Wednesday, October 5, 2016

Crypts and Things Review

OK ,do you like OSR Rules?
Conan?
Lovecraft?
Are you prepared for a game without Clerics?
Still with me?
Then boy Oh boy do I have the game for You!
From D101 Games, written by Newt Newport
PDF is $13 from Drive through/Hard copies available directly from D101 Games
Powered by Swords and Wizardry (OD&D Clone)

You've got your standard 6 stats, with the addition of sanity and Luck

Sanity is very simple and elegant , covered by the wisdom stat

Luck is used for pretty much everything from spell saves to doing maximum damage in combat, again simple and elegant

The Game uses 4 core character classes, Barbarian, fighter,thief and sorcerers,
The balance between Barbarian, Fighter and Thief is a little iffy and I think most Keepers are going to want to fiddle w/ this, but only minor fix is necessary. Prob as simple as giving the fighter a few more "specializations" (Feats) but the thief is a little tougher fixer upper.You see EVERYBODY gets backstab (A part of the basic flavor of the game) and should not be changed. I think the fighters could have used a bit more spec's to pick from but this is an INCREDIBLY easy fix.
The sorcerer can cast white, grey or black magic. White and Black have different drawbacks , grey has none but is the weakest of the three, any sorcerer carrying his share of the adventuring load is going to want White(Cure spells, cleric y) and Black(fireballs n such) Very Very Very Nice!

A further bunch of character classes are closely tied to the setting provided
Beast Hybrid(Lycanthropy)
Disciple(monk like with white, black and grey subtypes)
Elementalist ( a more standard sort of caster than the sorcerer with it's own spell kist)
Lizard People
Serpent Noble( classic REH Serpent man)

Character creation is rounded out with many life events charts that help with RPING but are COMPLETELY tied to core setting

A brief version  of the setting is provided for players with an expanded section for Keepers

Large sections on Others(the demons of the setting and Serpent men and cool NPCs are followed by a very cool bestiary including many cool new creatures and some old favorites

The book has many many extras including a bunch of adventures(don't use canned adventures so didn't read them)
The art is nice and very flavorful, didn't notice ANY typo's or grammatical mistakes

I can sum it all up with the following sentence:
50%Conan/50% HPL , all OSR D&D, Tough to use without their world(which is pretty good)
Despite my problems here and there 5 out of 5 stars

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