It's also a "What if?" blog. A blog asking the question what might have happened had e.g. I stumbled upon D&D in the same way as Ken St. Andre stumbled upon it. Being fascinated and confused at the same time by a totally bewildering new genre of games. Not being able to make sense out of the initial rules. And then trying to improve them.
Ken St. Andre wrote the marvelous Tunnels & Trolls ruleset that lives until today, barely altered from its origins (at least comparing the changes of the last 35 years to what happened to the few other games out there that still exist).
Thus this blog is (yet another) experiment of the OSR (old school renaissance, old school revolution, call it what you want) movement that tries to regard the origins of our beloved hobby in the context of the knowledge of today. It is a thought experiment of how the original D&D might have looked had a time traveller with more meta knowledge about RPG systems (but not necessarily specific other systems in mind) tried to revise the original D&D to a more accessible game.
- Although I may use my knowledge of today about game design, die probabilities and layout I also will assume that only the D&D White Box edition with the three little brown books (LBB) exist.
- Roleplaying games are something new and exciting and I want to do the "official thing".
- Fictious conversations with "Mr. G" (represented by what other OSR researchers have managed to find out about how D&D was played in the early days, how it is played by others and which house rules were applied, again originally and later on) will serve to change, revise or elaborate the basic rules.
- The result will be a clone of the LBB. Just the LBB and nothing else. With the goal of clarifying the rules as far as necessary but not completely rewriting or altering them without significant reasons (of which there should be very few). The goal here is clarity and easy access. Otherwise it should be the game.
