Over the weekend, I covered how the creator of today's free OSR (ish) pick ghosted their Kickstarter backers, but the free version of the game actually won an ENnie award this year.
Grimwild: Free Edition is a nice free pick. Run it as it is, or steal it for your campaign.
Grimwild is a streamlined, character-driven, cinematic fantasy RPG. You can also buy the full version with the Extras chapter here.
The goal with Grimwild is simple. Take D&D-inspired heroic fantasy, with its 12 classes and super tropey monsters, and match it up with a super fast, cinematic narrative rules system.
- The rules are concerned with the dramatic over the realistic, and minimizing detailed tracking.
- The game is very low-prep for the GM. The fiction maps to the rules simply, on-the-fly.
- Designed to run in your own setting (or a published one), or use our pointcrawl exploration system and collaborative worldbuilding to create emergent storylines.
- Characters earn bonus dice for pursuing self-set goals, pushing the story in the direction they want.
- The GM is given a clear GM framework of principles and moves to run the game by.
- Get strong player buy-in with the adventuring party creation system and creative freedom for the players.
- The rules create fluid action and gets rid of the mechanical slog that bogs down D&D.
- And all of this with GREAT ART from artist Per Janke, creating a consistent vision throughout the book.
So who is Grimwild for?
- D&D 3.5E, 5E and Pathfinder players will appreciate the low-GM prep, easy-to-learn mechanics, and the focus on character goals and letting players push the story.
- OSR/NSR players will enjoy the straightforward resolution system, sandbox-friendly gameplay, and ease of adapting modules from other systems. Lots of rollable tables help as well.
- Narrative game players will like the fiction-first resolution system, with a focus on player agency, and narrative currency that fuels drama.
Key Features
Grimwild has a lot going on inside, but here's an overview of big-picture stuff. We'll talk about mechanics later.
- All 12 classes from D&D: Barbarian, Bard, Cleric, Druid, Fighter, Monk, Paladin, Ranger, Rogue, Sorceror, Warlock, Wizard. With familiar abilities, re-imagined for a narrative rules system.
- New Take on 100 Classic Monsters: We detail and give advice on creating encounters that make the monsters a part of the story, not just meatbags of hit points to chew through.
- Story Kits: No preparation required scenarios that create evolving situations, not railroaded plots. These are more kits for your creativity than they are storylines, filled with evocative prompts and timers that create developing situations for you to tell your own stories, not ours.
- Homebrew-friendly system: Built on our open licensed (CC-BY) ruleset, Moxie. The game text itself is all licensed CC-BY forever. It's designed to be cinematic, narrative, and most importantly modular. This makes changing rules to your liking simple and the open license allows people to make modules, adventures, monsters, and even entirely new games with its mechanics.
Gameplay Overview
The easiest way to get a clear understanding of the Grimwild mechanics is to download the preview. It has the entire rule system in it. But here are some highlights that show off unique aspects of the system:
- Base system: Roll d6 dice pools and keep the highest die to determine how well things went. The GM adds d8s called thorns to represent difficulty. When they come up as a 7 or 8, it cuts your results down a notch. A critical always beats thorns, though, so the PCs can always gain the upper hand.
- Freeform Magic: Cast magic on the fly—the spell names, god domains, or details of a song give you limitations and permissions on what you can cast. Just say what you want to happen, then use the simple magic rules to cast the spell. No long spell lists, no memorizing, no opening the book to reference it.
- PC Bonds: Form bonds with the other PCs, like playful camaraderie, solid rivalry, or tense mistrust. When your bonds change through play, update them giving the other PC a bonus die called spark!
- Add Story Details: You can declare details to add into the story, about your character's gear, backstory, the elements around you in a scene, the behaviors of NPCs, and more. Particularly impactful details require you to spend spark, points you earn from facing adversity and getting up to trouble.
- Vex: When you get hit with fear, confusion, or other emotional turmoil, you keep control over your PC's actions. A simple system of choosing fight, flight, freeze, or freakout turns previously boring moments of losing control into a chance for you to play up the struggle they go through the way you want.
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