dB/dX: A derivative adventure game system

Nearly ten months have passed since my last post. Life is busy, to say the least, but in my downtime I somehow managed to compile my very own homebrewn of B/X.

Here it is: dB/dX v1.0 (31-page PDF). Roughly half the mechanics it details have been playtested at least to some extent.

EDIT: See this page for the latest version.

Whither dB/dX?

In a nutshell, the major differences from B/X or OSE include the following.

• Classless: player characters are first and foremost adventurers.
• New adventurers "purchase" starting gear and followers with negative XP.
• Ability scores map directly to combat stats (more or less as described here).
• DURF-style hit dice and consistent morale mechanics for both NPCs and players.
• Concise mechanics for adjudicating combat (a refinement of those described here and here).
• A system for tracking inventory with simple encumbrance (a refinement of this approach).
• A "robust" procedure for overland/waterbourne expeditions that uses a bag of six dice to determine what occurs in each "watch" of a given day.
• A modified version of Necropraxis' hazard die mechanic for dungeon crawling that emphasises the party's group movement rate.
• Silver standard: as seen in many fine homebrews, but with some (I think) novel changes to gems, jewellery, and item prices.
• A procedure for determining what happens to an adventurer's followers when s/he dies.
• A "catch-all" mechanic for adjudicating anything not covered by more specific rules.

I've probably given way too much thought to much of the above. Perhaps one day I'll write up some explanatory notes to describe the reasoning behind some of the more contentious ideas.

What now?

Like most poor souls afflicted with the all-consuming need to create a homebrew systems, I wrote this mainly for my own intellectual satisfaction and as an aid to refereeing games in my own particular (highly opinionated) idiom… not to mention trying to get my brain to just shut up about it! There are still a number of ideas I want to develop—mostly those mentioned under the Future heading—but I'm hopefull that this is enough for me to just relax and simply enjoy playing with my friends once more.

That said, if you find any parts of dB/dX interesting, particularly those involving the expeditions procedure (which, despite my best efforts, I've have yet to playtest properly), I'd be interested to hear your thoughts.