How to Play D&D for Free

You don't need D&D to play D&D. There are free alternatives. Not to mention that its not hard to make your own game if you understand how table top roleplaying games (TTRPGs) are played. 

• Basic Fantasy RPG is a free retroclone of an old school edition of D&D. It's like the Basic / Expert edition (B/X) with a few modern rules. This is the GOAT! They have a downloads page where you can get supplemental books including adventures.
• White Box : Fantastic Medieval Adventure Game has a free pdf. It's a 100 page retroclone of original D&D and I love it!
• Blueholme Prentice Rules is a retroclone of an older ed of D&D taking you on levels 1 to 3.
• OSRIC 1e, which stands for old-school reference and index complication, is a retroclone of Advanced D&D (AD&D) 1e.
• For Gold & Glory is a retroclone of AD&D 2e.
• Both D&D 3.5e and Pathfinder 1e have a System Reference Document (SRD) here. I've heard PF 1e described as D&D 3.75e. An SRD is also available for D&D 5e there.
• Draw Steel by MCDM is a relatively new game with its complete rules free online (got to respect that). I've heard it's similar to D&D 4e.
• Index Card RPG 2e has a very generous amount of content in their quickstart rules. It's a very simplified version of the essence of D&D. Setting and genre neutral. Flexible. Fast. Simple.
• Olde Swords Reign is a mix of D&D 5th edition, D&D 0th edition, and then some quality new ideas. I would call this a great way to ease modern gamers into older style D&D games.
• Shadowdark has a quickstart rules set. It's a popular alternative to D&D 5e. Its similar to 5e mechanically but it has an old school feel. I hear it's a good entry point for modern gamers into older style play.
• Cairn aka Cairn RPG is a very rules lite game. 1e and 2e online.
• Black Hack RPG is a hack of classic D&D. Probably B/X.
• Lamentations of the Flame Princess is old school D&D with a weird / horror twist. The core rules are slick and free.
• Open Legend RPG is like if all the familiar assets of character creation for D&D 5th edition were broken into little bity pieces and it allowed you to make a highly customized character. It's setting and genre neutral and highly customizable. Core rules are completely online. I really like it but the barriers to entry are that no one's playing it, there are few to no other resources for it even though its open-source, and it's character creation is really involved.
• OpenD6 is an a free game different from D&D and the d20 system. OpenD6 uses only six-sided dice. It's got a dice pool system. Your stats are represented by a number of dice. For example, rather than having 10 strength, you might have 2D for two dice in strength. That's the number of six-sided dice you roll to make a strength test. The rules are modular so if you want to change it to suit your game, you can by adding or removing stats, skills, etc.
• Patherfinder 2e is here. I hear this is very different from PF 1e/
• Mork Borg has a bare bones edition for download. This is a dark fantasy/ horror fantasy game.
• Open 2d6 is a game with mechanics inspired by Barbarians of Lemuria. Roll 2d6, add bonuses, try to roll 9 or higher. Double 1s are a crit fail, double 6s are crit success.
• Open Lite RPG is a game I wrote for fun on this blog. I imagined it as a simple, rules lite game. It uses only the d20 and d6's. 

Free Settings

A setting that is ready-to-play. A setting is a defined major location for your game with one or more minor locations. It could be a town, a dungeon, and a wilderness in-between. Or a whole region of a world. Or a galaxy.

• Mystara is a classic D&D setting.
• Blackmarsh (not Elder Scrolls).
• Draconia '95 is an in-progress setting I'm working on, also on this blog. It takes place in a generic city in 1995. It's a bases for urban fantasy, sci-fi, and horror in a grounded modern setting where the best of technology exists but is not ubiquitous.

Free Starter Adventurers

What's and adventure? It's a scenario to play through with a problem or goal, a map or series of maps, monsters, treasure, etc. Sometimes adventures they have built-in settings.

• Basic Fantasy RPG's dowloads page is your friend! One thing worth noting is that all versions of D&D pre 3e are mostly compatible and easily converted, which means adventures for one work for the others. I am recommending these as good starting adventures:
• BF1 Morgansfort: The Western Lands Campaign. This contains a starter setting.
• JN1 The Chaotic Caves
• AA2 Adventure Anthology Two, the mini-adventure Kidnapped on page 41
• Tomb of the Serpent King is a teaching dungeon. Very good!

House Rules for Faster, More Immersive Games

The intent of these house rules is to make games  faster and more immersive by eliminating habits that lead to interrupting the pace of the game. I hoped this would be a simpler version of a much more in-depth blog post here which uses the concept of flow state to describe why interruptions in TTRPGs are detrimental to the overall TTRPG experience. I've added some non-essential rules that suit my desired game, but I justify their inclusion because they set expectations which can avoid confusion.

