My OSR Blog about fantasy world building and rules analysis for D&D. Also home of the B/X inspired 5e-clone "Into the Unknown."| mythlands-erce.blogspot.com
I know, I know. Addition is easier than substraction, what kind of backwards grognard do you have to be to like descending AC in 2024? I get all that. But hear me out for a moment. My argument is that whilst ascending AC may be marginally easier to calculate to begin with, descending AC offers something different - A more intuitive appreciation of what the numbers mean and how they are bounded.| Mythlands: The Setting to End All Settings
As an adult, my favorite class is the regular fighter, though I did enjoy playing a paladin straight for a campaign's worth.| Mythlands: The Setting to End All Settings
Mmmm, races from the good old days, Before tieflings, drow and dragonborn became core options in the World of Warcraft menagerie that is modern D&D.| Mythlands: The Setting to End All Settings
It's time. A detailed and opinionated appraisal of the best, or possible second best, version of Dungeons & Dragons ever made. I mean of course Advanced Dungeons & Dragons, Second Edition.| Mythlands: The Setting to End All Settings
One of the great things about Hal Foster’s seminal Prince Valiant is that from very early on, Foster demonstrates how medieval combat was inextricably entwined with wrestling. The sequence below is one of the earliest examples, Val is losing versus the quarterstaff and resorts to grappling. It’s an early example, but the strip is full […]| Fluid — Druid
AD&D is pretty famous for having a fairly extensive weapons list, including in particular quite a lot of different types of pole arm. However, a couple of recent videos (here and here) by the esteemable Matt Easton of the YouTube channel Scholagladiatoria recently made some points that reminded me of things I’ve noticed are missing […]| Fluid — Druid
Inspired by this proposal to runs a Pancho Villa Expedition for AD&D/Boot Hill. It seems like if this is to be done, we need stats for the equipment of the time. With information from the artic…| Fluid -- Druid
Apparently my special interest now is writing about the annoying mundanities of AD&D city/town life - taxes, tolls, intentionally misleading encounters, and irritating and expensive NPCs. To this end, I've been reading all about henchmen in the DMG. Boy, it is a lot more difficult to recruit these people than I gave it credit for!| Blog of Forlorn Encystment
Look at this guy's face: He's mad! Why? Probably because, per the AD&D DMG, dealing with NPCs "should be expensive and irritating": The exam...| forlornencystment.blogspot.com
Just posted for free and paid members of the Monster of the Month Club: August’s reprint is an AD&D1 Deities & Demigods treatment of the Egyptian crocodile god Sobek, from Imagine magazine in 1984.https://www.patreon.com/MonsteroftheMonthClub Want to support my work? If you’ve enjoyed the content on this blog, please consider supporting me by making a small […]| Graeme Davis
Since I wrote about indentured magic-users and clerics being encountered among the city guard/watch, I've been poring over the rest of AD&D's city/town encounters. Yes, yes, that's the part of the book with the infamous harlot table:| Blog of Forlorn Encystment
Here's something that I mentioned very briefly in my post about the AD&D DMG's section on "taxes" (including duties, excises, fees, tariffs,...| forlornencystment.blogspot.com
In an earlier post, I discussed the spear versus the dagger efficacy versus the armors available in AD&D. I also present, more generally, the entire list of weapons and how they’d fare ve…| Fluid -- Druid
Something amusing I found while poring over the AD&D city/town encounters:| Blog of Forlorn Encystment
The blogosphere is celebrating Stanley Yelnats's birthday by posting hole . It's a blog bandwagon! A holewagon. The following post is my hum...| forlornencystment.blogspot.com
There has been a fair amount of confusion about how surprise is conducted in AD&D 1e. I don’t know why because right there on page 61 of the DMG it says: Surprise is basically self-explanatory. Well then no more need be said. For something so self-explanatory, there is a lot of confusion. I’ll say a […]| Fluid — Druid
This post is inspired by this X post discussing random wilderness encounters. He’s not wrong. But, he’s not right, either. I’ll explain. Plus he’s got this blog post. What h…| Fluid -- Druid
Let's pretend it's still 2024. It may now be the Year of the Snake, but in my heartit's still the Year of the Dragon!| Blog of Forlorn Encystment
No, I'm not actually going to describe one hundred thousand encounters with a dragon. How would I even do that? If you want an exhaustively ...| forlornencystment.blogspot.com
This post is inspired by this video. Though this one pretty much sums up my conclusions pretty well. In summary, Shad’s argument goes like this, when held up next to one another a dagger and …| Fluid -- Druid
When I first read Jack Vance's Tales of the Dying Earth (and other Appendix N literature) and became familiar with Mazirian the Magician, C...| forlornencystment.blogspot.com
This is not a Dragonlance post!| Blog of Forlorn Encystment
Something I often struggle with when creating a sandbox is the level of detail to give to each location, and at what point in the process to do so. My sandboxes tend to be big - probably too big. The 100-hex sandbox was my attempt at codifying a procedure for creating a play area that felt big enough to contain the bare essentials that I would want for a campaign without going overboard. | Blog of Forlorn Encystment
Tracing the California Gaming Scene, part II: Erol Otus in NorCal| The Cryptic Archivist
Let's face it, most game fiction isn't very good.| The Cryptic Archivist
My favorite character is my silver-haired, half-elf jester, Wonko the Sane (yes, named after the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy character).| The Cryptic Archivist
Why Ascending?| Homebrew Homunculus
Observation 1: Most of the Thief skills in B/X D&D improve in increments of 5%, which makes using a percentile die rather pointless. You can take the percentile (and x-in-6) Thief skills table, convert all the values onto a d20 target number, and it looks like this (TN rounded up):| Homebrew Homunculus
