Heroes of Adventure

While browsing on itch.io I recently stumbled upon Heroes of Adventure, a free, rules-light, OSR-adjacent tabletop roleplaying game released under the Creative Commons Attribution license. Like D&D it comes in three core rulebooks, the Players Handbook, the Referees Guide and the Monsters Compendium. The three books have a clean layout and are beautifully illustrated with AI art. What its sets apart from other games of this nature is a skill die system instead of regular attributes, a crafting and alchemy system and a “cast at will” magic system.

I haven’t had the time to give it a closer look, but my initial impression is quite positive. I especially like that the books contain easy-to-follow rules on how to create new monsters and even new hero classes. That’s something I’d like to see in other class-based games as well, since it makes customizing the experience much easier.

If you are looking for a new and exciting fantasy tabletop RPG which combines old concepts with fresh ideas, you should give Heroes of Adventure a closer look.

Michael Wolf is a German games designer and enthusiast best known for his English language role-playing games blog, Stargazer's World, and for creating the free rules-light medieval fantasy adventure game Warrior, Rogue & Mage. He has also worked as an English translator on the German-language Dungeonslayers role-playing game and was part of its editorial team. In addition to his work on Warrior, Rogue & Mage and Dungeonslayers, he has created several self-published games and also performed layout services and published other independent role-playing games such as A Wanderer's Romance, Badass, and the Wyrm System derivative Resolute, Adventurer & Genius, all released through his imprint Stargazer Games. Professionally, he works as a video technician and information technologies specialist. Stargazer's World was started by Michael in August 2008.