So what would a Five Stone Retro-Clone look like?

And no I have no plans to jump into the already crowded market but if I did it would be like this

FS-RC #1 Quick Start

32 pages or less quick start to get people into the game, fast

FS-RC #2 Main Book

128-256 Pages akin to Swords and Wizardry Complete or Dark Dungeons. Quite complete

FS-RC #3 Monster Palooza

A big book of monsters basically . Unlike most of these it would include reprints of the main book monsters.

FS-RC #4

128+ pages of optional rules, more spells and enough stuff to run for a very long time. This would include alternate settings (Oriental, Viking, Pirates, Rome, etc)

Rules wise it would be a mix of everything from S&W to 2e and in-between modded into coherent whole with an emphasis on clear easy to run rules that work together.

Classes would

Fighter
Ranger
Thief
White Wizard (the non cleric divine caster)
Black Wizard (arcane caster)
Bard

each one pertaining to a stat and with a range of lenses similar to kits that allow common archetypes to be easily created

Races would include all the basics plus the alternates (in the companion)

Supporting the game (and providing the bread and butter) would be the world book, the regional modules , adventures and if the demand was there a magazine.

All crunch of course would be OGL and as an added bonus free to download as web support. If after several years, a lot of options were created, they'd be complied and we'd release new companions. This way no one needs chase out of print magazines or buy PDF's just to get a new spell or the like.

Of course such a model is unsupportable in this market but there ya go, how I'd do it ….