Ailments for the Poor Fighter
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
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
I've been anticipating reviewing "Mystara" as perhaps the most difficult of the setting reviews. | Mythlands: The Setting to End All Settings
Extremely online billionaire and corrupt barnacle on the hull of the American ship of state Elon Musk recently stirred up some controversy by hinting he might buy out Hasbro. This may or may not be serious – he talks about buying lots of things he doesn’t end up touching, he only went through on the … Continue reading The Making of Original Dungeons & Dragons: The Manufacture of a Controversy| Refereeing and Reflection
Bathtub Reviews are an excuse for me to read modules a little more closely. I’m doing them to critique a wide range of modules from the perspective of my own table and to learn for my own module design. They’re stream of consciousness and unedited critiques. I’m writing them on my phone in the bath. […]| Playful Void
Link to discussion Over the years I’ve settled on a way to run 0e/OD&D/White Box combat that keeps the action moving and is pretty simple, while covering many cases that come up. I use this bas…| Smoldering Wizard
Link to discussion The story of the Thief class is well-known by now, with the idea being given to Gary …Continue reading →| Smoldering Wizard
This is not a Dragonlance post!| Blog of Forlorn Encystment
As I covered in my previous post, I've been working on a retro-clone of the original 1974/1975 era Dungeons & Dragons rules titled The Fantasy Game. That post describes the first book, the Basic Player Guide, which covers rules for character creation, combat, magic, and exploration, which is roughly equal to Men & Magic, volume 1 of the three LBBs (little brown books) in the original boxed D&D set.| The Cryptic Archivist
As I posted about briefly in my last post, I am currently co-teaching a History of Role-Playing Games course at Drexel University. The course is a mix of lectures about the history and evolution of RPGs, written reports about specific RPGs, and with in-class activities to create characters, monsters, campaign locations, and play through an adventure using the original 1974-1975 Dungeons & Dragons (OD&D) rules.| The Cryptic Archivist
I am happy to announce the upcoming publication of the book chapter "'Dr. Holmes, I Presume?' How a California Neurology Professor Penned the First Dungeons & Dragons Basic Set," co-authored with Zach "Zenopus" of Zenopus Archives. It will be published in Fifty Years of Dungeons & Dragons, scheduled for release on May 14, 2024.| The Cryptic Archivist
There are plenty of choices for games that I have played in the past but don't get to play enough - Call of Cthulhu , James Bond 007 , West ...| crypticarchivist.blogspot.com
A bit ago I saw a discussion on twitter where Idle Cartulary and Marcia B were discussing the design differences between the original thief class - which anyone familiar with OSR discourse knows creates limits on other characters that didn't previously exist - and the paladin which largely creates new abilities only that class has. Marcie later posted her own thoughts on the original version of the thief, but I thought I'd weigh in not with thoughts on the thief but my third(!) attempt at a ...| In Places Deep
Angband is a 1990 computer game in the subgenre of turn-based permadeath dungeon-crawling RPGs, also known as roguelikes. Very few people play Angband today, and most PC gamers have likely never heard of it - even when they've likely heard of NetHack and Dwarf Fortress. But did you know that the randomized equipment or "loot" so common in video games today was originally an innovation of Angband? | Homebrew Homunculus
This post is part of the papal conclave Blog Bandwagon/Blogclave . As the world turns its gaze towards the Vatican, the blogosphere turns it...| forlornencystment.blogspot.com
Recently, I wanted to create a low-prep, dungeon-focused, easy-to-grok campaign to run online with my friends and family who've been asking to play some D&D. The first post is here explains how I ran the Gygax 75 Challenge, 75 minutes each day instead of using a whole week each time. Below is the completed effort with each "minutes" section.| I Cast Light!
Smaller numbers are better.| Mythlands: The Setting to End All Settings
A while back I reviewed Jon Peterson’s Playing At the World, the first of his in-depth books of RPG history. Though very good, the book’s got the drawback of having spent a fair bit of …| Refereeing and Reflection
Link to discussion Let’s look at the sleep spell in Men & Magic: >Sleep: A Sleep spell affects from 2–16 1st-level types (hit dice of up to 1 + 1), from 2–12 2nd-level types (hit dice of up …| Smoldering Wizard
Carry these Darkness is Bad. We live in a world with light at will and we’ve forgotten how scary the night is. But moreover in a fantasy world it is worse than in ours: it twists and transfor…| Odd Skull
Thinking of a different model for you fantasy world’s polytheism.| Odd Skull
Totally not a bootleg zodiac Today it’s my birthday so I’m putting together a simple birthsign table intended to be compatible with classic D&D-ish games. It’s not an original…| Odd Skull
An alternative to open-ended cantrips and small magicks through the use of a consumable| Odd Skull
