Okay, Jeez, Is WOTC Just Getting Desperate Or What?

Ride some coat-tails and make a buck.
They do own all the art along with the IP so I guess they can do whatever they want, but come one, have a little dignity.

Well, the bus is cool but 30 years too late. Still desperate times call for desperate measures.

5 Great Things To Come Out Of The OSR / IEP3GCwC / Or Whatever You Want To Call It

Yeah, I use the label OSR, The Old-School Renaissance, and that's Renaissance as in 'a rebirth or revival'. Regardless of what you label it or refuse to label it, things have happened and are happening on a larger scale (some may argue that) in an independent way in recent years that has not happened since the birth of this hobby.

So lets take a look at some of the things that have come out of this 'Renaissance' shall we:

1. The Retro-clones, Simulacra and All Their Bastard Children.

Sure, people have always been playing the earlier versions of many of these games and there ain't a thing wrong with that. But what we have here is accessibility. I still have my Holmes, Moldvay, 1st ed AD&D books but not everyone else does. Free, pay, either way, anyone can pick up/download these rules. And who can't argue that some of these rules really needed to be rewritten and revised and not tossed out leaving room for a new more complicated set of rules. All these new rules and variations that have come out refined and enhanced the original game, not to discredit what has come before but to honor it. Sure some call it just house-rules but so what? After all isn't everything a house rule? Holmes seemed to have put quite a bit of his house-rules into his blue book. So without having to mention the incredibly long list of creative efforts (Swords & Wizardry, Labryinth Lord, Basic Fantasy RPG, OSRIC, Microlite, LOTFP and countless others rule, modules, supplements, etc.) just take a gander over here for just a brief glance at just the tip of the iceberg.

2. Blog Explosion.

It probably started with the Dragonsfoot forums or perhaps the passing of one of the great wizards himself, but wherever started it, the explosion of blogs related to classic style RPGs have created a fantastic resource of shared ideas. Good blogs, bad blogs, they're all out there. I know I've been inspired and 'borrowed' a'plenty from all of these interweb authors. I would have loved to have all this available when I was 10 and just starting out with the game.

3. One Page Dungeons.

Admit it, flipping through modules can, at times, be a pain. Yeah, I'm sure many of us have compressed dungeon making into a single page before but here we have a nice format put together by some thoughtful and inspired PnP gamers. You can cram a whole lot of adventure in that single page format and it has become my go-to process to whip out a new adventure for my players. One Page Dungeon Templates. Lets not forget the One Page Wilderness template either.

4. The Return of the Megadungeon.

Pure dungeon crawl joy. Nothing says Dungeons & Dragons more than an endless labyrinth of dark tunnels, cave, chambers, pits, traps and wonder leading a party deeper beneath the surface of the earth. From Stonehell to the Castle of the Mad Arch-mage to many others the wild and wacky worlds of wonder of the Megadungeon has resurfaced again to entice many'a adventurer to their fortune or doom.

5. Magazines and Fanzine.

Knockspell, Fight On!, Encounter, OD&Dities and Nod just to name a few. Nuff Said!

Regardless of what is happening and whether people see it differently or not, something has indeed created an excitement about the 'classic' game, something to bring in old players and new alike. Something to get us all delving once again.

Let's admit that TSR as we once knew and loved it is dead. For many of us it died at many different periods of it's history but it has indeed passed. Like all of you, I have fond memories of that brand, logo, creators etc. but lets face it, Wizards of the Coast / Hasbro has really done a shitty job carrying the torch.

Well, they did give us the OGL.

p.s. I'm not saying this is a movement or club or anything. Just play any game you want and have fun!

Dark Dungeons

Rules Cyclopedia retro-clone?



Or Gateway to Hell!

http://www.chick.com/reading/tracts/0046/0046_01.asp

(thanks Mike!)

Savage Swords of Athanor

On Friday I received my latest Lulu purchase in the mail-box (always a great way to end the week), Doug Easterly's Savage Swords of Athanor available through Lulu.

