GURPS Basic Fantasy: BF1 Morgansfort

Basic Fantasy is one of the most amazing projects and games ever created. Free for everyone to play, a hybrid OSR game that mixes the best of modern mechanics with old school gaming. And the one part most overlooked is that this game was tested extensively, and the math just works flawlessly. People will play other OSR games and come back to Basic Fantasy just because the math and balance are solid here, and there's no wonkiness or silly stuff that breaks immersion.

And the books are free for all to enjoy.

It is one of the most generous communities in gaming, and the books are printed at cost and sold for zero profit. This isn't some $200 botique OSR game meant for crowdfunding profits; this is a movement to keep gaming free for everyone, forever. I wish more communities were like this one.

And this is one of my favorite systems to convert to GURPS. No offense to the creators, these adventures are amazing in Basic Fantasy and should be played there, too. But as a GURPS adventure engine, Basic Fantasy is a snap to convert adventures into GURPS, the AC values cleanly translate into DR values, and you can even use the HD and hp numbers nearly as-is in a hybrid conversion model.

And the adventures, towns, maps, and worlds are so well put together, they are amazing. There isn't too much detail, but there is just enough to get the mind working. They are the perfect blank canvas to work on, not so blank that they are nothing, but with just enough detail to expand and fill in yourself.

They also feel on the low-fantasy side of the genre, where magic is still rare and special. I could play these almost entirely low fantasy with GURPS, even without magic, and they would work perfectly. I like being able to control how much magic is in a setting, and I have a few setting books that overdo it with the magic to a point where the setting feels unusable.

Converting

BX hit points and damage are very compatible with GURPS, and if an orc has 4hp, let him have that, and he becomes a BX-style mook in GURPS that typically goes down in one hit. I am not looking for everyone to have 10 hit points in GURPS, and 1-2 HD creatures will often have less, but by the time creatures get 6+ HD, they will be tougher in GURPS, almost like boss monsters, and it will all balance out.

If a basilisk has 6 HD in BF, that will be 6d6+12 hit points in GURPS, or about 34 hit points on average. a DR of 5, and ability scores of about 16. Attack skill will be 17, and powers that total 30 character points. I have a B/X conversion page that works pretty well. The only difference is that converted creatures will be a little tougher at higher levels, but if you treat them as boss monsters, they will be fine. Lower-level creatures will go down fast like mooks, but that is fine in the genre, too. GURPS is deadly enough that a 2 hit point goblin with a skill of 12 can kill you pretty quickly on a critical hit with a shortbow.

Mind you, get access to one high-tech firearm, and even that 9 HD dragon with 63 hit points, a skill of 20, and a DR of 9 is going to go down fast. To those with bows and pointy sticks, that dragon will be terrifying and take dozens of men's lives and a few siege weapons to take down, if it is even possible, or the dragon doesn't flee early.

This is a converted reality versus the actual baseline GURPS reality. The world will have that "video game" feeling in places, but this is how the gods decreed the world, so it shall be. GURPS Ultra Lite fills in most of the rest.

My conversion is more "GURPS in a BX reality" than "GURPS in a realistic reality," where GURPS drives the engine of a BX-style world, BX values are imported from standard bestiaries, and the differences between high- and low-HD creatures create a natural balance. There will always be "hero orcs" generated like characters, but the rest are background extras in a Peter Jackson movie, left with their converted HP and HD ratings.

This also saves me a ton of conversion work, while leaving the door open for me to create custom hero monsters with the character creation tools. Oh, and kudos to the GURPS community that does these amazing conversions! If you want to play with "real reality" stats, please visit those sites and creators and support the amazing work they do.

The GURPS Campaign

I would start in Morgansfort, even as just a hired bow guard on the walls, and run a campaign telling his story. Since there is a refugee component to the setting, with new settlers arriving, I would expand the fort by adding wooden houses huddled around the outer walls, and place the newcomers in them.

The castle itself is a bit small for a few hundred people, and putting them gathered around the fort for protection makes sense. There are humanoid attacks, so the fort's defenders would ring a bell and rush everyone inside before slamming the gates shut. This puts pressure on the new workforce outside the walls to be digging an outer defensive moat with pikes, and putting up a temporary wooden wall before a large outer stone wall can be constructed.

