Original Dungeons & Dragons

Yeah, this blog has been silent for a bit. Sorry about that. Things have been busy over here - working in and co-owning a game store has been an interesting life experience over the past 9 months. I know a lot of you are probably interested in how that's going - and I plan on writing about it soon enough. I'm assuming that most people reading this are of the OSR type...and I can assure you that OLD SCHOOL GOODNESS is alive and well in our store! We have a biweekly SWORDS & WIZARDRY campaign happening, two weekly D&D 2E campaigns, weekly CALL OF CTHULU games, and some interest in TOP SECRET, LAMENTATIONS OF THE FLAME PRINCESS, and original TRAVELLER brewing. Not to mention the X-PLORERS campaign I mean to get off the ground.

I also ran a 3 session SWORDS & WIZARDRY WHITE BOX adventure that seemed to grip the attention of the whole store - and literally has some of the players begging to continue. That was the adventure where I used the BEYOND THE WALL chargen/towngen system which i detailed on here to some extent. I ran the players through Kelvin Green's excellent ROUGH NIGHT AT THE DOG AND BASTARD. Sadly, Balotelli wound up assassinating Genevieve, Parletothraxus manifested and began tearing people apart, party members sold each other out, and a damaged Ring of Wishes (taken from an old issue of WHITE DWARF) was used to summon a halfling sized suit of demonic plate mail. Good times. Here's the adventure if you want to use it - it can be played with any edition of the game.

All Parletothraxus wanted was a saucy evening...

Of course, I've also crossed over to the dark side and have begun to enjoy certain card games like ASCENSION, THE AGENTS, THUNDERSTONE, LOVE LETTER & THE RESISTANCE...as well as various board games like FANTASTIQA, TROLLHALLA, KING OF TOKYO, CASTLE PANIC and the like.

Anyway - I want to focus on OD&D. That's the one version of D&D that I never thought I'd be interested in - until I came across a version of 3 LBB OD&D that had been re-edited into an organized book. It incorporates various "fixes" from early issues of STRATEGIC REVIEW and removes mention of CHAINMAIL and OUTDOOR SURVIVAL. The result?

A game that I instantly wanted to play.

Now, I know that many of you are probably going to want to know where you can find this spectacular document. Well, I'm not going to tell you. Not to be a jerk or anything - but as you probably know, OD&D has recently come back into print. I don't want to get anyone in trouble - but if your Internet search skills are up to par you should be able to come across it somewhere, as there are a few versions of it floating around.

Anyway, after reading that document i was very interested in the reprints of OD&D, which I finally obtained due to my awesome girlfriend. She had ordered it for me on Amazon as a Christmas gift...and, as you may know, Amazon had some trouble meeting the demand. I finally got a copy a few weeks ago via the Barnes and Noble website. Of course, me being me, I had to make a few modifications to the box. Check it out:

I pulled out the picture in the lid and laid down some felt for some dice rollin'. I also ripped out the dividers to make more room for my stuff (old articles from Dragon and White Dwarf, Dyson Logo's awesome book of dungeons, etc.

So what is it about this game that made me want to play it so badly? Well, for one is that it seems (to me, at least) to be the most "fantastic" of all the early versions of the game. You're expected to gain powerful magic items. You're expected to run into powerful creatures right off the bat. Example: you can be wandering around the wilderness and just stumble across a castle inhabited by an Evil High Priest who will seek to cast Quest on the party. Oh, and he has 1d4 Rocs ridden by 4th level Fighting Men, along with some assistants and 60 1st level Fighting Men. Or maybe he has d10 trolls serving him. This can happen to your party any time and at any level. You can also just randomly encounter dragons at first level. You're not going to be able to fight your way out of all that - so what next? The game just seems so open - I guess this is kind of hard to explain. 

It was also refreshing to not have Thieves. Three classes, four races and go! One of the common questions i see on message boards is how you resolve "thief stuff" without a thief. To resolve that whole issue I turned to the excellent ASTONISHING SWORDSMAN & SORCERERS OF HYPERBORIA. They have a neat little d6 system for resolving checks based on your attributes and a % system to accomplish heroic feats also based on attributes. That's what that little index card in the picture is.

I've already run a few of my friends through a small OD&D adventure and they really liked it, so I hope to continue doing it more regularly. Oh, and I made a GM screen and I have decided to share it with you. Enjoy, brochachos.

ALIENS & ROBOTS for X-PLORERS

it's no secret that i love the X-PLORERS RPG.  so, i'm happy to announce that some stuff i designed for the game has been published by BRAVE HALFLING!  john took the ALIEN and ROBOT generators i made, spruced up the layout and added some awesome artwork from steve zeiser. seriously - check out this badass cover:

anyways - if you want  to grab this puppy it's up on RPG NOW for less than $2. Click here to start making robots and aliens! if you've never played X-PLORERS you can check out the free (sans art) version here.

HOMEMADE S&W BOX

i found myself in michael's the other day.  i had gotten an idea for making a dice tray.  after some inspiration from dave bezio via an old rpg.net thread i went hunting for some wooden bowls/trays and some adhesive felt.  during my search through the aisles of michael's i came upon some of those "faux book boxes".  basically, a box in the shape of an old hardcover.

well, i made the dice trays. when i was done i painted the "book box" black (there were birds on the cover) and...well, this happened:

the front - i love the cover to CORE

my white box books fit perfectly inside. the front cover has a reference sheet for NPC reactions, attack bonuses by level, my house rules for races and the armor picture from CORE

the back - i turned this DCC pic into a S&W one. why not, right?

 cool, huh? oh, and these are the dice trays:

i made these for our store - i hate when people roll dice on top of cards or through minis. yes, that is a VHS copy of STAR WARS on my floor.