Now the thing I really love about this Old School Revival are all the booklets, downloads and publications that other gamers are putting out for both free and pay. Some of my favorites would be peoples house-rules and campaign worlds.

As you may know, I tend to cherry pick the best of peoples house rules out there and fit them to my own campaign. So I love gathering these books up and getting fresh ideas.

Savage Swords is a great little booklet. Easterly put together a very creative, pulpy, planetary romance world in the vein of Burroughs' Mars stories using the Swords & Wizardry White Box as it's foundation. In just 63 pages Easterly gives a perfect broad-stroke of this hex based planetary setting and the city state of Zamora. He doesn't weigh the book down with needless detail but gives you just the right amount of information for the GM to jump in and color this savage world.

Savage Swords of Athanor is broken up into 3 familiar sections, Men and Magic, Monsters and Treasures, and Underworld & Wilderness Adventures which bring to mind the original Little Brown Books. These sections cover everything from new alien races, mutations, Treasures of the Ancients, The City State of Zamora, Planetary Encounters, a mild skill system, details of the planet Athanor, adventure hooks and much, much more all packed into 63 pages. The book also suggests what to remove from the standard Swords & Wizardry rules (races, classes and monsters) to bring it in line with the world of Athanor.

As with any campaign world that takes the fantasy concept outside of the 'comfortable' classic setting of elves, dwarves, and wizards, there is always that curve of getting GM and player up to speed with the extra fantastic world setting, culture and races. Easterly realizes that and provides the familiar character type of Earthman to help players jump into the Savage World of Athanor.

If you love deep pulpy campaign worlds settings I would highly recommend Doug Easterly's Savage Swords of Arthanor. At a concise 63 pages it's a perfect length to get into a fantastic fantasy world. I plan on transporting my current players there sometime in the near future. What better way to keep them on their toes!

More Of "My Players Are Awesome"

This week proved to be a double header in the My Players Are Awesome department. Zach, one of my players whom I've mentioned before and will be returning to the table, dropped this off for me.



It may be hard to believe, with me being such a huge fan of the OSR, but I never owned a copy of Labyrinth Lord. I've loved the book, the layout, the rules but I found it to be so close to the basic red and expert blue that I never found it a priority to pick this one up. Well, I'm glad I have it now as it's a great little compiled set of rules (which I have always thought, btw). In fact, my house rules have been sprinkled with some of the LL Advanced Edition.

Next up, Brian surprised me with this Usagi action figure (yeah, I took it out of the package...for shame!).



For those of you who don't know of Usagi, this is Stan Sakai's Ronin Samurai rabbit. Don't be turned off by the anthropomorphic characters, Usagi Yojimbo has all the drama of a Kurosawa film. It's one of my favorite comics. It's a must read for those into feudal Japanese action.

Level Titles

One thing that I've always enjoyed quite a bit in everyone's favorite classic fantasy game but is sadly missing in the many iterations of the Retro-Clone Rules are Level Titles. I've always felt that Level Titles added just a bit of color to characters and the game. I mean, what sounds better:

"Greetings, I am Kal'Thak a, 3rd level fighter."

or

"Greetings, I am Kal'Thak the Swordsman!"

It's a very minor element but I think it fleshes out the game. It's one of the things that pulls the game away from just numbers and stats. Whether the players use it or not, I enjoy having it present in my games.

So, to keep Level Titles alive for the character classes in my campaign, we have some of the more familiar titles and a couple of others:

Fighter
1: Veteran
2: Warrior
3: Swordsman
4: Hero
5: Swashbuckler
6: Myrmidon
7: Champion
8: Superhero
9: Lord
10: Lord (10th Level)
11: Lord (11th Level)

Dwarven Warrior
1: Dwarven Veteran
2: Dwarven Warrior
3: Axebearer
4: Vanquisher
5: Guardian
6: Dwarven Hero
7: Dwarven Champion
8: Commander
9: Dwarven Lord
10: Mountain Lord (10th Level)
11: Mountain Lord (11th Level)

Magic-User
1: Medium
2: Evoker
3: Conjurer
4: Theurgist
5: Thaumaturgist
6: Magicician
7: Enchanter
8: Warlock
9: Sorcerer
10: Necromancer
11: Wizard
12: Wizard (12th level)

