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Basic Fantasy RPG hero art
Chris Gonnerman / Basic Fantasy RPG

Basic Fantasy RPG

"Classic 1981 D&D — free, clean, and quietly upgraded."

Free B/X
Diced20 + variable weapon damage
Players3–6
Prep~30 min
Foundry VTTCommunity
Complexity
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What is this system

Basic Fantasy RPG is a fully free retroclone of 1981 D&D Basic/Expert (B/X), developed by its community since 2006. Chris Gonnerman took B/X and made two key upgrades: ascending armor class, and race decoupled from class. Dozens of free adventures and supplements, an active forum, and an open license. The most economical on-ramp into the OSR.

Setting

Setting-agnostic with a classic sword-and-sorcery spirit. Dungeons, frontier villages, dragons, and forgotten tombs. The tone is grounded old-school heroic fantasy: the candle, the ten-foot pole, graph-paper mapping, and greed as the engine of the plot. Any B/X module runs with almost no conversion.

What it looks like at the table
The party ropes down into a flooded crypt. The thief goes first — a check to find traps. Ahead, a corridor of ghouls. The fighter swings: d20 + attack bonus against the ghoul's ascending AC 13. He rolls a 16 — a hit, then damage by weapon (longsword, d8). The ghoul rakes back with its claws. The candle gutters; the party decides — press on toward the loot, or fall back to the light.
Playstyle
Exploration Combat Sandbox Fantasy
Key mechanics

Ascending armor class

Unlike original B/X's descending AC, here armor class goes up — higher is better. Intuitive for newcomers and compatible with modern d20 instincts.

Race separate from class

No B/X 'race-as-class': you pick race and class independently. A dwarf magic-user or a halfling thief — free of the old-school restriction, but true to its feel.

Completely free

All rules and dozens of supplements are free PDFs on basicfantasy.org under an open license. Print copies are sold at cost. A community project, not a commercial one.

B/X compatible

Monsters, spells, and procedures are compatible with the classic line. Any B/X or OSR adventure runs with almost no editing.

What people say
Overall, this game does what it sets out to do, and does it with conviction. It's an inexpensive, exhaustive, and approachable system.— M Harold Page, Black Gate
It captures the spirit of old-school fantasy adventure without burying players under archaic mechanics and obtuse formatting.— Serban Ionita, The RPG Gazette
Free resources
Official site — everything is free
Website · Web
Free downloads (rules, sheets, supplements)
Quickstart · Web

Written and curated by Kejid — TTRPG player & GM

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