They’ve mentioned it really helps them to sort of discover their characters.

• B/X, OSE, The Rules Cyclopedia: It all starts here for me. If it weren’t for B/X and it’s derivatives in the OSR space, I probably wouldn’t be playing any form of D&D today. What’s the inspiration here? All of it.

• Mythic Odysseys of Theros: You don’t need to like Magic the Gathering at all to fall in love with this setting. Most importantly, I have never seen a more GM friendly setting book. This setting should be the standard going forward for all setting books. Bigger than life characters for the GM to use along with motives, goals and ideas aplenty on how they might be used for good or evil. Campaign and adventure generators, NPC generators, item generators, plot generators and so much more.

• D&D 4th Edition: I know I’m probably going to get some flack for this, but I actually consider 4th Edition to be an amazing game. As a player, it may actually be my favorite edition. As a GM however, I’ve found I prefer to lean towards less complex and easier to improvise systems. If I were a more prep-heavy GM, I’d probably just use 4E and never look back. My big inspiration from 4E, however, is it’s language. D&D is plagued with a curse known as “ancient Gygaxian”. Many players and GM’s love this, but I prefer a more codified system. Mechanics should be short, explicit and codified with keywords that are well defined. Save the ancient Gygaxian for flavor text.

• Five Leagues from the Borderlands: This is a solo-oriented tabletop wargame/skirmish game. Honestly, I probably need to sit down with this one and give a full and detailed review as I’d love to do it justice. It’s an amazing game and I look forward to gushing about it. One of the most interesting things about this game is it’s procedures for campaign generation. With a few changes, the ideas behind this could be used to generate campaigns for just about any TTRPG. I think this could be huge.

There are plenty of other systems I have every intention of stealing ideas and mechanics from, but these seem to be the ones that have really taken root in my brain.

A final note for today…

While I intend to discuss and detail my process in building this Fantasy Heartbreaker, I cannot in good conscience actually release such a thing into the wild. I’m blatantly stealing ideas from some amazing systems and authors and I do not feel that I personally would be contributing enough of my own content to be meaningfully different from the source material.

It’s not an issue of legality, but an issue of morals and ethics on my part. My opinion and position might change as I write this and discover how much these ideas have changed from their initial inspirations, but for now it feels clear it’s strictly derivative.