Dungeons & Dragons is practically synonymous with “tabletop role-playing games,” but sometimes you want something a little different. Or at least I do. And in the wake of Wizard of the Coast’s 2023 OGL fiasco, a ton of TTRPGs that are D&D-like but different in their own way popped up–Critical Role’s Daggerheart, Kobold Press’ Tales of the Valiant, The Arcane Library’s Shadowdark, Gila RPGs’ Dragon Slayers, and MCDM Productions’ Draw Steel, just to name a few. My favorite of the lot (so far–time and money prevents me from playing everything I want to try) is Nimble, which originally existed as an alternative ruleset for D&D 5e in 2023, but then it evolved into its own system in 2024 with a Backerkit crowdfunder that exceeded its $5,000 goal by over $260,000. Now, Nimble is on Kickstarter for a reprint and expansion, and it has overshot its $50,000 goal by $663,000 with a week to go (as of publishing this article).
Nimble is a system built on speed. It accomplishes this by being more efficient than a lot of other combat-driven TTRPGs. Just comparing it to D&D 5.5e, Nimble has four ability scores instead of six, and 10 skills instead of 18 (which is too many, WotC!). These changes make for a smaller and easier-to-track character sheet. This also makes it very easy to onboard new players, even if they’ve never played a TTRPG. Instead of keeping track of the pages of notes you’d need for something like D&D, Nimble only asks you to keep on top of what amounts to half a page of numbers when you’re first starting out. In Nimble, you can understand your character at a glance.
Combat is where Nimble really shines, though. There aren’t a ton of weapons and spells but each does something unique and is useful, and since initiative puts emphasis on the players going before enemy creatures and attacks almost always hit, every player feels suitably heroic whenever combat happens. A simple and easy-to-remember action economy and loosy-goosey handling of initiative order ensures the Game Master can keep battles feeling punchy and fast-paced as well, controlling the tempo of every scene and creating avenues for the players to be both creative and tactical. My biggest qualm with D&D, especially at the higher levels of play, is that a single combat encounter can last for three to four hours (sometimes longer!). In Nimble, the longest encounter I’ve ever had was an hour. I like having room for the exploration and social pillars in my sessions, which typically only last for three hours.
All that said, there are a few notable holes in Nimble. For example, one of my players wanted to play as a magical inventor or tinkerer in one of my adventures, and that wasn’t really an option–Nimble only launched with the barbarian-like Berserker, thief-like Cheat, weapon specialist Commander, bow-wielding Hunter, magic specialist Mage, paladin-like Oathsworn, summoner-focused Shadowmancer, healer-focused Shepherd, support-focused Songweaver, druid-like Stormshifter, and martial artist Zephyr, with the witch-like Hexbinder available as an add-on. And so that’s what this second Kickstarter for Nimble is–a means by which to address the most prominent holes in the system for both players and Game Masters.
“Most of this campaign is [Monsters & More], a book of hundreds of new monsters,” Nimble designer Evan Diaz told me. “It makes it easy on the [Game Master] to run them, and it’s easy to balance them, and it’s easy to prep, and you don’t need to do a lot of those things that make people not want to be a GM.”
Those who back the Kickstarter also receive a free PDF of the Creator’s Kit, a how-to guide for making homebrew content for Nimble to then share with the community. “I’m printing [the Creator’s Kit] now for the first time widely, so all the orders are coming with that,” Diaz said. “I really want to incentivise people making their own stuff, and I think that the third-party creator’s license for Nimble is the most open amongst any TTRPG. It’s basically ‘use anything.’
“The community has been so cool, so I want to give away as much of this stuff [as possible], just let people use it in homebrew and even make stuff and sell it. I want it to be as easy as possible for people to do that, and people have been making a lot of really cool stuff. So that’s one thing I’m really excited about. I’m really proud of that.”
Of course, some don’t have a desire to jump into the Game Master chair (cowards) or to make their own creations. This Kickstarter is aimed at those players as well, adding new options in character creation. Most notably, the Kickstarter bundles new hero classes into a new collection of zines–this includes the previously separate Hexbinder, but adds the magical inventor Artificer, telepathic and telekinetic Psion, and death-defying Revenant as well.
“At first I didn’t even see the fantasy for the Artificer,” Diaz said. “I was like, ‘I don’t know. I don’t want to do it.’ But then some people were like, ‘All right. Two words for you: Iron Man.’ And I was like, ‘All right. We’ll make it.’ I just need to see the perspective, and then I get it.”
“The Psion is like the anti-Mage. They could do magic-like things, but rather than controlling the elements, they control people. They control people or objects. So it is distinctly purely physical and not magical. And then the Revenant is just off on its own. It’s doing its own thing.”
The Revenant, a stretch goal add-on, sounds very cool. And I’m a little mad that D&D doesn’t really have anything like it–a class that risks it all to toy with death, rather than try to avoid it like all the others. “The classes, they drop to zero hit points, they get weaker, right?” Diaz said. “But the Revenant, they drop to zero hit points and they’re stronger now, they have this other mode.”