Grounded Fiction

This rule establishes a common understanding of the setting. Fiction does not mean anything goes. The setting has relatable characters, plausible scenarios, and realistic environments. Your character is an ordinary person who becomes an adventurer. Don't do anything you wouldn't do in real life. Play your characters like you care what happens to them.

Ready Bonus

If you're ready at the start of your turn, you get a +2 bonus to your roll. This means that as soon as it's your turn, you state what you do and how you do it in one fluid sentence. No questions, no looking up rules, no thinking.

Initiative and Turn Order

Transitions into combat should be seamless, as much as possible. He who takes initiative goes first. If unclear, a GM ruling decides. Turns go clockwise around the table.

One Action Per Turn

Long turns mean more waiting which is boring. On your turn, you can move without acting, you can act without moving, and you can move up to your maximum movement as part of your action, but attacking ends your turn. One sentence can be spoken during your turn. No double actions or double moves, no bonus or free actions, no holding actions, no reactions.

Skipping Turns

Players are not entitled take as long as they want on their turn. The GM can give them a last call for declaring an action or rule that their character hesitates this round.

No Redo's, No Do-Overs, No Retcons

Once you declare your action, you can't change it.

Player Descriptions

Players must describe what they do and how using natural language, like writing a scene in a book. Avoid using game terminology. The intent of your action should be clear.

No phones, laptops, or electronics

Put them away. It's a paper and pencil game.

Character Creation

Player Characters (PCs) must suit the tone and setting of the game. PCs must have their own goal to pursue in play. Discuss with GM.

No Player vs Player (PvP)

The game is about collaboration and cooperation, not adversarial or competitive play. Don't sabotage each other. Don't be that guy. Evil PCs become GM property and NPC villains. Adventuring is dangerous, therefore PCs need a good reason for why they trust the other PCs with their lives.

Metagaming

Metagaming means thinking about the game like a game. Using knowledge that your characer doesn't have is also metagaming. Out-of-character discussions that your characters would not reasonably be able to achive in-character; e.g. long strategy during a short combat round. 

Player Skill, Not Character Skill

Dice rolls and game mechanics do not solve puzzles, resolve exploration, or social interaction; player ingenuity does. Describe what you search and how. Treat NPCs like real people, try to make them happy. Knowledge and insight are learned in play. Pay attention and ask questions. Plan ahead.

Character Stats

Your stats are just numbers for mechanical purposes. They do not necessarily describe your character or determine how you must portray them.

Emergent Story

Neither the GM or the dice tell the story. The GM prepares the setting and the NPCs, obstacles and opportunities within. The story is what emerges when the players engage with the setting and NPCs. In other words, players choose what to do and how, and the GM reacts.

Tools, Not Rules

The games rules and mechanics are just tools to help the GM to run the game. The GM may take and leave these tools to make their own tool kit as it suits them. Part of being a GM is knowing when to use them and knowing whey they don't suit a moment of the game.

No Rules Talk During The Game

During the game, no talking about the rules, no reading the rules, no asking for clarity about the rules. No rulebooks at the table. Save it for outside the game. The GM makes a ruling and moves the game along.

GM Rulings

One of the roles of the GM is to be a referee of the rules and to make rulings of what happens in the game. It's important to be fair and consistent, and without investment in the outcome. The rules can't account for everything, but people can! Consider in real life as your criteria. If something can reasonably succeed, it does. If something is genuinely impossible, no die roll will allow it.

Don't Break Character

This house rule is a guideline. Always being strictly in character is not needed, but breaking character leads to loss of immersion, momentum, and tension. Instead of asking what's in a room, ask what you see, hear, smell, etc. Don't ask what's in the box, describe how you inspect it. Don't declare that you sneak, describe what you're doing to be sneaky. Treat each in-game conversation as though it's actually happening and avoid out-of-character comments or sidebar. Turn out-of-character discussion into in-character conversation. If you're going to award anything to players for good roleplaying, factor whether or not they stay in character for their whole turn!

Optional Rules (in-character bonuses) to incentivize desired player behavior:

• Go an entire scene without breaking character and earn a hero die (a d6). You can hold up to five of these. Any number of hero dice can be spent on any roll.
• Go an entire game session without breaking character and earn 150% experience points.

Customize Stat Growth in RPG Maker

Have you ever played Breath of Fire III? In this game, you can assign one master to each character in your party. When your character levels up, their stat growth is modified by the master.

In Super Mario RPG, Legend of the Seven Stars, when your characters level up you have the choice of a stat bonus, and you modify your characters stats based on this bonus.

In Final Fantasy VI, you can equip an Esper to each character. When you level up, your stats are modified by the bonus from that Esper.

All of these ideas sound like fun, right? Can you do it in RPG Maker? I think you can! This post isn't a step-by-step guide. It's an explanation of how the idea might work and what it would take to do it.