Viking
1: Nomad
2: Savage
3: Barbarian
4: Berserker
5: Buccaneer
6: Corsair
7: Vindicator
8: Dane
9: Thane
10: Thane Warlord

Cleric
1: Acolyte
2: Adept
3: Priest
4: Curate
5: Perfect
6: Canon
7: Lama
8: Patriarch
9: High Priest
10: High Priest (10th level)
11: High Priest (11th level)

Thieves
1: Rogue (Apprentice)
2: Footpad
3: Cutpurse
4: Robber
5: Burglar
6: Filcher
7: Sharper
8: Magsman
9: Thief
10: Master Thief
11: Master Thief (11th level)

Druid
1: Aspirant
2: Ovate
3: Initiate of the 1st Circle
4: Initiate of the 2nd Circle
5: Initiate of the 3rd Circle
6: Initiate of the 4th Circle
7: Initiate of the 5th Circle
8: Initiate of the 6th Circle
9: Initiate of the 7th Circle
10: Initiate of the 8th Circle
11: Initiate of the 9th Circle
12: Druid
13: Archdruid
14: The Great Druid

Ranger
1: Runner
2: Strider
3: Scout
4: Courser
5: Tracker
6: Guide
7: Pathfinder
8: Ranger
9: Ranger Knight
10: Ranger Lord
11: Ranger Lord (11th level)
12: Ranger Lord (12th level)

Evolution of the Old School Revival

There was an interesting post over at the Swords & Wizardry Forums talking about the past, current and future trends of the OSR. I've actually been thinking about this for a while. I think it's a good discussion to have. I mean, we (by we I mean the community as a whole) can't be putting out revisions of the same game over and over again.

The way I see it is that the past few years have been a process of defining what we all enjoyed about the 'classic' style of gaming that has been missing or has been 'forgotten knowledge' for decades now. Things like sandbox, megadungeons and free-form play have sort of fallen into the forgotten corners of gaming. That's not to say that it wasn't out there, it just was forgotten.

So during these past couple of years we got the 'OSR' and all the retro-clones and all the products and blogs and things out there that support these rediscoveries so to speak. It seems to me that we've recreated the atmosphere of the origins of the game, the excitement and explosion of creativity of those times. The trend that I feel it can move into now is evolution. Evolution to what the game (in our vision (and by our I mean the community as a whole)) should/could have evolved into. Moving it into different realms without falling into the traps of complicated and over structured rules yet expanding the original intentions, the freedom and pulp aspects, of the game. I think we are starting to see that with the new 'supplements' that have come out, Carcosa and Majestic Wilderlands as well as Planet Algol and Savage Swords of Athanor and many others. Enhancing the (other) worlds in which the game is played without complicating the (rules of) the game as a whole and keeping the rediscovered elements. I think that's the underlying trend.

There's really no 'bottom-line' or 'investors' that will define the direction. It will be defined by an 'open-source' community whose love and care for the game will direct it's evolution.

We all know where one path leads but I think now is an opportunity to forge a new path. One that could have been taken 30 years ago.

Rob Conley's Supplement VI: The Majestic Wilderlands

Many of the old school blogs have mentioned this already so I wasn't going to. I figured what's the point? Everyone is talking about this much more eloquently than I could. But after reading Jeff Rient's take on it over at Jeff's Gameblog I felt that this item was really starting to pique my interest. Rob Conley's Supplement VI: Majestic Wilderlands sounds to me to be quite the resource for a nice custom piece of gaming. It sounds like there's plenty to plunder or take as is. It's written for Swords & Wizardry but sounds like it can be adapted to most classic style fantasy RPGs. I'm not going to repeat Jeff's take on it, you can read it here, but this is one item that I'll be heading over to Lulu to purchase a print version as soon as it's available.

Why Play A Retro Clone?

This question has come up recently for me. It is, indeed, a valid question and has been in the back of my mind for a while now. Why play a retro-clone over the original game of Dungeons & Dragons when you still own the original OOP rules or can purchase them online?