Every class in Nimble has two subclasses, with the player choosing which path their character opts for at level 3. But a few of the classes have a third “story-based” subclass, which can only be chosen under certain circumstances. If the Oathsworn breaks their oath, they become an Oathbreaker; the Commander becomes a Spellblade if they find a magical artifact or weapon; the Shadowmancer becomes a Reaver if they’re cut off from the patron that gifts them their magic; and the Hunter transforms into a Beastmaster if they adopt a magical monster like a dragon or owlbear. New books in this Kickstarter add more of these story-based subclasses, as well as traditional subclasses to buff up the numbers of those traditionally offered.
“The Cheat is getting a new story-based subclass,” Diaz said. “So someone who started off as a swindler or cheater, and then they give that up. It’s called the Honor Seeker. So they’re honest, and they have a [unique] mechanic instead of Sneak Attack.” Sneak Attack is normally the main mechanic of the Cheat, allowing them to deal extra damage to enemies who are distracted. The entire class is built around–as the name suggests–trying to “cheat” a fight and take advantage of weakened targets.
“[The Honor Seeker] gets advantage when the enemies have the upper hand. They’re an underdog, and they’re trying to get more enemies to fight them. It’s still the Cheat, but it’s the opposite of [how the class works]. A lot of the different classes are getting their own story-based subclass. The Revenant is still very early. The Artificer is a bit further along, but ideally I would like for each class to have at least one story-based subclass where it’s the opposite, like the Oathsworn and Oathbreaker … People just want that, and you have to support that.”
In addition, Monsters & More adds a new school of magic. In Nimble, all magic is divided into elements: Fire, Ice, Radiant, Necrotic, Lightning, and Wind. The spells in the Fire list hit hard or craft illusions, while Ice spells hold creatures in place or focus on divination or defense, Radiant spells primarily heal or buff allies, Necrotic spells summon minions or enchant, Lightning spells focus on attacking from range or teleporting, and Wind spells have a high probability of landing a critical hit and can push or pull targets. This new book adds Earth spells to the game.
“Before this, all cantrips cost one action,” Diaz said. “So I started to ask what mechanically would be iconic about Earth. It’s slow, but strong. So the Earth cantrip costs two actions, but it’s really strong.
“I really want each spell school and each class to feel unique and to feel like it has its own lane and it’s not just ‘another d8 damage, but this spell looks like fire, and this other one looks like this.'”
The biggest question I had for Diaz was about complexity and power creep. It happens to every system that gets numerous post-launch add-ons eventually–the creators keep adding more classes and spells and rules, and soon the entire TTRPG is an altogether different beast where the new stuff is meta, the old stuff is obsolete, and the rules take longer to learn. We’re seeing this now with D&D 5.5e, which, while advertised as backwards compatible with 5e, isn’t really proving to be the case with the new versions of subclasses and spells outpacing the “legacy” content first published back in 2014 for 5e. The new stuff is just stronger. There’s also just more of it though, with each of the new classes and subclasses (for the most part) capable of making more choices and having more offensive options from lower levels. Nimble made a name for itself with its simplicity and tactical, punchy gameplay. If the game continues to evolve and grow and gain more and more mechanics, doesn’t it lose some of that?
“The thing that I’m keenly aware of is scope creep,” Diaz said. “So I want to be super careful to hook into the existing mechanisms and not have bloat. So any additional rules like terramancy or the Earth school [isn’t more]–spellcasters can choose this school, but you have to give up one of your other spell schools that you know. So if you know Lightning, Radiant, or Wind spells, you can give up one of those spell schools and replace it with Earth magic. There’s not one more thing that you have to keep track of.”
“There’s definitely a danger in putting too much on your plate and ballooning the system and making it unorganizable. There are nine Fire spells [in Nimble], just nine. And half of them you’ll never use because nobody’s going to play up to level 13, 14, 15, but they’re cool to look at … I don’t think we need any more. There’s enough.”
He continued: “I have this view that I’m making a complete system. We needed a bunch of monsters because in the GM guide, there wasn’t a bestiary at all. It was just ‘Use your D&D monster books.’ But the people were like, ‘No, you got to add a bestiary.’ And so I’m like, ‘All right, I’ll add a few.’ And then people were like, ‘Oh, this is great. How about a bunch more?’ And that makes sense. But once you have enough monsters, it’s like, well, that’s enough.”
“There’s this place that I’m working toward, and I think I’ll know when I get there, and I think we’re pretty close to there now. There were these certain gaps in the system, just like with any new system, that once we [fill those], then that’ll be done. You can always have more adventures–you can always have more other things.”
If you want to back Nimble’s Monsters & More Kickstarter, you have until March 12. And if you’re looking to talk shop with other players, discuss homebrew creations, or look for a group of people to play with, I highly recommend hopping into the Nimble Discord–like so many other TTRPGs, it all comes back to Discord.