Dungeon Delving Brown Box Edition (No Art) (5e)
Dungeon Delving Brown Box Edition is a retroclone of the original fantasy role-playing game published in 1974 (aka "0e"). It is an edited reconstruction (using open game content) of that game in easier to understand and use form. If you have wanted to play 0e but found the original rules confusing¸ disjointed¸ and apparently written for people who already understood the game¸ Dungeon Delving Brown Box Edition may be what you are looking for: a close emulation of the the original game presented in an organized manner intended for today's gamers instead of 1970's wargamers.
The first three sections of Dungeon Delving Brown Box Edition present the material from the original three 0e booklets (with an optional thief class from the first supplement)¸ just with better organization and clearer writing. The fourth section adds a number of optional rules and guidelines allowing the Referee to tailor the main rules to the needs of their players and their campaigns -- rules that the editor has created for use in his various campaigns over the last 45 or so years. Four appendixes complete the volume with an introduction to old school play¸ advice for the referee¸ advice for running adventures from the early days designed for large groups of players with the smaller groups of players more common today¸ and random tables the Referee will find useful.
Referees can easily design their own dungeons¸ towns¸ and wilderness or use published adventures and settings designed for 0e¸ B/X¸ or (with a bit of conversion work) 1e. Hundreds of published adventures both from the 1970s and 1980s and from OSR publishers today are available for use. All a player needs is paper¸ pencil/pen¸ and dice. The game itself is easy to learn and is fast and easy to play. Characters can be created in 10 minutes and a combat encounter seldom lasts much longer than that.
This the "pay what you want"/free version of the Dungeon Delving Brown Box Edition. It includes all the text of the paid version¸ but lacks most of the art¸ the main tablet/digest version¸ the ebook (epub and mobi) versions¸ and the editable version of the game (making it easy to house rule and produce a copy of the game for campaign players with just what they need included). The paid version can be found here.