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: Game Rules & Aspects
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) […]
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 […]
Pig-Faced Orcs Are The One True Orc
Absolutely, for me at least… There have many iterations but nothing says Orc like the classic illustrations from the early D&D and AD&D books from the 1970’s (The Holmes Basic D&D book and the various Advanced D&D ‘Manuals’ feature classic illustrations). And I’m not alone. Forget about the bizarre things Peter Jackson created for his […]