Category: D&D 1977 Basic [Holmes]

The Dreams in Garys Basement Flyer

The Dreams in Gary’s Basement

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…

Jennell Jaquays collage

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 […]

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 […]

Judges Guild Deluxe Volumes I & II

A big lot of kudos to Goodman Games for their work with historic Judges Guild material – and most especially one of my all time favourite modules The Caverns Of Thracia! Goodman Games have run 2 Kickstarter Campaigns recently to produce deluxe oversize hard cover volumes containing some of the most significant and historic Judges […]