There is room for it on the local map, and the cliffs on the water could be left open for now. There could be an argument on how large the outer walls should be, if they should stay 120 yards from the fort, or extend out all the way to the road. The scattered farms would also need to be considered, and they would need to expand dramatically in the near future. We need the wall. The humanoids keep attacking. The refugees are not safe out there. And we need to keep everyone fed and productive while putting every able-bodied person to work.

And that is it.

That is the campaign.

Keep it simple, use the included dungeons as a source of adventure, but leave the main story of the first few months, the building of the wall, and all the struggles around that, along with fending off humanoid attacks and finding their source. Keeping the game simple will ensure its success, and give me room to go any way I want with it. If the players want to train soldiers from the new arrivals, great. Do they want to direct the construction of the wall?

Do they serve as peacekeepers and constables among the new arrivals? Is there tension among the refugees, or between them and the town? Are the workers cutting logs getting attacked? Are the farms being raided while starvation looms? Is there a clan of dwarves in the hills who could help with stone, if they get help (or gold) for their services?

And since this is BX, could the orcs or goblins be negotiated with? Turned against each other? Could you find a good dragon who could scare them off (in trade for a favor)? Or perhaps find fae and get them to help, and not attack those cutting trees down for the town?

Keeping the starting point simple ensures longevity and playability.

It also gives the players the freedom to go in any direction imaginable.

Some may just want to "up and leave this dump."

Others will stay.

Some will head out to learn the secrets of magic.

Others will eventually make this the seat of their new domain.

That is fine by me.

I don't need "the magical stairs" and the "1000-year curse" with the "planar concordium" coming into play here. Some 5E modules go way too hard on the planar, multiversal, and high-magic stuff, and they lose me. I do not need any of it. I want humanistic, relatable, down-to-earth stories of struggle and sacrifice. In 5E, my characters would get so powerful that they would cease to care about Morgansfort. This is 5E's problem: You get so godlike that the world is beneath you. Why would the town ever trust people who get planar bastions at level 5 and are never seen again?

In GURPS, I can have an 800-point character who still cares about this place. That character is still very grounded and real to the world. While they may be around the world on adventures from time to time, this will always be home, and they will never outlevel it.

That keeps me coming back to turn the next page of adventure.

One Great Character Versus Many Simple

First up, I love OSRIC, Old School Essentials, Basic Fantasy, and all my B/X and First Edition games. These are S-Tier games for me; the math is correct, they don't use silly video-game number scaling, and the characters are simple. If I am playing a d20-based fantasy game, these are my go-to games. And I play a lot of solo, so having these "books full of data" makes the game easy for me.

But, in playing solo, why do I want to play simple characters? If I think about this in terms of computer gaming, this is the difference between a Skyrim character and one from an RTS game. I would rather have a fully detailed "CRPG character" in a solo-play tabletop game (with full gear, skills, backpack, magic systems, and ability scores) than a simple "RTS unit" with a few ability scores and no ability to equip or change them (attack, armor, speed).

Granted, playing GURPS solo with six characters begins to overload my will to manage that amount of complexity, as this is like running a six-person party of Skyrim characters and drowning in micromanagement and wishing things were simpler.

But for one to three characters in a "small party" game, GURPS does that fine and gives me a greater level of detail to each, which provides me with a greater level of satisfaction "per hour spent gaming." Running one character in a B/X-style game is a "thing," and I would probably get bored with it pretty quickly. Even four is not that hard, but when it comes down to those "small choices" that I love to make in GURPS, like what eight character points can be spent on, given what my character needs, it's excellent stuff.

In B/X games, so what? My bard has 1,600 XP out of 2,000, and there's nothing I can do with it except wait. What will happen in 400 XP at level two? My combat modifier and saving throws remain unchanged. I gain 1d6 more hit points and a level one spell.

Really?

The character does not get interesting until level five, and most games end around level ten. Even if you accelerate leveling to a rapid pace of one level per session, that is five 4-hour sessions to get to level five, or about 20 hours of solo play, with most of the "small choices" being around treasure and gear. Most of your interactions will not be rules-based ones. By that point, we get our first bonus to-hit, our first second-level spell, better saves, and a few class abilities open up.

An accelerated rate in GURPS is about five character points per session of play, with one to three being normal, but we are going on an accelerated pace to match our "level per session" that we used in B/X. This is a total of 25 character points in GURPS for our theoretical five sessions of play.