WHITE BOX CAMPAIGN KICK OFF (with an assist from BTW)

so, i started to run my WHITE BOX campaign yesterday. sadly, there was no adventuring - but we did get a heck of a lot accomplished. as i touched on in my last post, we've started running S&W in our store for our PATHFINDER leaning customers. we used the BEYOND THE WALL chargen system (just the flavor - most mechanics were thrown out with these exceptions: the "player to your right gains +1", weapon specialization acts as a +1 hit/damage with the specified weapon and you gain your special item) and it was a huge hit with everyone. so much so that people wanted to buy the S&W COMPLETE book just to get the chargen tables (which i had to explain to them weren't in there)! 

so, we used the BTW system again for my campaign and AGAIN it was a huge hit.  the four characters generated:

• Cornelius - halfling fighter (used the outrider playbook)
• Armond - human thief (used the untested thief playbook)
• Gideon - halfling thief (used the halfling vagabond playbook)
• Garrock - dwarf fighter (used the dwarf adventurer playbook)

they were all happily scribbling notes on their (awesome looking) WB character sheets (*AHEM*) and coming up with ways that they knew each other - including one character who's already at odds with another. this was discussed while the one player was in the bathroom - so he's not even aware of it.

the standout hook that the BTW tables generated: one of the characters (gideon) discovered a moving dragon skeleton UNDER the town - the entrance was discovered under the basement of a burned down house...so he's now using that secret place as a hideout to start a thieves guild. 

next weekend we'll start playing. i kind of feel bad, since the adventure i have planned will almost immediately take them out of the town they've made. it's not a dungeon crawl though, so they *should* make it back alive.

i scanned our notes from the session since i know more than a few people are interested in how the BEYOND THE WALL system plays out.

out town is called OXLEY...you can see a quick map of it and some of the key NPCs on the images below.

SWORDS & WIZARDRY WHITE BOX CHARACTER SHEET

i mentioned in my previous post that my friends and i have recently purchased one of our favorite local gaming stores. we took control in may - and we're still open - so i guess that means we're doing something right.

it's been interesting talking to all of our customers about games and all other things related to this hobby of ours...but the one thing that has taken us by surprise is the general attitude of gamers towards the current rules-heavy games. as you can imagine, the most heavily played rpg in the store is PATHFINDER - but here's the kicker - many, many of the players are tired of it. most of them play it because it's the only fantasy rpg they've ever played  - counting of course, 3.X.  we've overheard the players complaining about the rules, the constant focus on combat and all that - so we decided to take a gamble and start running all the rules-lite games that we like.

guess what? SUCCESS. they love it. and they BUY IT. the runaway hit has been SWORDS AND WIZARDRY COMPLETE. we've sold through 3 orders from frog god and just placed another one due to the demand. crazy, right? it's funny watching these players (who are all used to min-maxing and "building" characters) be told to roll 3d6 in order...and when they get a 17 or 18 they're like "what do you mean it's just a +1 bonus?". but they're having fun and most of them see these easier games as a breath of fresh air.
 
speaking of SWORDS AND WIZARDRY - as much as i like COMPLETE...i'd like to profess my love for the BRAVE HALFLING version of WHITE BOX. it's just awesome and simple and allows me to do whatever i want.

is there still love out there for WHITE BOX? i hope so - i just made a character sheet for it. it's in the same "style" of my previous effort for S&W COMPLETE...but this one can be printed on both sides, cut, and placed in your WHITE BOX.  check it out...

download it here.

EDIT: the pdf was printing weird and when i tried printing on both sides it cut into the character sheet. i fixed the pdf and it should cut cleaner now.  sorry about that.

EDIT: i noticed that i messed up the modifiers for XP bonuses. there is no general INT bonus - there's a general CHA bonus. the sheet is now correct. boom.

MINOTAURS as a BX or LL class

sorry for the lack of updates lately...things here have been busy.

first off, my friends and i pooled our resources and actually bought a gaming store here on long island.  one of the local game stores out here was going to close its doors as the (former) owner is planning a move to texas.  so, yeah - we took it over. it's been an interesting 2 months to say the least. i'll post more about the store in the days (or weeks) to come.

anyway - minotaurs. a few months ago i worked up a minotaur class and posted it on the LABYRINTH LORD boards...i did a layout for it last month and included an illustration that kelvin greene did for DUNGEON STRIKE. 

my take on them was a bit more from the 4E/WOW side of things. i figured minotaurs that were PCs wouldn't be so darn evil, you know? their spell-like abilities are pulled from the LABYRINTH LORD cleric and druid list...so you'll need those to use this class.

so, here it is: let me know what you think.  DOWNLOAD THE MINOTAUR.

PACIFIC RIM

i just got home from seeing PACIFIC RIM. i don't really know what to say other than it was incredible. if you grew up watching old godzilla movies, shogun warriors, voltron, robotech and other stuff like that than you NEED to see this movie. seriously.