Primordial OD&D: A Chainmail fantasy simulacrum

Alan Kesher provided links to work he started on a kind of primordial OD&D. Or as he more appropriately phrased it: a Chainmail Fantasy Supplement simulacrum. Although it's not complete I find this fascinating stuff that I directly added to the references section of 'The Fantasy Game' and will also study over the next weeks.

Enjoy!

The Ryth Chronicle: A fan-based setting as important as Greyhawk or Blackmoor?

Today marks yet another great day in OSR research: ... over at Risus Monkey posted the PDF scans of the Ryth Chronicle, an 80 page document stemming from the very early days of our hobby, written on a typewriter around 1975-1977 in order to introduce new players into the campaign.

The Fantasy Game: A d6 only game?

The past couple of days I have been a bit silent, studying "The Big Brown Book" (also newly added to the reference section), "Epées & Sorcellerie RPG", "Using CHAINMAIL to resolve OD&D combat" and "Forbidden Lore". I mentioned it a couple of times and now I am sure concerning the use of dice in 'The Fantasy Game'.

Epées & Sorcellerie RPG now available

Picking up Nicolas Dessaux' recent comment about the extended reference section of 'The Fantasy Game' I just wanted to point to the most recent post at There's Dungeons Down Under: the Epées & Sorcellerie RPG now is available as a free download from Lulu as well as a print edition. I already added the print edition to my shopping cart  but now need to find some more new releases that make the shipping costs worthwhile. Suggestions welcome ;-) Naturally I also added it to the references section for 'The Fantasy Game' in order to see which inspiration might be derived from it. I'll probably post an opinion about the game soon, too.
(BTW: What font is that in the logo? Love it!)

Opinions about the Dungeon Crawl Classics RPG beta release

Now that everyone is talking about the beta release of the Dungeon Crawl Classics RPG from Goodman Games I felt the need to chime in, too, as I love to look at their upcoming product from a designers and a players point of view. I will try to comment it after a casual glance. My viewpoint will be very strongly 'The Fantasy Game' based as DCC RPG seems to take a similar philosophical viewpoint for its design but a very different technical design route (quote from their website: "Return to the glory days of fantasy with the Dungeon Crawl Classics Role Playing Game. Adventure as 1974 intended you to, with modern rules grounded in the origins of sword & sorcery.").

New reference material added: Forbidden Lore & Consolidated OD&D rules

I just added two new references to the references section of this blog:

• Original Dungeons & Dragons Consolidated Rules by Bruce Mohler
• Forbidden Lore by Jason Vey, which nicely describes a way to integrate Chainmail with OD&D - together with the resources mentioned above by D. H. Boggs I will consolidate the Chainmail based combat rules for 'The Fantasy Game'

I'm probably soon going to jump around a bit more in the LBB as I am itching to get to the combat section of the game. The goal here is primarily to have a playable rule set as soon as possible and the combat rules are the most pressing (and missing) part right now. Since I do not have any experience with Chainmail I will have to do quite some research. The goal here will be to present a more or less unified combat ruleset closely matching the intention of Chainmail. More soon...

First layout impression: Abilities

Since I have been writing on the actual rules for some time now I just wanted to give you a quick expression of the layout of a single page: Here's the intro to the abilities in the game.

Minor progress today: Blog alterations & charismatic player characters in the game

Today I only did minor work on 'The Fantasy Game' (it's once more Gaia Gamma time ;-) ). First of all I adjusted the blog design a little bit: The blog description at the top is gone and has been moved into a text box to the right (in order to allow for a more compelling status update structure on Facebook).

Secondly and more importantly I have done some minor work on 'The Fantasy Game', too, despite this being a Gaia Gamma day.

Ability Tests in OD&D

As far as I can see so far (remember - I am reading the LBB from front to back completely for the first time in my life) OD&D does not contain any actual rules for ability tests and the like. This is something I am going to elaborate slightly for 'The Fantasy Game'.

On the origin of divisional tongues...

Just something I started wondering about... does anybody know what inspired the introduction of divisional tongues? E.g. languages for the various alignment factions? The concept of a language of "Law" versus a language of "Neutrality" versus a language of "Chaos" in that strict division seems somewhat strange to me. It kind of implies an overarching religious or metaphysical concept, even stronger than in the books of Michael Moorcock (I don't remember seeing any aligned tongues in those books) which seems rather strange for a game that otherwise has almost no hints about the way religions might work.

So, any takers for literary examples that might have influenced the original rules in presenting such a strange special case?

About languages (Reading OD&D from cover to cover)

One thing that bewilders me while reading the little brown books is the comparative detail given to languages - at least when comparing the language section to other parts of the rules.

Looking for a name for volume I of 'The Fantasy Game'

I'm plodding steadily ahead with volume I of 'The Fantasy Game'. Yesterday I finished the first version of the first page inside the covers (but don't fret - many other more important parts also have long been written ;-) ) and here it is:

OD&D: A matter of language

Although the past week has been pretty silent as far as postings go I have made some pretty good progress actually writing down more of the rules of 'The Fantasy Game'. Volume I is shaping up pretty nicely. While writing the rules I noticed a thing about the way the rules language has changed from the very early times to more current editions... in a way which to me takes away a bit of the flavor inherent in the ancient rules. I'm not sure if I feel this way just because English is not my native language or if there is more to it but today I would like to elaborate a bit on this observation.