GURPS typically "levels up" character power every 50 points, so this is halfway to increasing a tier of power. The wonderful things I could do with 25 character points in GURPS blow my mind. If I engage in more social and performance activities, I can improve those skills; otherwise, I will apply my skills that I learned in combat. I could develop my magic, learn new songs, or improve the ones I have. I could create a new advantage based on my experiences and the story. If I went on a harrowing survival adventure, I could develop new survival skills.

The actions of my character will be reflected in their improvement.

That does not happen in B/X. 5d6+CON hit points, a few spells, some save numbers, and a few class abilities. Gear and treasure will reflect the most significant differences between fifth-level bards.

My bard in GURPS? Specialized in social, combat, magic, survival, or any other area relevant to the campaign I am playing and "what is going on." The character will morph and change to reflect the game I am playing, and be specialized in those areas of campaign interest. If I am doing more of a social campaign, guess what? My bard's skills will improve in social areas, and my character will reflect the campaign. And remember, in GURPS, there are a few areas of social skills, so these can be specialized social interactions (with supporting advantages, and an expansion book focusing on the area).

MS Paint strikes again. -Hak

In B/X? Level five bard, extra hit points, slightly better to-hit, a few class abilities, and spells. No better social skills, magic is a fixed path, and I may get some magic items to help me out? If I need survival skills, I need to find a ranger, and the improvement can't happen inside my character (without houseruling it).

In 5E? Forget it; find a Kickstarter book for $60-100 that improves the social aspect of the game, and add it to the pile of books to fix the system. 5E is notorious for shipping a basic tabletop game that requires a few thousand dollars' worth of add-on books to play the way you want. The grift is so high here that it is off the charts.

GURPS works perfectly, even with just the core books.

And it gives me greater satisfaction with fewer characters.

Basic Roleplaying vs. GURPS: Disadvantages

One thing Chaosium's Basic Roleplaying could do better, compared to GURPS, is character disadvantages. They have a "character failings" system regarding superpowers to increase the "point budget" to buy superpowers. Still, these need to be integrated into the main game as a system that nets extra character or skill points.

You could make a house rule saying the points in character failings can be applied as ability score points or give 5% per point in skills since a 5% bonus in a sharpness spell would cost a point in an item (times five for always on). Still, this is a hack and invites min-maxing.

Played as-is, BRP does not have a character advantage or disadvantage system, and the characters come off as ability scores and skill lists. If you have a disadvantage, it is roleplaying only, and you note it as a part of your character background.

BRP has a "passion" system that can be a double-sided trait (BRP p214). It forces "self-control" roles and acts as a positive inspiration system in certain situations. This is the best way to handle these in the system, though these are more mental and social traits than physical ones. The passion system in BRP is like a skill and can improve over time (or decrease to 0% and be removed from the character). It can be gained at any time through situations and role-playing.

If a character sees a village destroyed by necromancy and has an extreme reaction, that character could get "Hate: Necromancy" as a passion at 60%, and that will guide the character's actions, improve or weaken, and be a part of that character going forward.

Passions are also how devotion to a deity and a paladin's code of honor work in the game. To go against it, you need to fail the roll (and this may force a check later to lower the passion by 1d6%). But passions can be rolled like a skill to gain temporary inspiration for an action or scene, so they work both ways.

GURPS does a better job with character disadvantages across the board; they cover more situations (social, mental, and physical), and the disadvantages can be added to templates. There is more "English" when creating a minor disadvantage versus a quirk or a full-blown major disadvantage.

One issue that GURPS does not cover is temporary disadvantages that can change during play. The system in BRP is more suited for this since the percentage values constantly change. Passions can go away or become more severe over time. You can always "buy off" a GURPS disadvantage, but the system in BRP is more "gamified" and serves as a roleplaying hook (that can be used for temporary advantages as well).

The passion system in BRP was not built to factor in physical limitations or concepts like corruption. These are more role-playing backgrounds or things for which you need to create new systems.

And I am not house ruling these or creating a system to work them in. These are well-understood and translate to any game without teaching people new rules or explaining lists of house rulings. They can be used in adventures, templates, and character designs without a problem.

