12/05/2022

In this installment of What’s That?, we will look at making a character for the Basic Fantasy Role Playing Game. I thought it would be fun to use the Quick Character Generation Supplement (release 2) available from basicfantasy.org to create Brandis Slywood.

We start off with Chart A: Ability Scores. We roll a D20 and get a 16. His best score is a 15 in Dexterity so we might have to make this hero a thief. We roll a D4 and get 4 for his starting HP.

Next, we roll a D10 to see the birth order of the hero. We get a 10 so Brandis is the 8th child in the family (no wonder he has to become a thief, he probably had to steal to help support the family).

For his father’s occupation, we roll an 18 and get clergy and a 2 for a Parish/lower clergy, mainstream religion. His father was an assistant pastor in a small local church. His mother had to stay home since she had so many kids.

When Brandis was a teenager, he ran away from home and fled to a big city. He met up with some thieves and began the life of a criminal. Not a bad backstory for a quick random character.

For equipment, he will start with thieves’ tools and leather armor. He then rolls a 5 and takes a sword for his melee weapon. He rolls a 2 and gets a light crossbow and bolt case for his ranged weapon. Since he has a 15 DEX, Brandis will tend to stay out of melee and try to use the crossbow most of the time. For gear, we take the automatic stuff and roll a 6 for the additional equipment.

We roll a 1 and get no mount (Brandis like the big city anyway) and Brandis starts with 30GP in his pocket (must have picked a few good pockets earlier in the day). We find a nice image to use for Brandis as a thief and we would be ready to play.

I like the old-school feel of Basic Fantasy. While I usually play 5E, I like the deadly feeling of the OSR games. 5E feels more like superheroes of the fantasy world. A long rest gives you all HP back. Death Saves keep you from dying easily on the battlefield. Wizards and Cleric have a lot of spells from 1st level.

Keep on gaming!