The best things in life are free!

Some of my current favorite RPGs are available free. T&T fans will instantly think of the quick start rules, the same ones from the double solo books, widely posted on the web and at RPGnow.com . This is however not the only great game out there for free.

Many of the TSR classics have been cloned and offered free. My favorite of these is Swords and Wizardry which clones the original edition of D&D. It goes farther than this though, offering supplements with new Classes, new magics and more.

Mutant Future also gets a nod. I love Post Apocalyptic gaming and MF does it very well. Fans of Gamma World will recognize the inspiration behind this one.

Great though these cloned games are, and there are many others as part of the Old School Renaissance, there are also some original designs that are well worth looking at and playing.

For Sword and Planet fans who grew up as I did on Edgar Rice Burroughs, H P Lovecraft, etc, there is the simply brilliant Under the Moons of Zoon. This game is set on a post apocalyptic world and features flying boats, psionics, weird science, mutants, swashbuckling, creatures from Beyond, and more. It has a simple d6 based system of game mechanics and just enough setting material to provide a spark to GM's creativity without shackling you to someone else's world. I love it. It has serpent-men as the main villains, one of my favorite pulp fantasy tropes.

The other great free game I want to call attention to is Olivier Legrand's Mazes&Minotaurs. M&M is a game from an alternate history of the RPG hobby. It posits that Gygax and Arneson based their first RPG not on medieval Europe but rather on mythic Greece. The result is two editions, four core rule books. Ten magazine supplements, plus adventure modules. All offered for free. The game is quite playable and a has a very enthusiastic following. I discovered it after I had written most of my Mythic Greek sourcebook for T&T (currently in preparation for publication by Peryton Publishing). Had I known about M&M I might never have written Sailing the Wine Dark Sea. M&M covers not only ancient Greece, but also analogues to Africa, the Middle and Near East, Europe, and the realms of the gods and monsters. It is not a strict recreation of Classical Mythology, but rather a fantasy game that draws its inspiration from myth and legend.