So, I've got a few games of Nimble5e under my belt and figured that it was time to write some quick thoughts I have. I heard about it on Reddit and figured "Ah, what the heck." My goal going in was to have something light enough that I could bother running it for my oldest friend group. We've diverged quite a lot in game styles over the years as I embraced the OSR style of play, which created large differences in expectations and needs that honestly made me not want to run with them. I got interested in some of the hooks of Nimble, and decided to run a one-shot which has now sprung into a loosely connected episodic campaign!

One of the biggest issues I have going back to more trad games is prep and character creation. I don't mind a lot of prep, but I also don't want to spend time on the actual game-bits of them. I try to stay mostly in the "world" parts of prep, preparing a game world without worrying too much about the 'system' parts. I genuinely dislike encounter balancing and find it mostly both a waste of time and a temptation towards reducing player agency. If I spend half an hour balancing combat encounters to create an engaging game, it makes me want to make sure the combats happen, both from a time-spent perspective and because usually you're balancing around the fact that players are using resources throughout the adventure: if they navigate encounters in other ways that don't cost combat resources then later encounters become easier. That's a good thing, unless the encounter becomes so trivially easy that I shouldn't have bothered in the first place. I usually fight this temptation and just let whatever happens play out, but I do sometimes hate the feeling.

Nimble doesn't really remove this sort of prep, but it makes it quicker and easier. Since monsters are VERY simple and encounter balancing basically amounts to following some basic guidelines and adding up levels, I don't feel as pressured to make every encounter just right. It helps that I'm running the game as a series of one-shots, because my process is still different from what I would typically do, and I don't think I would be that interested in running my typical style with it. Perhaps with more experience, I'll be more in sync with the system and be able to pull things out on the fly, like I would in Whitehack or any other OSR game.

Character creation is lightning fast. Pick a class, ancestry, write down some numbers, divide some skills, and jot down a few sentences describing whatever abilities you get. There's a lot of choices at levels 3 and 4, but everything is so straightforward that players aren't bogged down by options. One thing this game lacks is fluff, though. It's all stripped down to its necessary mechanical components, in a way that I think really loses its luster. Every class has a little bit of flavor text, but there's nothing that's actually all that interesting or different from 5e. I do enjoy how each class has a bulleted list that tells you what the class is meant to be doing, combat-wise, though. Outside of flavor text, I think the game lacks a good amount of non-combat options or decisions. This isn't necessarily a bad thing, but it'll come up again later.

From a purely mechanical standpoint, every class I've seen in play has been both very different and deeply interesting. My party has a Cheat, Mage, Berserker, and Oathsworn. Here's a quick summary on how they actually engage with the game, to show the point, with their 5e counterpart in parentheses:

I hope that illustrates the point. From a cursory reading, it seems like every class has a well-defined niche. The ancestries are nice and simple, but can be very game defining, like my Oathsworn's Rabbit ancestry fundamentally changing the way that class plays the game. They're also the easiest bit of the section to modify. Backgrounds are similarly simple, just small powers that don't really give combat strength but try to do something interesting. My Berserker was Raised By Dragons (The original option is goblins), which lets them smell gold and speak draconic. Overall, I'm happy with it, with some caveats for later.

I don't want to go that in depth with the rules, as you can just go look at the free quickplay rules. Outside of combat, it's basically just roll 1d20 and add a skill, hit a DC. It's functional, though nothing all that interesting. I'll tinker with it eventually, since I hate systems based around variable DCs. There are no procedures, so I think they're just assuming that you're coming in with a knowledge of TTRPGs, specifically 5e. The GMG is... fine. One thing I'll say though, mostly for combat rules, is that simplicity seems to be more of a goal than clarity. It seems like a lot of answers for how the game is meant to run are actually on the Tube.

This is where all of the meat is. Tactical grid gameplay. All damage rolls à la ITO and Cairn, though with a little bit more depth. PCs all get 3 actions per turn à la Pathfinder 2e. This game is also super reaction focused, with every character having 4 basic reactions (defense, interpose, help, opportunity attack) that can only be used once each and takes away from the next turn's action economy.

My players heavily enjoy this aspect of the game, and I have to admit that it's kinda fun. There's a lot of versatility in 4 basic actions and 4 basic reactions. Despite that, it actually runs fairly quick! Not OSR quick, but there's not a lot of slog. Because players can only defend once (it's a flat reduction from an attack's damage) and they declare it after damage is rolled, AND because everyone is way more likely to hit than miss, turns go quick. My level 3 party beat a level 4 boss in 5 turns, while almost losing in the process. The game can also be very lethal, with its wounds system mirroring Knave. It still gives players choices to make even after dropping below 0, and I find it quite fun. You can easily make it more or less lethal by changing the number of wounds needed to die, as the book suggests.

In my game, we've settled on declaring Interposes BEFORE an attack roll and defense after. Apparently, RAW is that both are meant to happen after the roll. It honestly works fine for us, though, and places a greater priority on establishing position (interpose lets you move the interposed target to another space) while also incentivizing the party to interpose more often, since they never know when that big crit is coming down on the squishy mage or cheat. I still allow a lot of harebrained schemes and strategies, even though they're probably disturbing the balance. I let my cheat target the level 4 bosses' crossbow, for instance, which probably made the fight possible in the first place.

Monsters run well. Monster armor is simple enough to manage, and they have such easy to read and use abilities that I don't have to put much thought into understanding stat blocks. By the book, it seems like monsters are mostly supposed to stick to whatever actions are defined for them; this irks me only a little, because sometimes it does feel like I'm a little limited in their ability to adapt. It makes the game quick, though, and I can still ignore that advice whenever I want, so I'm not too annoyed.

Boss monsters are extremely fun. They're simple, but instead of Legendary Actions which they would get in 5e, they just go after every PC's turn. They also wind up having phase changes of sorts, getting another ability upon being bloodied and upon hitting 0 HP. These have been by far the best battles I've run.

Overall, I really like it. It's got me thinking of ways to make OSR combat a little more tactical. There's a power in having defined actions and rules that give players buttons to pressed, even if there's more 'tactical infinity' without them. I wonder if there's a healthy balance I can find with this group, if I try to run more OSR stuff with them later on.

I only have one really big complaint about Nimble, and I don't think it's really anything wrong with the system itself. Nimble doesn't feel hackable to me, at all. So much of it is purely mechanical that touching it seems like putting your hand in a rat trap. I've looked at https://nimble.nexus/, the homebrew site they have set up, and though it's certainly possible I don't really think it's interesting. A certain amount of hacking is connecting the game world with the mechanics of the game, and Nimble is just so clearly a mechanics-first project that I'd probably reach for literally anything else if I wanted to run anything other than a strictly high fantasy adventuring fantasy campaign.

There's more than enough room to fit non-combat modifications on top of the game, though. This might be a complaint born of inexperience, like my prep complaints, but I'll wait and see.

I think that's about it. There's more I could say, but the basic message I'm trying to convey is this: Nimble is very well made, very fun, but not very suitable for me, outside of its ability to bridge the gap between my expectations and those of my friends. I respect so much about it, even enough that I might steal from it, but it's not where my heart lies. Give it a try, though, especially if you're thinking about switching from 5e to greener pastures. I'll probably never run 5e again. See ya!