One of the annoying parts of the GURPS disadvantage system comes with Dungeon Fantasy characters, where that system forces me to take bucketloads of disadvantages that almost seem like character stereotypes. I will end up with these 250-point characters with 50-75 points of disadvantages (or even 125), and the characters feel heavily weighted down with baggage (I hate to call it that, but it is). Playing a character with five 12-minus self-control roles feels like a chore, and some overlap, like charitable versus compulsive generosity and honorable versus some of the codes of conduct (and even selfless).

I prefer my GURPS characters to have fewer disadvantages, like the one or two defining negative traits, which are no more than 30 points. Players should be worrying about those one or two weaknesses and not something that looks like a skill list packed with disadvantages. This adds to the already complex Dungeon Fantasy character templates, and I get the feeling DF was designed for GURPS experts and not the target audience of "players coming from D&D," as the game would be better suited to serve.

Dungeon Fantasy is a fantastic game, but it misses the target of being a system you can use to convert D&D players to GURPS. The 250-point templates are capable but more meant for experienced players. Ideally, the system should give you class abilities in 50-point increments, and you should start at 50 points, with your first milestone happening after your first adventure and getting you to 100 points. Disadvantages should be limited to 25 points at the start.

A 250-point character with 30 spells is a lot to learn and understand if you are new to GURPS. By contrast, a beginning caster in BRP has 4 or 6 spells (normal and heroic power levels), which come from skill points (starting at INT x 1% and improved by spending points). Also, a BRP character with a collection of 3-18 ability scores and a list of percentage skills is much easier for new players to pick up and learn than a 250-point GURPS character. Players can get into BRP games like Call of Cthulhu much faster than they can GURPS.

GURPS does a better job here, as these rules are built into character design. I like GURPS's freedom in defining a character's "roleplaying characteristics."

BRP is a more straightforward game, with a softer system that is either listed in a character's background (not pointed) or vectored out using the passions system. BRP is also meant to "bolt on" optional rules and modules more than GURPS,

Are Conversions Even Worth the Trouble?

Some games are so large that they aren't even worth converting. They showcase a world, adventure path, and rules where everything is part of a whole. I picked Pathfinder because I have a massive collection of 1e pawns perfect for hex-based battles.

I am still working on a " Pathfinder-flavored" Dungeon Fantasy game since I have the pawns and background material. But converting in every spell, magic item, class, and power is off the table. This will be straight Dungeon Fantasy wearing a Pathfinder 1e look and style, much like the excellent Savage Pathfinder set of rules (without all the conversion).

I will likely base this around everyone's favorite starting town, Sandpoint, since it has a book of information and is as iconic to the game as the Keep on the Borderlands module. I would modify the town, the underwhelming dungeons underneath, and the sparse pickings in the overland map to add more dungeon locations and excitement to this map. This book assumes the Rise of the Runelords adventure path is completed, so take note of that.

That said, the 3.5E era Rise of the Runelords adventure is also a good resource, and if all Pathfinder 1e was is the core books and this module, that would be a lifetime of gaming or converting over for Dungeon Fantasy. A word of warning about any Pathfinder adventure path: there are places where they actively discourage exploration and expansion of locations and source materials, which is annoying. I know why they do it, to "keep the story moving" and "hustle the party along to the next place."

Because if you stick around in one place too long, you will gain levels and power, and the next part of the story will be a pushover. The appendix for the book above contains an ancient city, and it goes out of its way to say, "The real loot is in the tombs" and "Don't be scavengers here."

Seriously?

Sandbox, you ain't.

Old-school TSR would give you places to expand your adventure in every location. They would dot the Sandpoint landscape with ruins and exciting locations. Every chapter of the adventure path would be full of places where the game master could expand the area with new dungeons, missions, NPCs, and towns to help.

Paizo tends to say, "Please move along." To be fair, they have a section for "continuing the campaign" afterward, but as you go through the story parts, I wanted much more than was given here, especially for expansion.

If you convert these over, please be more like old-school TSR.

GURPS makes it easier to have a flatter power curve, and you don't need humanoids with 30-80 hit points in every room at level ten when you start with the same enemies with 3-8 hit points in every room at level one. In GURPS, I can "increase the CR" of an average orc by giving in 4 points of skill, 5 extra HP, a few points of FP and other stats, good armor, and the combat reflexes advantage.

Slow down and enjoy these places. Explore them. GURPS's flatter power curve has you covered, and you don't need to worry about artificially limiting character progression. Just have fun.

