MiniBX

This is an excellent little system by Lucas Rolim that provides fast moving, exciting combat while allowing the use of the original B/X material and swathes of compatible content. It has a pay what you want SRD document that details the rules the booklet version just has some nice stock for the booklet and attractive artwork by Bruno Prosaiko.

MiniBX is a con

So the first thing is that MiniBX defaults to a FKR style narrative negotiation or free play for the resolution of most things. Apart from combat and magic it doesn’t really have any rules. This means it has all the good and bad things about freeform play and if you enjoy more substantial rulesets you can already move on.

The good news is that prior to the introduction of skill systems and saves against stats a lot of the original material either has flat probabilities of actions working or there are fixed outcomes to activities so that for example if the party search a given room they will find a secret there. This means you can play a lot of the original material without needing those kinds of rules (which makes sense as those rules were introduced later).

The saving throw system is simply reproduced by each character having a fixed number of saves and when they may have been required to roll a save they may either use a save point or suffer the consequences. This little subsystem is one of the things I love about MiniBX as it is very simple but has player agency and the feel of things like like luck rolls without a lot of book-keeping.

MiniBX is combat

The main thing that MiniBX is concerned with delivering is a combat system that is fast, relatively simple, consequential and true to its source material. Combat hinges around the use of a hit dice chain. The damage dice of a weapon (d6 to d10) is compared to highest hit die of the target along with their Armour value. If the damage is higher or equal the attack is successful and the target’s hit dice chain is reduced by one die. Less and nothing happens, the target’s armour and natural agility means the blow either doesn’t hit or is deflected by the armour.

If the damage is higher then the initial role then the difference between the two dice becomes the residual damage and the target must now roll their next highest hit die and add their Life score. They now aim to roll higher than the residual damage. If they don’t then they lose another hit die and must repeat the procedure again until they are either successful or loss their last hit die and die.

Player characters can then spend a save instead of losing their last hit die, which can keep in the fight for longer than NPCs. After the fight they can also try to heal their wounds but there is a chance that their injuries may worsen resulting in another lost hit die so when you are down to your last hit die magical or guaranteed healing is far preferable to battlefield medicine.

The feel of combat is that initially both sides are chipping away at each other’s hit dice but there is always the possibility of a big hit on either side that cuts through an opponents chain, sometimes killing them instantly. Such moments have a lot of dramatic tension as they shift the balance of power significantly.

Even if this doesn’t happen at some point the tide is clearly turned and unless you have a lot of armour so you can risk continuing to take hits despite your hit dice you are going to have to consider surrendering or running away.

MiniBX morale is narrative

Exiting a losing combat is a choice and a tactic for the players but there is also a Morale mechanic that derives from the old-school Morale number but works in quite a different way. A player can initiate a Morale challenge at any time and the two sides then dice off their Morale scores and whoever wins gets a degree of narrative control to create an advantage in the fiction for one side. At a simple level this can involve fleeing or an attempt to parlay but could be more elaborate like the arrival of friendly forces to the rescue.

It’s an interesting foray into storygaming mechanics and in a way I feel these could have been used a bit more in things like generating lore about the world.

Magic

The magic system is really only partially there. The character classes give a circle rating for each level of the magic using class. You get a guide for translating circles into dice values and there are several commons spells laid out as an example. Spell durations are based entirely on the ability of the caster to concentrate on their spell, which is much better than managing spell durations and creates some tactic nuance in combat as parties need to protect the spellcasters.

However it seems that you are probably meant to mesh the original definition of the spells to decide whether they allow saving throws for example or get a sense of the default duration or effect. Part of the problem here is the very unique nature of the original D&D magic spells: each one was artisanal, created and playtested (or not) as the creator see fit rather than emerging from a system.

Creating a decent magic system is always problematic in fantasy game. Here I think it is best to create a simple system that relates the dice effect of the result (or the scope) to the circle of the character but allow access to all the regular D&D spells via spellbooks or scrolls. Magic could really do with some better options but in terms of allow reuse of historical content the system here mostly works.

MiniBX is the best OD&D system

I have played a few retroclones, OSR systems and my first D&D rules were Red Box. I can say with complete confidence that MiniBX is the best system I have used for playing original D&D material.

That’s because it has thoughtfully abstracted its ruleset down to the essence of the original rules. It has thought about what the purpose of things like Saving Throws are and it has only enough rules to serve that purpose. However mechanically it has managed to created a complete mapping between the mechanics of the original material and its own. You can adapt the mechanics of the original material in minutes and the play experience is as expected. Dragons are frighting, goblins may get lucky every now and then.

MiniBX captures the spirit of the original excitement of the early roleplaying games but eliminates all the boring repetitive parts of the incoherent and often under-tested rules systems. It makes combat exciting, it pushes the emphasis onto the characters to make decisions, its rules while simple have an appealing depth to them that allows players to use some tactics.

MiniBX Hacking

Carrying Capacity by default is quite limited, it is so low that it makes sure that the characters are not armed and armoured to the teeth but often a character will not be able to carry even the starting allocation of four items. I’m not sure if this is actually intentional or not.

A rule of thumb I’ve applied is to add four to the Carrying Capacity determined in the rules which then gives you a pretty standard range of roughly five to ten items.