For Day 10 of the 2024 #CharacterCreationChallenge I elected to put together a character for Basic Fantasy Role-Plaing Game 4th Edition. Now this game is available for free download on the BasicFantasy.org website. You can also pick up a physical copy (like I did) just for cost from two different sources. You can pick this up at Amazon or DriveThruRPG. I have the hardbound version, but it is also available with the softcover.
So if I already created a Basic Fantasy character in 2021, why am I making a character again? For two reasons. The fourth edition of Basic Fantasy was released after the WotC OGL fiasco inspired them to remove all SRD material and the OGL licensing information in the book. For my second reason, I volunteered to run a Basic Fantasy game at the upcoming SaltCON gaming convention in March. This character will be one of the pre-made characters provided for the players to choose from.
I won’t go into the statistics of the book since I covered that in my initial review. The character sheet is one that I downloaded from the Basic Fantasy project website and is a single page. There are quite a few other character sheets available. The character creation process starts on page three.
Our first step is to roll up our ability scores. These are the standard attributes that fans of the D&D d20 based systems will familiar with. Strength, Intelligence, Wisdom, Dexterity, Constitution and Charisma. The RAW states roll 3d6 and place them in order. I did this.
The next step is to select your class and race (if you meet the minimum requirements for either). With my INT of 17 this guy is going to be an Elvin Magic User. After writing down his special abilities I rolled his hit points (woot rolled a high number) and wrote that down. I also filled in his savings throws, movement and other statistics.
Next comes purchasing the equipment. This game uses the standard 3d6x10 for starting gold. I rolled up 110 GP and purchased what I thought an Elven Wizard would own. For the name, I selected Durlan Torven (found from an online random name generator). Durlan was instructed by his father to gain some experience in the world before he returned to the High Kingdoms to assume his place in the family business. Here is the character sheet.
Afterthoughts:
Basically (no pun intended) if you’ve played 3rd edition Basic Fantasy, moving to 4th edition shouldn’t be any difficult at all. Other than minor tweaks everything is the same. I forgot that the character sheet that I like to use still has page numbers from the 3rd edition. I should point that out to the original contributor.
I’m glad that I made this character now. It got me in the groove for creating the other characters for the upcoming convention session.
Talking with a friend last week, I had to explain that 4th Edition of Basic Fantasy was not the same as 4th Edition of Dungeons and Dragons. Don’t let the 4th edition trip you up in this case.
Additional Notes:
A participant in the Character Creation Challenge had posted on the RPG.net forums a D&D B/X character that they had created. Since they didn’t want to have any blank lines they placed “TardisCaptain” down as the Dungeon Master. I laughed and responded that I better get out my campaign notes.
While looking at the traffic hitting my website, I noticed that there was some coming in from the Steven Jackson Games forums. I went to the site and discovered that one of the participants had started a thread there. While there hasn’t been a lot of posts, I’ve added it to the links on the Character Creation Challenge page. If you know of a website or message board that is participating in the challenge, please let me know. You can email me at Carl (at) TardisCaptain.com or by reaching out to me on the TardisCaptain dot Com Discord server or on one of the social media services that I use.
Coming Up Next:
Teenagers from Outerspace
This article is open for discussion on the TardisCaptain dot Com Discord server. You can also email me at Carl (at) TardisCaptain.com or click on my social media links with any comments.