A friend in the UK reminded me 50 Years ago a strange obscure game called Dungeons & Dragons was born and the 1st edition of it was published (obviously they didn’t know it was the first edition at the time). Some of you might have heard of it…
Category: D&D 1983-85 BECMI [Mentzer]
RIP Jennell Jaquays
Very sad to hear the passing of Jennell Jaquays – after a period of severe illness. She was a great contributor to the early D&D era and (as Paul Jaquays) did many new and original things at the early time in D&D’s history. I have hugely fond memories of playing through Caverns of Thracia while […]
D&D Basic’s Turning Table As A Skills System
Something that’s cropped up a bit in recent times and had some discussion is the use of the Cleric’s ‘Turning Table” found in D&D B/X (Moldvay) and OSE, and obviously in BECMI (Mentzer) & Rules Cyclopedia as well, as a general improvisational skills/challenge/difficulty system. There’s been more talk about it of late (although reportedly its […]
House Rule Ideas for Old School D&D
I’m not a huge fan of having lots of ‘house rules’ (although I was once); and I think the beauty of D&D B/X (and similar editions of that era, and the newer OSE, etc) is the malleability of the rules and play (vs. the heavily structured and detailed approach of 5E with very rigid processes) […]
Original Adventures Reincarnated #7: Dark Tower
Goodman Games have done it again and launched a new Kickstarter for the latest in their “Original Adventures Reincarnated” range of books – this time the classic Jennell Jaquays Judges Guild published ‘Dark Tower‘ module. This module along with Jaquays’ ‘Caverns of Thracia‘ module are arguably the 2 best non-TSR D&D/AD&D modules produced in the […]
Old School Elf Class
Continuing the old school character class post theme (with a particular emphasis on the Moldvay era of D&D B/X) is the Elf. There is a large divergence of views on Elves in Old School D&D including what they are and how common they should be, and a common perception of the Elf Class in B/X […]
Old School Cleric
Continuing on the old school character class theme (with a particular emphasis on the Moldvay era of D&D B/X and the likes of OSE) is the Cleric. There is a common perception of clerics just being played as ersatz fighters with some healing skills – but this needn’t and shouldn’t be the case. Even the […]
Old School Thief
Two of the classic ‘Old School‘ character classes that often get maligned these days are the Magic-User and the Thief. This is partly because the style of more modern D&D versions (primarily from 3e onwards, but more specifically the current 5e D&D rules) provide a completely different type of game and place a lot more […]
Old School Magic-User
Two of the classic ‘Old School‘ character classes that often get maligned these days are the Magic-User and the Thief. This is partly because the style of more modern D&D versions (primarily from 3e onwards, but more specifically the current 5e D&D rules) provide a completely different type of game and place a lot more […]
Original Adventures Reincarnated
Goodman Games have been republishing classic TSR era D&D Adventure modules in a ‘deluxe’ hard cover format marketed as “Original Adventures Reincarnated“. These feature high quality scanned reprints of the original module releases (in some cases including 2 different original versions) that were originally for D&D Basic or AD&D 1e (1st Edition), and a modernised […]