Beyond Belief Games

Simon Washbourne at Beyond Belief Games pumps out a good bit of material and doesn't hcarge an arm and a leg for what he does either. He recently released a new rpg called Crimson Blades.

Crimson Blades is a dark fantasy RPG built on the engine/mechanics used in an earlier title of his called Woodland Warriors. Both titles are technically a variation of Swords & Wizardy withthe major difference is all you need for play is a d6. No buckets of dice needed at all, just a couple d6, most rolls will be a single d6.

At first I thought reducing Swords&Wizardy and D20 style gaming to d6 roll was a crazy idea, but it works. with a smaller less fiddly range of modifiers to worry about it just plays quickly. Combat is quick and innovative in an odd way that gets combat done quickly, characters and monsters just roll 1d6 per hit dice when making attacks, there's some tweaking to lower the number of dice rolled and some monsters aren't as HP heavy as they may be in cousins of the game but it works great when 2 or 3 guys are fighting a dozen weaker foes. There's a number of minor variations that make d6 work for traditional or perhaps semi-traditional based on the implied settings of both games that use his variant system.

I'm eyeballing using Crimson Blades or using it for a house variant for my next campaign.

I'm not just endorsing Crimson Blades as you can tell by the title of the post. Beyond Belief games offers a number of games that are minor variations of other systems that I've found enjoyable: Tombs & Terrors, Go fer Yer Gun, and Medieval Murder Mysteries are all available for free these days and are each pretty good even if they aren't using Washbourne's d6 variation. Go check out what they offer if you like anything on this blog Beyond Belief Games is going to have something you like.