19th Level

DM: "Black Dougal, you find out that you missed a tiny discolored needle in the latch. Roll a saving throw vs. Poison, please!"  Dougal (rolling): "Missed it!"  DM: "Black Dougal gasps 'Poison!' and falls to the floor. He looks dead."  Fredrik: "I'm grabbing his pack to carry treasure in."  Rebecca: "I'm giving Black Dougal the last rites of my church." - D&D Basic Rules, 1981, p. B59. As an older gamer, I tend to like a lot of aspects of the Old School Renaissance. As I began having children, discovered that spending a lot of time balancing encounters, making sure I gave out just the right amount of treasure, calculated stats properly, etc. was not how I wanted to spend my time. Indeed, I often didn't have the time. It really made me appreciate many of the tropes from the beginning of the RPG hobby. That's not to say I don't enjoy new-fangled stuff. I'm enjoying running a Fate Acceler...

I received a number of useful comments from my previous post as I consider systems for a possible superhero game. With that in mind, I've eliminated several games and have a few more to consider. Eliminated: Hero System/Champions: I'd love to try this out but I sense this is creating more work than I want at this case - only about half the players in the group have any experience with the Hero System coupled with a need to run the game on a virtual tabletop. Mutants & Masterminds: Certainly lighter than Champions, but truthfully I'm trying to keep things a bit on the lighter side. Wild Talents: One of my favorite games, running it on a virtual tabletop is a bit more complicated than I'd prefer, with everyone needing to roll simultaneously and ordering everything accordingly. Still in the running is Daring Comics. I'm still in the process of digesting the game but I've been liking it so far. I do need to consider if I want to run such a strongly n...

One thing I've noticed is the D&D products of the 1970s seem awfully different from the material produced now. Not totally - looking through the material that companies like the Judges Guild and TSR produced, adventures have always been popular. (Though the adventures of the day were a lot more open/easy to drop into a campaign.) But what I see is a lot of products designed as resources for Dungeon Masters. You had your Monster & Treasure Assortments and Dungeon Geomorphs. Judges Guild produced a gazillion products with dungeon and wilderness maps, random encounters, etc. As I'm prepping my first "real" sandbox style game I have to confess I see the utility in them. Not knowing precisely what the players will do has me going through my not inconsiderable gaming library (stretching, if not back to the 1970s, at least to the 80s - when a lot of those old products were still in print). Lots of adventures I've used in the past seem just perfect for locat...

As I've mentioned in the past, my first version of D&D (and first exposure to RPGs in general) was via the "Magenta Box" D&D Basic Set. Some of the early D&D books I picked up advertised the "Original Collector’s Edition" of Dungeons & Dragons but I never encountered such a version. I had hints of what it was like with my copy of Best of Dragon Volume I  which I encountered in a book store in Brooklyn's King's Plaza mall. I was also therefore unfamiliar with the Judges Guild licensed products. I recall an advertisement or two for the Mayfair Games version of City State of the Invincible Overlord  but that's about it. The reason for this prelude is for a large number of the older RPG products I've reviewed in this blog I acquired them in the period they came out. My first encounter with this product was via purchasing a digital copy at RPGNow a few years ago (unfortunately the scan at RPGNow is of petty poor copy and it appea...

April 17th is scheduled to be "Swords & Wizardry Appreciation Day". I've signed up this blog to participate in that. While I believe my blog has made mention of Swords & Wizardry on numerous occasions I've never actually done a review. It seemed a good idea to remedy that prior to doing an "appreciation post". Swords & Wizardry  is one of the earlier Dungeons & Dragons retroclones, designed to emulate the flavor of the "pre-AD&D" incarnation of Dungeons & Dragons. My memory may be a bit fuzzy, but I'm pretty certain it came out early in the days of D&D 3.5 as people realized the d20 System Reference Document and the Open Game Content of that could be used to reverse engineer older versions of D&D. I believe at that time the original edition of D&D was available as a PDF download from RPGNow, though it may have been made available at a later point. The original D&D books and supplements were pulled fro...

Earlier this week Wizards of the Coast announced  they would be reprinting the original edition of Dungeons & Dragons, the famed "white box".  This set will consist of the following: Volume 1: Men & Magic Volume 2: Monsters & Treasure Volume 3: Underworld & Wilderness Adventures Supplement I: Greyhawk Supplement II: Blackmoor Supplement III: Eldritch Wizardry Supplement IV: Gods, Demi-Gods & Heroes I first started playing with the " magenta box " version of the D&D Basic Game. Prior to this the Advanced D&D Game, the "blue box" Basic Game, and Original Edition were released. AD&D 1st edition was still very active and would be for years to come; it was the game we probably played most in the early 80s though by the late 80s I'd switched to science fiction games. It wasn't till years later that I managed to get copies of the Original Edition and blue box version of the Basic Game. I also have PDFs of all...