Welcome back to the weekly Tabletop Games thread! This thread is where we can talk about all kinds of RPGs, card games, board games, etc. Whether you gather around a physical table in the real world, or use a virtual space to play with friends who may live far away from you, this is where you can discuss your favorites, ask for and/or receive recommendations, recap your recent adventures, or even find some people to play games with!

Discussion Prompt: Handsome Young Dugong returns to bring us another TTRPG overview!

Hey everybody, the week we’ve got an overview of a game that shares a common ancestor with D&D 5.5E much in the way that a marmoset shares a common ancestor with a human, White Box: Fantastic Medieval Adventure Game.

What is it?

White Box: FMAG is a retro-clone (modern rewriting of an earlier game) of the original edition (0E) of Dungeons and Dragons. Or, more accurately, it’s a reorganization of another retro-clone (Swords & Wizardry White Box) with some widely-used house rules and additional content. What it amounts to is a very stripped-down, focused game; it has four classes, spells, monsters, rules for generating treasure, and all the hallmarks of a game where you go in a dungeon looking for treasure.

What are the mechanics?

Most of the rolls are done with either d20s (for attacks and saving throws) or d6s (for damage, dungeoneering, and thief rolls). Like many old-school games, character improvement revolves around finding treasure; experience points are gained by collecting gold pieces, but more importantly, characters (especially fighters) become more powerful by collecting magical weapons, armor, and other items. Compared to other OSR games, the characters tend to be less powerful, but also more balanced – the largest modifier a character can have to a stat is +1 or -1. The stats themselves (in the standard STR, INT, CON, etc. spread) are less important in the game than descriptive roleplay and clever planning.

What does the gameplay look like?

The halfling thief listens carefully at the large, wooden door to the unexplored wing of the crypt. She rolls a 2, and the referee describes the trudge of heavy footsteps and the occasional groan of the undead. The party, not willing to go toe-to-toe with a ghoul, prepares to have the cleric Turn Undead while the others lob oil flasks and torches. Their fighter, boasting an impressive +1 strength, heaves the door open while the cleric brandishes their holy symbol. The turn roll is a 7, just barely enough to turn the ghoul that was shambling towards the party, and it retreats from the holy light. The thief throws an oil flask, rolling a 13+1, and then the fighter lights the oil, taking down the ghoul over the next few turns. The party finds themselves in a room with that most sought-after prize of dungeon crawling: a sarcophagus, no doubt full of grave goods. The thief grabs a ten-foot pole and begins to prod the lid.

Niche

The cost of the book and ease of use make this a particularly good entry point for OSR games or for looking at the origins of D&D.

Pluses

• The game is complete without having any extraneous content – you’ve got spells, magic items, and a reasonable list of public domain monsters all in one 150ish page book.
• The game has a bunch of quality-of-life improvements compared to OD&D, like ascending armor class and unified saving throws.

Minuses

• The d6 hit dice/damage dice convention mean that the game will need some conversion to use with modules made for later editions of D&D – there will be some extra math for the referee if you want to run Keep on the Borderlands or something similar.
• The same simplicity that is a benefit to the game may turn off players who enjoy classes and sub-classes outside of the fighter/magic-user/cleric/thief quartet.

Dugong’s advice

If you pair this game with the Sandbox Generator manual by Altier Clandestin and the Feats of Exploration supplement by John Britton, you’ll have everything you need for years of swords-and-sorcery adventure gaming.

Where can I find it?

The pdf is free on DriveThruRPG. You can buy a print copy from DriveThruRPG, but they are curiously overpriced, as you can get them at-cost from Amazon or Lulu.

Thanks again to Handsome Young Dugong for the write-up! If you would like to suggest a prompt or contribute a write-up or discussion topic of your own, let me know in the comments!