Maze Rats

OSR in 14 Pages
Maze Rats is a digital file/print-n-play game by Ben Milton (Questing Beast on Youtube) that I printed and stapled to make a journal sized booklet of gaming fun. Maze Rats is rules-lite, but heavily into creative thinking.  Mr. Milton has mentioned he is a school teacher who runs Maze Rats with an after school role-playing club, which I think is awesome. Creative thinking is something like a muscle, use it and it gets stronger. Assisting young (or older) people to think outside the box, to imagine situations and to devise creative solutions to problems using innovative methods is priceless. I personally can think of no better way to be having fun.
Mr. Milton has set Maze Rats up so it is easy to print either as a few sheets of loose paper or in this cool pamphlet that only requires a staple or two along the spine and you have an inexpensive, fun game for kids and adults. The pamphlet makes heavy use of a number of 6x6 inspiration tables, roll two six siders, one die gives you the column, the other the row and you have room descriptions, character characteristics, monsters, and spells.  Magic is one of my favorite aspects of Maze Rats which makes use of those tables to give you the name of the spell by combing a noun and an action such as Burning Hands, or Whispering Wall/Wall Whispering. Magic focuses on effects rather than damage and encourages creative spell use such as being able to "whisper through a wall". How each spell works is up to the player and referee, but again creativity is encouraged.
Rolling dice in Maze Rats is perilous and the game encourages players to address situations without resorting to chance. Combat and other risk taking behaviors such as attempting to jump across a chasm can result in injury and character death...it's OLD SCHOOL people...so finding a solution that doesn't require a "Danger Dice" roll is encouraged.
Maze Rats is a complete game. There is nothing else required except six-sided dice, pencil, paper...and a healthy imagination. The random tables can be used to create adventures on the fly and include monster generation, urban, wilderness and dungeon generators. The author includes a section on game master advice including how to prep Maze Rats, how to run the game and advice on world building. Like everything in Maze Rats, this section is brief, but to the point and right on target from an OSR perspective.
Maze Rats reminds me again how much I am amazed with the creativity and talent that is so evident in the DIY OSR community. Ben Milton has an even newer product, Knave, which is either in the works or just being released that I believe is written so that it is more compatible with the actual mechanics (not just spirit) of the original game that started it all and can run the old published adventure classics (and new OSR titles) with minimal adjustment.