You’re probably aware of the multi-attack abilities fighters have had over the years. There’s the “Melee attacks per round” table, where Fighters in AD&D could have 1/1, 3/2 or 2/1 attacks per round. That fractional value of 3/2 means your number of attacks alternates each round: twice in one round, then once in the next, and so on. Sure, it’s not hard to understand - but it’s still an additional thing to remember in the heat of battle, which I don’t want in my game. Newer edi...| Homebrew Homunculus
The AD&D wilderness inhabitation tableshave infected my mind. They have wormed their way in, forcing me to make sandboxes I may never use. Now that they've burrowed deep beneath the surface, living (rent free!) in my brain, so too have I begun to dig beneath the surface. I'm increasingly interested in analyzing and rationalizing the implications of these tables, picking apart the little oddities that likely exist only because Gary Gygax simply wasn't thinking that much about it.| Blog of Forlorn Encystment
As you've probably noticed, I've been spending some timeusing the tables found in Appendix B of the AD&D 1e DMGto populate my sandboxes, which I will definitely use in a real game at some point...| Blog of Forlorn Encystment
The knock spell first appears in original D&D's Book I: Men & Magic. It is a 2nd-level magic-user spell. The description is as follows:| Blog of Forlorn Encystment
My most recent foray into using the AD&D DMG to stock a hex map sparked some discussion about the frequency of "totally deserted" castles.| Blog of Forlorn Encystment
I typically propose very minor alterations to D&D: how to fix summoning , how to fix shapechanging , how to fix weapon damage . I'm not real...| forlornencystment.blogspot.com
Here’s a short one with no real conclusion. This really is just a place to memorialize where I am in thinking about this subject. And, to inspire anyone who also might be interested in the to…| Fluid -- Druid
I am back again to stock a third ring of hexes using the AD&D 1e DMG! You can find Parts 1 and 2 here and here . As with previous installm...| forlornencystment.blogspot.com
I am back to do more sandbox stocking with the AD&D 1e DMG! I'm continuing from Part 1, here . I start by filling in the terrain in the nex...| forlornencystment.blogspot.com
I thought it would be a fun exercise to try stocking a sandbox using the procedures presented in the appendices of the AD&D 1e DMG. I'll be ...| forlornencystment.blogspot.com
Let’s face it, does AD&D 1e really need another pole arm? Not really. Gary Gygax already provided a pretty detailed list. Plus, given the variation in historical pole axes, the already pr…| Fluid -- Druid
In a prior post, I looked at AD&D movement rates in relation to missile fire. In that piece I used the DMG overland movement rates and terrain classification to explicate short-term movement ra…| Fluid -- Druid
Not so long ago, in discussion with the bros, it came up how in AD&D 1e swords predominate over other magic weapons. Indeed, magic long swords predominate over other types of magic swords. And,…| Fluid -- Druid
At the end of the recent Arbiter of Worlds stream, with Alexander Macris and Harmony Ginger, the issue of game rulings and precedent came up. I commented in the chat my view that rulings should not…| Fluid -- Druid
In AD&D, a typical movement rate is 12″ per round. Cursory review of the missile weapon ranges shows that for most weapons an infantry unit moving to engage in melee with a unit of missil…| Fluid -- Druid
In my previous column here, I suggested that cavalry may be the best unit type to use against trolls in AD&D. Not just because the damage advantage of the lance at the charge, but because the c…| Fluid -- Druid
This is a scenario I’ve run for Mr. Wargaming of the Joy of Wargaming. He’s done me some favors in the past, now is time to help him out. Mr. Wargaming generated an AD&D 1e encounte…| Fluid -- Druid
My OSR Blog about fantasy world building and rules analysis for D&D. Also home of the B/X inspired 5e-clone "Into the Unknown."| mythlands-erce.blogspot.com
AD&D 1e gets a fair amount of flack for being awkward and clunky. This is mostly from people who haven’t played it for any length of time. Gygax’s rather florid style which challenges their com…| Fluid -- Druid
This is a follow-up on my piece about firearms for AD&D. Presented are my approach to Renaissance artillery for AD&D 1e. The rules here use the War Machine rules on page 108 & 109 of th…| Fluid -- Druid
The discussion that follows is best understood with a copy of both the first edition DMG and a copy of the Boot Hill rules. Gary Gygax was against functioning gunpowder in AD&D. For him, gunpow…| Fluid -- Druid
I started doing some 1e comparisons when I wrote the previous entry, but it quickly grew out of control and I decided to section it off, so that 2e classes also get to be compared on their own merits. That said, let's look how classes stack up in 1e vs 2e:| Mythlands: The Setting to End All Settings
The AD&D appraisal show is back on the road. Today is about classes and it's a bit long, so here is the | Mythlands: The Setting to End All Settings
I've been running our group through the sandbox presented in "The Vanilla Adventure" using classic D&D with some houserules, strict 3d6 in order, no re-arranging or re-rolls. I sprinkled in a few other modules (Hole in the Oak, Incandescent Grottoes, Gatehouse on Cormag's Crag. might add more).| Mythlands: The Setting to End All Settings
Last night, our gaming group played out the final battle in the Crimson Abby story arc. One of our starting players had moved away to KC last summer, we continued the campaign with out her. This la…| Stonewerks
This post grew from watching a video by Aaron the Pedantic (Twitter: @cha_neg) I saw recently, where he mentions things he (as a new guy with that edition) likes about AD&D, second edition. One…| Emperor's Notepad
Currently, I am working on another 1d100 random ass list, this one is a list for “I loot the body”. Looting the body happens alot in my current campaign, go figure! I was at work today,…| Stonewerks
