QuAD RPG: Classic Sword & Sorcery

[Note: the game QuAD RPG has been changed to Drakken]

So, I started a campaign in the Drowned World, using the classes as I shared them here, along with a custom magic system, and the LotFP Specialist Skills as an add-on to BECMI D&D. And my players were a little disappointed. They loved the world and the design, but the mechanics were not to their taste.

They didn't find the rules congruent with setting and experience that I had set out to create.

I asked for a couple of weeks and went back to the drawing board, looking for something simple and more heroic feeling. I started with Venger Satanis' Crimson Dragonslayer d20 for a test game, and then started hacking the hell out of it... adding stuff from DCC RPG, from Black Pudding Heavy Helping, from Knave, Maze Rats, ICRPG.. even Talisanta, until I had a cobbled-together OSR rule-set that would feel at home with the world I wanted to create.And was extremely rules-light. I named it Quick And Dirty RPG, or QuAD for short. Then I discovered that the name had been taken, and rebranded it as Drakken.

After a week of hacking, refining, and writing it all down I had something that was pretty playable, but to share it I would need to put together a Gazetteer of the Drowned World that could take a little more time... 

Thankfully I did have everything I needed to make an OSR clone here and now.

So I took a couple of extra days to polish it up, pull out the Drowned World material that was integral to it, and then added, as a bit of an experiment, some Ukiyo-e art from a favorite artist, and put it up on Itch.io to share.

I am pretty proud of this one, I must confess. It is fast, you only need a sheet of paper to track HP and inventory. I hope you will have a look and give me a little feedback.

A Drakken: Drowned World is now in the works.

Get Drakken: Classic Sword & Sorcery as a PWYW title on Itch.io here.