Black Sword Hack

[Heresiologist]

"BLACK SWORD HACK is a dark fantasy roleplaying game inspired by books such as Michael Moorcock's Stormbringer or Karl Edward Wagner's Kane series. It is a stand-alone game that uses the Black Hack 2nd edition as a foundation and adds a few tweaks."

Note that the Black Hack started out as a very stripped down version of early D&D, emphasizing simplicity and ease of play.

[Rothgo]

There are quite a lot of these "stripped down" systems about these days. Its quite interesting that after the "bugger rules - i just want a group story" vogue, we've come back round to "just give me a limited few options to choose from 90% of the time". Fashion eh? Which leads me to conclude that there isn't a "better" style of game: fashions just come and go and come back again. Doesn't stop there being better/worse implementations though!

[Heresiologist]

Whether you want a story game RPG, a more trad RPG, or some combination of both, there is certainly an embarrassment of RPG riches out there right now.

[Sir Sorcerer]

Haven't played RPGs for many many years, but minimalist systems definitely seem to be in vogue at the moment. I remember being struck by the beauty and simplicity of Dungeon World and other more recent Powered by the Apocalypse games. Another recent RPG heavily inspired by the Elric books, but with a few more rules, is Dungeon Crawl Classics.

[danskmacabre]

Just scored this on Drivethru with some credit I have there.
Will have a good read

[Rothgo]

I always liked Dragon Warriors, which was a stripped down RPG released long, long before the fashion was set.
There was a re-release a few years ago which was fair enough, except it was a re-packaging rather than a revision of the game. Opportunity failed IMHO.

[Heresiologist]

Just scored this on Drivethru with some credit I have there.
Will have a good read

Please consider reporting how much, or how little, you enjoyed it.

I always liked Dragon Warriors, which was a stripped down RPG released long, long before the fashion was set.
There was a re-release a few years ago which was fair enough, except it was a re-packaging rather than a revision of the game. Opportunity failed IMHO.

I sometimes visit Dave Morris' blog. In fact, just the other day it led to me to decide I will likely order one of his interactive fiction books in the near future.

Haven't played RPGs for many many years, but minimalist systems definitely seem to be in vogue at the moment. I remember being struck by the beauty and simplicity of Dungeon World and other more recent Powered by the Apocalypse games. Another recent RPG heavily inspired by the Elric books, but with a few more rules, is Dungeon Crawl Classics.

I have Dungeon World. It's got a lot of good stuff in it. Sort of a medium sized rule set, I think. A fellow who works at my friendly local game store has played it with the author as GM. DCC is the favoured RPG of that store's owner. Seem a medium large sized rule set, though.