Microlite75

Historical Information on Microlite75

What is Microlite75?

Important Note: Microlite75 has been replaced by third edition Microlite74 Extended. The information on this page is for historical information. Please download Microlite74 Extended from our Microlite74 page instead of Microlite75.

Microlite75, like its parent game, Microlite20, was a trimmed down, sub-miniature version of the Primary Fantasy SRD rules (see license for more info) that has been designed to be quick and easy to play. The goal of Microlite75, however, is to recreate the style and feel of the early editions of the world’s most popular fantasy roleplaying game published in the 1970s and early 1980s – but with a few modern ideas and additions that fit the early edition spirit.

The rules are based on the 1974 0e edition with its supplements and material from 0e magazine articles, some 0e third party material, some of the house rules the author used in the 1970s, and selected ideas from other roleplaying games. The rules are not intended to be a clone of the 0e rules, but rather a conversion of them to a rules-lite D20-based system that encourages old-school play without strictly old-school rules.

Are these rules better than the original systems? Microlite75 is more like 0e plus supplements expressed in Microlite20 terms. It doesn’t claim to be new, improved, or better, just the way we did it converted to a rules system more players are likely to be already familiar with.

Microlite75 is divided into two booklets, the Characters & Magic book and the Options & Monsters book.

The Characters & Magic book contains the complete basic rules and the equipment and spells lists. For many campaigns, this booklet contains everything a player needs to know to play. This book includes:

  • Simple Character Creation Rules: Roll 4 attributes and select a race, class, background, and alignment.
  • Standard Classes: Fighter, Ranger, Paladin, Monk, Magic-User, Illusionist, Cleric, Druid, and Thief
  • Simple and fast-playing combat system that tracks physical damage (aka body points) separately from luck/skill/fatigue (aka hit point) damage.
  • Hit points recover with a night’s rest. Spells cost hit points to cast. Actual wounds recover more slowly.
  • Rules for hirelings, monster reactions (not every monster wants to fight), morale (not every monster fights to the death), and more.

The Options & Monsters book contains a large number of optional rules a GM might elect to include in a campaign as well as monster lists and other GM-oriented information. This book includes:

  • Monsters and more monsters with simple stat blocks.
  • Old school GM guidelines.
  • Optional rules for additional character classes, single class campaigns, advantages and disadvantages, character goals and personality traits, metamagic, ritual magic, weird science, fire-and-forget magic, combat maneuvers, armor for all classes, action points, fame, sanity, psionics, spirits (combat, powers, and binding), fixed level campaigns, science
    fantasy, and more.

Download Microlite75

Note: These downloads are OUTDATED! Please download Microlite74 Extended from our Microlite74 page instead of Microlite75

You can download the Condensed Type edition of Microlite75 here. The current version is 1.01, released in January 2011. There are two booklets to download:

Important Errata (will be corrected in version 1.02)

The description of the level 1 arcane spell “Pep” is missing a sentence. It should read:

Pep: One target per caster level instantly recovers 25% of their Hit Points. No effect on targets in combat or other heavy activity. Can only affect a given target once per day. R: touch. D: instant but effects permanent.

The words in italics were omitted. This omission turns a spell that was meant to be a magic version of the “Second Wind” optional rule into a unending source of free HP.