So I ran into a blog of a gentleman named David Guyll. Apparently he unsuccessfully had an anonymous blog called yourrpgsucks or the like, really a man after my own heart. Most of his takes were solid gold, then I saw that he'd actually written his own game. So, sight unseen, I ordered it with a Lulu Black Friday coupon. What arrived was... less than solid gold.
So it turns out Dave likes 3E and 4E. A lot. And beyond the default ability score bonus schema of B/X (and BECMI), this game is pretty much a mashup of 3E and 4E. Which means it's complete shit. The end.
Well, the art is fine. It appears that the Guylls don't like drawing men, so it is predominantly women. But races are called "races" and it was "published" in 2020, so it's not woke. He also isn't very good at action shots, so the art is all very posed. But otherwise there's no real issue. I don't judge based on art & layout anyway, none of that shit matters at the table. On the other hand, there is no index, which is a ding for a 500+ page book.
Now it's important to define why this game actually is shit. It's really the impetus of the OSR, if not our motto and battle cry. When D&D started caring about characters more than setting, caring more about Players than GMs, it all turned to shit. And this game is a hack of those games (WotC D&D).
Now as a 3E variant, it's ok. It borrows a lot from 4E; for example, there are no real spell lists for magic users, it's all powers like 4E. The game uses wounds and vitality like Star Wars d20 revised but nonsensically both escalate over time, so you end up with a giant meat balloon problem even worse than your standard HP meat balloon problem. Then looking at the Critical Hit solution and how Vitality and Wounds expand over time, there isn't really even a point in the separation. This is just bizarrely asinine. An ending Fighter likely has 42 Vitality and 142 Wounds, for a total of 184 HP. And this is in a system where weapons do the exact same damage as every other version of D&D.
A comparatively a max-statted BFRPG Fighter rolling perfect HD has 121 HPs at 20th level. More likely has around 90 HP. This is not in question in Delvers as there are no rolls for either version of HP, they are entirely statically derived so every max statted fighter will top out at 184 HP. This is just one of the tens of problems with WotC D&D math. It frankly doesn't exist in a meaningful sense. It only cares about the endorphins gained by plusses, not systemic integrity.
The backswing of 4E and it's apparent motto was "sure lots of plusses, but at least we should get the game part right!" with mixed results, even for those who enjoy it decry it as a combat simulator and an exceedingly long one at that.
The standard races are here, except halflings have been renamed kobolds. Wacky races are also here including cambion (tieflings), cthon (stone people), ishim (aasimar), kytherian (warforged), tarchon (dragonborn). On the plus side, there is a very small blurb at the beginning of races that says the wacky races are considered wacky by the populace, not just the player base.
Classes are ripped straight from 3E. Identical. Can't even pretendsies call a Rogue a Thief like an actual OSR game. Also we have subsystems out the fucking wazoo. Gone are the days when a different spell list was a different flavor of magic. Now we have the Bard with a pool of Rhythm, Cleric & Druid with a pool of Favor, Monk with a pool of Ki, Sorcerer with a pool of Mana, Warlock with a pool of Eldritch Power, and the Wizard with a pool of Willpower. Do they all operate the exact same? No. Most have the same increment over time, but the ones I've checked have independent subsystems you have to keep straight.
Skipping the rest of classes because it's just a variant of 4E for north of 200 pages of the book, longer than most legitimately good OSR games altogether, we hit Skills. It's blessedly not completely asinine, he pared the shitty d20 list down to 20 actually fairly relevant skills. The game points out relevant abilities to each skill, which means it gets halfway to the idea that you should just use ability scores for "skill" rolls, but sadly like WotC D&D the game relies on ability score modifiers to the point that they are considered the ability score itself. So 18 Strength isn't a +3 modifier, if you rolled 18 on your Strength score, you have a Strength of +3. Another dumb move proposed and implemented by a slavish adherence to WotC window-licker math. The good news is that I haven't ran into any strands of blue hair stuck in the crevasse of the spine yet. This is shaping up to be just an OSR heartbreaker in name only, it might actually be a decent evolution of 3E but sadly I'm not the target audience and Dave put OSR on his back cover which makes his game MY target.
Back to the book: then we get to skill perks which are just ways to subdivide skills into subskills and burn down what small amount of goodwill that I presented early on in the previous paragraph. Then we hit Craft skills, meaning there's even another god damn skill system in this game. Then we hit the Cooking craft skill and it appears Dave is a fan of Breath of the Wild. So yeah, strike everything I said and reverse it, he almost didn't suck at page 3 of his Skills chapter, he fucking ate it with another 10 pages or so.
Equipment's next, it's basically 3.5 equipment except longswords have been renamed arming swords and two-handed swords have been renamed longswords. Oh and it runs a silver standard like all pretentious retards who think that matters in any way. In traditional failure fashion this game uses both Armor Class and DR, and Dave can't even be arsed to name the armors used, they are categories of Light, Medium, Heavy, etc. Oh look, hirelings. Like that's going to be a thing. Ah, lame alchemical concoctions from 3E.
Blah blah combat, 3E action economy, each weapon type has a crit table, Saving Throws: We get 5E saves AKA Castles & Crusades saves AKA no saves. So ability scores aren't good enough for skill rolls but are totally good enough to eliminate saves from existence entirely. Whatever dude.
Short and Long rests to replenish the two different pools of HP. I get that this is some form of attempting avoidance of the 15 min adventuring day. It's just a quirk of the early D&D levels. Don't get your panties in a bunch about it, it's not worth all this fucking effort.
Almost 300 pages in and a big list of conditions show up which remind me of 5E but probably should remind me of 4E if I had read it enough to remember it.
I hit the game master section (295). Until the character tables on page 314, it is a respite from the retardation of previous pages. It picks back up on page 325, traits and goals are pretty neat. A few example rules I guess aren't completely awful, I did get some nostalgia from "0 level characters" though it may have existed in 3.5 somewhere, I remember it from the 2E DMG.
Then we get 100+ pages of monsters, though it's not a lot because it's 3E style statblocks. After that come treasure, and we hit special materials before I find something interesting again. Which are a few new-ish types - Cold iron (fae-bane), ironwood (really hard wood, lol), madiron (cthulhu metal), moonsilver (faerie silver), sinsteel (demon weapons), skyiron (meteoric iron), sunsteel (angelic weapons), thaumaterium (anti-magic steel), and venomite (inherently poisonous metal). They mostly have their own mechanics, though skyiron is just adamantine (adamantine also exists) and moonsilver is just steel-hard silver.
We then hit a blog post section with random books, trade goods... Ah, magic items. Mostly the usual suspects but a few newbies join the fray. It makes me wish this was written for a different system, there is some fun and creative stuff here... And then the book just ends on page 515 like a wet fart.
As I said early, no index, no outro, nothing. I would say there might be 20 pages of worthwhile content in this entire book, and some of that is rehashed GM advice. Anything systemic would have to be reworked to be useful to the average OSR goer. The cardinal sin of "OSR" products is indeed sinned by this game, that being that it is not TSR D&D compatible and still puts OSR on the back cover.
It is banished from the OSR, as is anything David produces from here on out. I read his blog, I know he knows what he did before he did it, and I don't give second chances to knowingly breaking the rules.
He is too fun to be dead to me, and not a woke retard, so let's see if he produces something better in the future. Preferably something that actually tries to be OSR instead of merely lying on the cover. I've never let anyone back in but stranger things have happened.
