The Basic Fantasy Role-Playing Game, Fourth Edition is published by The Basic Fantasy Project. It takes its cue from the Dungeons & Dragons of the early nineteen eighties, so is more akin to Basic Dungeons & Dragons than Advanced Dungeons & Dragons. There are differences though, but there is a great deal more that will be very familiar. It is a Class and Level roleplaying game, up to Twentieth Level, rather than a Class and Level and Class as Race and Level roleplaying game. It offers four Races—Elf, Dwarf, Halfling, and Human, and four Classes—Cleric, Fighter, Magic-User, and Thief. Only Elves and Humans can be Magic-Users. Other than that, there are no limits on the choice of Class and Race. The familiarity mean that Dwarves have a minimum Constitution, Darkvision, and know their way around worked stone; Elves have a minimum Intelligence, Darkvision, are immune to the paralyzing attack of ghouls, are less likely to be surprised, and are better at finding secret doors; Halflings have a bonus to ranged attacks and initiative as well as Armour Class when facing large creatures, and are naturally stealthy; and Humans gain a bonus to Experience Points earned. Clerics can wear any armour, must wield blunt weapons, can turn undead, and gain their first spell at Second Level. Fighters can wield any weapon, wear any armour, and are simply better in a fight. Magic-Users begin play knowing the spell Read Magic and another spell of the Game Master’s choice! Thieves cannot wear metal armour, can perform a sneak attack with a melee weapon, and have a range of Thief Abilities such as Open Locks, Remove Traps, Pick Pockets, and more, all rolled on percentile dice.
Mechanically, the Basic Fantasy Role-Playing Game, Fourth Edition is mish-mash of different mechanics. Attack rolls and Saving Throws are rolled with a twenty-sided die, the aim being to roll high. Thus, Armour Class is ascending, with just three types of armour in the roleplaying game—leather, chain, and plate, plus shield—and beyond bonuses from either a high Strength or Dexterity, a Player Character’s attack bonus being determined by his Class and Level. A roll of one is always a miss, whereas a roll of twenty is always a success, but there are no rules for critical successes or fumbles. However, Hit Points reduced to zero for both Player Characters and monsters means they are dead. Other tasks are rolled on different dice. Thus, an attempt to open a stuck door is rolled on a six-sided die, but a locked door on a ten-sided die, the aim being to roll low, modified by the Strength bonus. Similarly, all Player Characters have a very low—one-in-six—chance of detecting traps, though the Thief’s Ability supersedes this. Both Surprise and Initiative are rolled on a six-sided die, but low for determining the former and high for the latter. The Basic Fantasy Role-Playing Game, Fourth Edition is therefore highly idiosyncratic in its rules and their application, but no more so than many other Dungeons & Dragons-style retroclone and certainly no reason to be surprised given its origins and inspiration. However, this mechanical motley does have repercussions. Fundamentally, it makes the roleplaying game less easy to learn, even arcane by modern standards, because almost every rule is mechanically situational. This is not to say that the roleplaying game is impossible to learn, but it contributes towards the hurdle of doing so.
Conversely, any experience with a retroclone or Dungeons & Dragons, and the Basic Fantasy Role-Playing Game, Fourth Edition is easy to pick up and begin playing. The differences between the Basic Fantasy Role-Playing Game, Fourth Edition and any other retroclone dot the rules. Most notably, they include the use of ascending Armour Class, but other rules provide clear and easy rules for unarmed combat and brawling and subdual damage. Spellcasting is Vancian for Magic-Users and all spellcasters require a hand free to successfully cast a spell. Clerics pray for their spells, whilst Magic-Users prepare and memorise them from a spellbook, except for Read Magic, which is so ingrained, it does not require the spellbook. Dig into the spells, and there are small differences here and there. For example, Mind Reading replaces ESP, Magic Missile inflicts a six-sided die’s worth of damage rather than a four-sided die’s worth, and so on. Some of the spells are highly detailed, such as Teleport, which is given a description almost a page in length whereas Read Magic runs to just three sentences in length. There are some forty-eight spells for Clerics and some sixty-two spells for Magic-User, from First Level to Sixth Level.