I can use most OSR monsters without too much conversion instead of Pathfinder stats. Pathfinder stats are on that lousy "Wizards scaling curve," so they are way out of line with the OSR. To do this, I halve Pathfinder HD and divide attack bonuses and damage by three. Or just grab a copy of Basic Fantasy and use those numbers.

Another word of warning is that some of the maps and creature sizes are strange in the Paizo adventures. A battle with a full-sized dragon occurs in a room 100 by 150 feet somewhere in the adventure. There isn't enough room for that dragon to fly in a circle. The 3.x and later versions of D&D have always had this disconnect with the proper sizes of creatures, and it shows. Some of the maps here with 5-foot squares are too darn small, and some of the "legendary dungeons" under iconic locations are tiny cellars. Battle-mat limitations, I suppose.

Use the books and maps as "inspirations" and make your own. Go big. Expand. Make these places your own. Part of the fun of a conversion is adding your own stuff, so go to town.

The OSR does not have this problem since you aren't supposed to "balance encounters." But every Wizards D&D release and Paizo version of the game is tightly balanced and easy to break if you stay too long in a place and level up a little. It has been this way since D&D 3.0 in the 2000s, and it sucks.

This is a tricky subject since some conversions rely on a few key things to be there to "look and feel" like the original setting. You do a Star Frontiers conversion, and you need the major races, the iconic gear (skimmers, explorers, hovercycles), and the hard sci-fi starships. Most of these items are reskinned gear in GURPS, but they still need to be listed and stated as the options for this world. You will not have anti-gravity cars and artificial gravity in this setting, though we did when we had a hybrid Space Opera/Star Frontiers game back in the day.

With GURPS Traveller, we have it all done for us. Sci-fi can be tough since there is more to convert, so the setting feels authentic.

Fantasy is easier than sci-fi since I can just throw all the old 3.5E content in the bin and stick to a system designed for a flatter power curve fantasy. Thematically, there is little difference between a GURPS fighter and a Pathfinder 1e one, except the GURPS fighter is much more capable and on a more even power level with casters.

Conversion Notes

The more I play GURPS and master the system, the more I am done with other games. Yes, I know, it is always good to play new things and experience different games, but I have been down this road with game publishers for decades. Some games promise up the world but only deliver a fraction of the B/X town-to-dungeon experience. Some games are written and are 90% similar to B/X, and the encumbrance rules have been changed because the designer never liked the original system.

It reminds me of all the bands that sprung up in the 1990s that sounded like Soundgarden or Pearl Jam. There were some good ones, but everything sounded the same.

B/X compatibility is excellent, and it lets me easily convert to GURPS. B/X Damage and hit points are similar to GURPS and can often be used straight. A 3-hp goblin is more like a minion, and I don't mind those low values for some monsters since they speed up combat (or they could be sickly or wounded from a tough life). Even if you look at GURPS Dragons, hits never exceed 100, so the B/X scale of an ancient red dragon having about 88 hp works, and once you factor in modern firearm damage, a 6d6 fireball fits into GURPS nicely and is quite lethal. Armor? AC minus nine, and it works. Skill, parry, and dodge you can estimate, based on HD.

Be careful with AD&D 2E and higher hit points and HD; they increase quickly with each edition, tripling at 4E and doubling in 5E—which is still too much.

Any B/X adventure can be converted to GURPS on the fly. It is beyond simple. I added a page for my B/X conversions today.

Magic items? Most are used as-is, and magic weapons and armor can apply their bonus to damage, hit, or DR as needed. If a magic sword does an extra 1d6 fire damage, use it like that. If it is broken, fix it.

Saves? A resistance roll in GURPS.

Spells? I stick to the ones in Dungeon Fantasy and use these casting and effect rules. If one comes up in a module, I use the closest one. Magic is an easy system to swap out in any OSR game.

Basic Fantasy 4th Edition is such a great GURPS resource that I keep it alongside my GURPS books. It is the best conversion base and reference work for OSR gaming. It is worth playing as-is! But if you wanted to use it as a sourcebook for Dungeon Fantasy, that works too.

However, many of the OSR and OSR-like games are based on gimmicks (especially with all the random tables in games these days) or the designer's house rules. We are in the age of personal preference; if you like dried strawberries in your cereal, you eat this; if you don't, you eat that. Designers ask us to get passionate about minor differences. Am I really supposed to get behind your version of B/X because it has different encumbrance rules and a few other minor changes?

