In the past few months I’ve been playing with my little homebrew game, “A Fantasy Game” (AFG). AFG is a non-retroclone I wrote after feeling not completely satisfied about “Adventurers: Armed & Dangerous” and “SWOZT&M”, my two unreleased, unfinished retroclones.
EDIT: download an early draft here.
It all started when Sham posted rules on Experience by Plundering and Accomplishments and Art of Delving: these mechanics are very important in A Fantasy Game. Then, as I ran more and more playtest sessions, the game incorporated elements inspired from very bright designs such as Roger the GS’s One-Page, ZZarchov’s Neoclassic Geek Revival [1], Delta’s Book of War [2], Steve Jackson’s GURPS.
Earlier on I decided that the game was not going to be a retroclone, and to drop the SRD: the Vancian system was ditched after a long bibliographic survey, long pondering and a talk with Roger; the class system has been replaced with what I wrote for Breed of Darkness MUD (if you happen to remember it, it was 13 years ago), which nowadays seems similar to multiclassing for d20 (without some of its fastidious problems) or disciplines from World of Darkness; clerics are gone, replaced by a more meaningful approach to worship; armour reduces damage; the only dice used are six-siders. It’s still statistic compatible with most old school fantasy adventure games and retroclones, meaning you can yank gaming material from the past 38 years of our hobby and run them with no need to change anything.
Playtesting continues, while a partial version was released to a few selected individuals for feedback (I’m sure I forgot about somebody, so don’t take it personally). A teaser will be available very soon.
[1]: Disclaimer: I proofread Neoclassical Geek Revival and received a free copy. My opinion? Neoclassic Geek Revival is WIN! Buy a copy! The ruleset is a big funhouse of game mechanics that makes perfect sense together, in addition are presented in a way easy so you can pick’n’mix’n’bolt’em together to either create a new system or modify an existing one. And they are all good and sound. The book itself is extremely pretty, hardbound in faux leather with gilded title and printed on linen paper: it will not only outlive your RPG collection but also you and probably the building and neighborhood you live in. It’s a labour of love. TL:DR? BUY NOW!
[2]: Disclaimer: I proofread and tested Book of War and received a free copy. My opinion? Book of War is the miniature game that Old School fantasy games always badly needed to resolve mass battles. It’s fun, quick, easy to learn, full of interesting decisions. I wish I had it when my players had characters in command of armies, and it’s also really good and fun for skirmishes and man-vs-man melee (I’m one of the people Delta mentions using BoW for playing “some games of man-to-man D&D … using this cut-down d6 system, with good results”. Its math is sound and it’s compatible with all D&D retroclones. TL:DR? BUY NOW!
Lost Pages 
Interesting mix of inspirations. I’m intrigued about how you’re handling classes.
Game mechanic inspiration is one of the few good reasons to have a library well stocked with games 🙂
As for the classes, every level gives you the possibility to grow a level in a class, called for the time being “Ways”. At the moment I prefer “Disciplines” but I might need a thesaurus. 😉
The point is that I simply redid the exercise I did for B/X-BECMI demihumans for classes, but ditching experience points and a bunch of other “legacy” rules.
GURPS? D6’s only? So now I have to ask… Are you using roll under vs stat or are you using a 3d6 vs armor class?
Both guesses are wrong. GURPS is big. Very big! 🙂
It’s been inspiration for a couple of things of the magic system. Nothing exactly extraordinaire or existing only in GURPS (I’m not sure where those ludemes came from to be honest) but they came up after reading its magic system (for the unpthteenth time). The core implementation of my magic system is, as discussed, extremely similar to Roger’s, but a magic system is not just its core. And no, I haven’t stolen the mana point approach from SJ but from Roger. :p
5MORE is used for skill rolls and (possibly) melee, while FIGHTMORE is used for melee. FIGHTMORE is quite original and bourne out of a quite teleological brainstorming with Max Morrice 🙂