Similarly, the chapter on monsters—which runs to some one hundred pages—contains a mix of the familiar and the unfamiliar. Instead of the Displacer Beast, there is the Deceiver (or Panther-Hydra); the Gelatinous Cube is classified as a Glass Jelly, the Black Pudding as the Black Jelly, and Gray Ooze as the Gray Jelly, and so on; and the Golem entry includes Amber, Bone, and Wood Golem as well as Clay, Flesh, and Iron Golem. New additions include the Ironbane, an armadillo-like creature with hare’s legs and anteater-like snout with a long flicking tongue which transforms iron into rust (this does not replace Rust Monster), the Trollwife is included alongside the Troll as well as the Trollkin, the latter a young Troll, and the Urgoblin is a mutant Hobgoblin capable of regenerating Hit Points!
As you would expect, the Basic Fantasy Role-Playing Game, Fourth Edition covers most situations and elements that could come up in a Dungeons & Dragons. Equipment includes everything from arms and armour to land and water transportation and siege engines, traps and secret doors, wilderness travel, retainers and specialists to hire, handling encounters—including combat, and treasure. There is a complete set of tables for generating treasure types and hoards, the best feature of which are the list of effects, such as Courage, Invisibility, Protection, Flames on Command, Locate Objects, and Obsession, which can be applied to any weapons—not necessarily swords, and miscellaneous items. This is alongside the usual range of magic items and even rare items like the Bag of Holding, Boots of Travelling and Leaping, Girdle of Giant Strength, and Rope of Climbing.
For the Game Master, there is advice on various Player Character options in terms of the creation process, learning spells, weapon and armour restrictions, and so on. Added here is guidance on handling one of the most difficult issues in Dungeons & Dragons—wishes. The aim here is game balance versus literal accuracy. A similarly difficult issue, that of Energy Drain, is handled in more mechanical fashion. This is handled as negative levels which inflict a semi-permanent loss of one Hit Die’s worth of Hit Points and a -1 penalty on all rolls, plus spellcasters lose a spell slot. The effect is more granular, though still potentially deadly. Optional rules cover raising the dead, saving throws versus death and poison, ability rolls, awarding Experience Points for treasure, and more. There are rules here too for magical research for the Magic-User Player Character or NPC, and of course, for the Game Master to create both dungeon and wilderness adventures. There is no adventure included in the Basic Fantasy Role-Playing Game, Fourth Edition, but the advice is a decent introduction to creating both.
Physically, the Basic Fantasy Role-Playing Game, Fourth Edition is cleanly presented. The book is well written and fairly liberally illustrated, much of which appears in the monster chapter. The quality of the artwork varies, some of it is quite scrappy, but some of it is decent.
There are no real issues with the Basic Fantasy Role-Playing Game, Fourth Edition, but one potential issue is that the roleplaying game does not work as an introductory roleplaying game as written. The Basic Fantasy Role-Playing Game is intended to be simple enough for the younger player to play, and that is true, although with the supervision of older or adult players. The roleplaying game is written for the latter rather than the former, for example, there being no example of play, though there is fiction at the start and a decent explanation of what a roleplaying game is, plus there is an example of character generation. However, the meat of the rules and their mishmash nature are not easy to grasp, but again, to be fair, this applies to numerous other retroclones as well. For the experienced player, this would not be an issue.
There are plenty of Dungeons & Dragons-style roleplaying games available to choose from. The Basic Fantasy Role-Playing Game, Fourth Edition offers a comprehensive set of rules in a cleanly presented rule book, covering just about any situation that might come up in play. There are also two major advantages to the Basic Fantasy Role-Playing Game, Fourth Edition. One, it is slightly cheaper—even free as a download—than most other Dungeons & Dragons-style roleplaying games available. Two, it gives access to a range of scenarios and mini-campaigns, such as JN1 The Chaotic Caves: A Basic Fantasy RPG Adventure Series For Characters of Levels 1-3. Overall, the Basic Fantasy Role-Playing Game, Fourth Edition is a serviceable fantasy roleplaying game.
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