I am at the point now with B/X and OSR games. They need to bring something new to the table. I have enough of them, and many are just a few house rules away from each other.

YouTube, DriveThru, and Kickstarter keep many of these games afloat. Very few are worth buying into, and I can say that, having bought many of them. A few are based on a passion for how the games used to be played, and these are always the ones that rise to the top since the designer understands the relation of the source material to the inspirations. Cepheus Deluxe is like that for me in regards to 2d6 sci-fi.

Get the best in the OSR game genres and use GURPS for the rules. Cepheus Deluxe is an excellent example of classic 2D6 sci-fi, and Basic Fantasy is my best OSR source game. I have a few new B/X games, but Basic Fantasy's free status and community project will make it accessible and have a future long after every other OSR game goes away. And it was recently rewritten to eliminate all OGL material, so it is safe.

If a game has a unique wargame-like system, like a ship combat system in Star Frontiers (or even car combat in Car Wars), use that instead of the one in GURPS Space. Use GURPS for the skill rolls and apply a -1 or -2 per hex to hit the penalty (I need to test this). The same goes for Cepheus's ship combat. Ship design, combat, and internal damage all work like Cepheus—but make all skill rolls with GURPS and throw modifiers on there as needed.

GURPS is used for the skill rolls.

The unique system is used for everything else.

Only use GURPS for characters. This way, the classic Knight Hawks ship combat will look and feel like the game, but your GURPS characters will make the skill rolls. I wish I figured this out before my game blew up, but I can always restart at the point it blew up.

But I like a one-source system for everything since my mind is beginning to think and work in GURPS. When I play other games, I see how GURPS does the same things better and with less effort. Some of these "invented systems"—especially the ones that come from story-gaming—are so abstract and gamified that they make no sense.

Beware the games that need to invent abstract concepts to patch rules in other games. I like Level Up Advanced 5E's "supply" system to eliminate tracking food and water, but really? How hard is it to track food and water by day and weight per day and leave it at that? It won't matter in many games, or it can all be left on a horse. When it comes to survival scenarios, you can make it an issue. Or in genres where survival is paramount, like post-apocalypse (or worlds like Dark Sun), tracking these supplies and finding new sources will be life and death.

Require a skill roll to replenish them if you are in an area of abundance, or just say they top them off.

Otherwise, ignore food and water. If I were playing GURPS: Miami Vice, would I require players to track them? If I were playing a similar-themed fantasy game of constables in a large fantasy city, playing Magic Vice Cops, would I need them to track these supplies?

This is where a lot of GURPS's unfair criticism comes from: people taking one specific rule and applying it in every case. You would never do it in D&D, so why is GURPS any different? Sorry, your two vice cops are lying on the corner, starving! You should have kept food and water in your sports car! The rules are the rules!

When you realize that most all rules in GURPS are optional, and if you cut them all out, the game is like B/X in complexity, and 5E is a horrible mess of layered rules and interrupts, you will begin to understand the GURPS mindset.

I can play GURPS using GURPS Ultra Lite and still be playing GURPS, and these characters will be compatible with the whole game. I can use the above one-page rules for all my NPCs and monsters and use them in a game where the characters play by the complete rules.

I can run a nearly complete GURPS game off the 32-page GURPS Lite free PDF, and the rules you need to understand are only half the size of this book—the other half is character creation. Give me a break; GURPS is a rules-light game.

It has a few hundred pages of optional rules and a few thousand pages of optional setting rules, none of which are needed to play. It is lighter in rules than even a game I love, Savage Worlds, which requires you to understand many abstract concepts to get fluent in the system. Savage Worlds' speed comes at the price of programming your brain to work with the game. I still love it, but getting back into the game requires loading that information into my memory.

I can't say any of this about 5E.

5E is over 1,000 pages in the first three books; you only get the basics. Most of them are monsters, spells, and magic items—but you begin to need thousands of dollars of add-ons and third-party 5E books to give the game a good level of customization.

In the core book, GURPS does it all.

And I get so much more depth and customization in GURPS than I could ever buy, no matter how much money I spend on 5E (or even the OSR). I like 5E and love the OSR, but there is no contest here for the better game.

At least not for me.