For me, the Retro Clones brought back an excitement and gaming philosophy that lead me into the game in the first place. The revisions, presentations and community of these 'new' rules pulled me in.

It would be a tough argument to say that the original OD&D rules were written in a clear, concise manner. There was a lot of ambiguity and contradiction in those original rules. I'm not saying that that was a terrible thing but instead of just clarifying those original rules, they were rewritten into the 1ed Players Handbook and Dungeon Masters Guide, which in my opinion, was a complication of the game and lead us down the path to the rules-intense versions of the game that are out today. Holmes did a pretty good job of editing the OD&D game into something that was an presentation improvement in his 'basic' version of the game.

Now, I felt that Moldvay's basic rules improved upon the layout and explication of the Holmes rules but I always felt the writing was geared more towards children. Even though I was young at the time, I still read from the Holmes rules, more because of the way it was written than anything else. I didn't need the writing to be 'dumbed' down, I needed the rules to be clarified.

The retro-clones do just that. They are well written 'revisions' of the original rules keeping the original philosophies and concepts of the original intentions of the game alive. Things are left open enough for the GM and players to adapt the game to their vision and style.

Sure I can still play using my original rules and you can play those rules how you like, but I also feel that Retro Clones are a good way to step out of the weight of what D&D was and had became without having to get into any arguments or issues. My players have all played different versions of the games from Holmes basic all the way up through 4ed, but now we're all just playing S&W. No arguing, no expectations just good gaming fun.

Many version of the Clones can be obtained as free PDF downloads. You and your players don't have to spend a lot of money buying volume upon volume of rules just to sit down and play a game. That, alone, can bring new players into classic RPGs. And with WOTC pulling their pdf files of the OOP material, obtaining copies of those publications can be difficult and expensive.

I feel the game was meant to be fun, quick-paced and concise and these various rules do just that. It's really all just that same game but the clones have gotten me back into playing the game once more. And we've got 6 players now and more want to play. Anything that brings new players in or old players back is a good thing as far as I'm concerned.

Level 1 Gamer Gains A Level!

Corey Bishop, a regular player in my campaign, has a blog called Level 1 Gamer. It covers his new introduction to the RPG hobby so he has a pretty interesting and fresh perspective on gaming. His current post is about his experience with our Swords & Wizardry Campaign. It's a good read and his analysis is spot on. Check it out.

Tucson ComiCon & Classic D&D & Retro-Clones

IndieOnly Comics (my small press comic company) had a booth at the second annual Tucson ComiCon. Since I haven't put out much in terms of new comic stories, I decided to push more of the D&D / Retro Clone items that I've worked on.

Mind you, I always felt that comics and gaming are very close blood-brothers. The thing that I found interesting was that when certain people saw the "Outpost" module cover they excitedly recognized it as a D&D type of module and I took the opportunity to chat about classic style gaming and the Retro-clones.

What I found exceptional was that the people who were the most interested were some of the comic shop owners, convention organizers and other small publishers - none of which have ever heard of the reto-clones but were eager to set up a time to roll some dice and play a game. A number of these people fondly remember the good 'ol days of the game (less rules/rolling dice, more laid back fun at the table, etc.). People seemed turned-on by the rules-lite aspect of these games as opposed to the constant stat checking and dice rolling of modern games. But, again, none of the people I talked with have ever heard of the retro-clones. One book publisher, who has not heard a peep about the retro-clones, is very much into playing RPGs and is even creating a monster-based RPG.

All this tells me that this 'movement' / concept is still a very isolated (though perhaps growing) and unknown to a great many people outside of the circles, forums and blogs. Granted, word is spreading, but much more slowly than it would appear.

I think there is a potentially huge interest in classic style RPGs, whether for nostalgia or rule simplicity. The key is getting the word out there and that, of course, is the great mystery, and one in which TARGA has been working on. I really feel that, if by some miracle of the gods, WOTC was to re-released the original box sets of the games (OD&D, Holmes, or Modvay), it would be to a hungry group of players both new and old.