First, create a common event. If you're unfamiliar, the common even is a global event. Unlike a regular event on a map, a common event is programmed in the database and can be triggered from any screen in the game. So, what is the triggering condition? It's when the game detects that a character's level has increased. How do we get it to do that?

Second, you'll need lots of variables. If you don't know how variables work, you should really play with them until you figure them out! Make a variable and call it Hero A's old Level. You need one of these variables four each hero. Hero B's old Level, Hero C's old Level, etc. You'll actually need two of each! One will be Hero A's new level and one will be hero A's old level. I don't want to get too far ahead of this process, but what we'll later do is ask the game engine to remember the hero's old level as compare it to the hero's new level, and if there's a difference, then that will mean the hero has leveled up and we'll have trigger a specific event where we can process the stat changes.

Preparation note: by default, all variables in a new game in RPG Maker are going to start at 0. So, you manually have to use a regular event somewhere in your game to set these Hero X's old Level variables to 1 or to equal each hero's levels within the first map or room of your game.

Question for you about your method: do you want your game to trigger the common event or do you want the common event to be a parallel process? A parallel process is always running, and so I think making too many parallel processes will slow down the game, so you'll want some other way to have the game regularly compare the variables for Hero X's new Level and Hero X's old Level.

One way I think this can work is using the events inside of the monster groups. Every time the hero goes into a battle, you'll want to go into the monster groups page and toggle on a switch party was in a battle. That's it. Now, you'll need a common event that is triggered by this switch being ON. The common event is going to compare all the levels of all the characters. If there is a change, then we'll go into a new process. If there is no change, we'll turn OFF this party was in a battle switch.

So that is the set up!

This next part gets more complex. The question is how complex do you want it?

First, let's talk about how RPG Maker tracks character or actor stats. I speculate that if you open the database, whatever the stats show in the actors / character page, no matter what you do, those will be the stats of your character when they level up. Essentially, every time the character levels up, their stats will change to match whatever shows in the database. Therefore, the stats will effectively be reset or refreshed upon the characters' level up. Therefore, we will need to track the hero's cumulating stat changes using more variables, and then manually apply them using a common event whenever the character levels up. Sounds like a blast, right!

You'll need variables: Hero A's HP, Hero A's MP, Hero A's Attack, Hero A's Defense, Hero A's Intellect, Hero A's Speed, etc. Right? This is one set! Each character will need their own separate set of variables. Ugh!

More variables! OK, so what is the mechanism for your players getting to choose how their stats change? Maybe you have an NPC in the world who gives the character a blessing of the warrior, or mage, or thief. Skyrim stones reference anyone? Create a single variable for Hero X's Blessing. Make one for each hero! Now, you might have ten blessings in your game. Or twenty.  Whatever. So, you'll need a list to track each blessing! I like to use the Notes or Comments feature in the events. If you've overlooked this feature, you can write yourself a note inside an event! It's great for this sort of thing because you don't have to track it in a separate document file (but also do that!). You'll need to use the comment feature to itemize each blessing and assign it a number. So for example, the Fighter Blessing is a 1, the Mage Blessing is a 2, and the Thief Blessing is a 3. Etc. What, did you think the RPG Maker Engine would do this for you? Nope! You need to track this because it's entirely custom!

Method: Back to our common event! If the common event identifies that a hero's level has changed, it will trigger a separate common event or a separate portion of the current common event. First, we'll have the game check which blessing the hero has. If the Hero X's Blessing = 1, then we know from our comment that this means he has the Fighter Blessing. Now, we use a Conditional Branch. I don't know what this feature is called in your version of RPG Maker, but this feature will allow us to create an if then statement (if one thing is this, then do that) for our event. If the variable for Hero X's Blessing equals 1, then we will modify other variables. Hero A's HP, Hero A's Strength, Hero A's Defense, whatever, all will be modified by +1 (or whatever other numbers you like). You're going to manually do this for each blessing that the character can have, and because we're using the if then feature, the game will only do the applicable ones and skip the non-applicable ones. 

Method Continued: And then you're going to manually do this for each character! It's going to be a long, long, massive event, so take your time and be thorough. Get it right with one character and you can copy and paste it, then change everything to the second character, the third, the fourth, etc. It's going to be a really bulky boy of a common event!

Method continued: We've checked to see that our hero has leveled up and we've applied our level up changes. Done! Next, what? We have to tell the event to change the hero's stats by adding the number stored in each variable! Increase Hero A's HP by the number stored in the variable Hero A's HP. Do this for every stat! Like I said, big boy event! Finish up by updating the variable Hero X's Old Level to match his current level. Then switch OFF the party was in a battle switch to end the event.

Phew.