Earlier in 2023, Stellagama Publishing launched Gargoyle 74, a fast-play, old-school-flavored OSR game written by Tamir Levi and translated from Hebrew by Omer Golan-Joel. This ruleset grew organically from Tamir's extensive gaming, and enjoyed prolonged playtesting by him and by his various groups. The key aspect of Gargoyle 74 is taking the 1974 Original RPG rules, and gently adapting them to modern play in which the rules fade into the background and adventuring occupies the foreground.
Gargoyle 74 draws its inspiration from both myth and sword & sorcery literature. Monsters have a mythical twist, such as kobolds being miners transformed to monsters by their greed, and undead being difficult to kill without a Cleric's blessing. Once again, these rules developed out of its author's need for a system which does not get in the way of playing, and which the Referee may mostly play from his or her head after reading the rules once or twice - without unnecessary page-flipping during play. The goal is high adventure and heroic (or villainous) exploits - unobstructed by rule bloat.
The system itself is mostly compatible with the 1974 Original RPG and Swords & Wizardry, with some modernization (such as ascending AC), and almost exclusively uses 1d20 and 1d6 for the sake of simplicity. It also uses a unified XP progression chart and has spot rules for common adventuring pursuits, from stealth to listening at doors to wilderness travel, all simple and straightforward. It is quite easy to use any OSR adventure with Gargoyle 74 with minimal or no conversion, and hacking these rules is extremely and intentionally easy.
Available in PDF and print format from Stellagama Publishing.
Get it HERE.
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