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Is there any interest in Mazes & Perils? I received the Deluxe edition book in the mail and have been perusing it when I can. Sort of a homage of the Holmes’ blue book as I understand. I might want to DM a game using the system.

Golem wrote:Is there any interest in Mazes & Perils? I received the Deluxe edition book in the mail and have been perusing it when I can. Sort of a homage of the Holmes’ blue book as I understand. I might want to DM a game using the system.

im all in for basic D&D games

Not familiar with it. How does it compare to other OSR games? Is it Basic (blue book) D&D or AD&D 1st ed? How hard is it to mix races and classes, and how hard to make new classes? And how hard to steal err...borrow things, maybe from ACKS or similar?

I've got a spot opening up in the B/X hexcrawl I'm running. It's a relatively fast-paced, high-level game using the newly released Old School Essentials, with some add-ons.

thirdkingdom wrote:I've got a spot opening up in the B/X hexcrawl I'm running. It's a relatively fast-paced, high-level game using the newly released Old School Essentials, with some add-ons.

i believe i tried to enlist, but the posting rate was too high for me, hehe

I might be interested in mazes and perils. I am a big fan of the Holmes edition of Basic.

Rex, you should join us in A Brave New World. Think you would like that campaign and the setup going.

All I can say is I like running old Basic modules however I like using them in editions where a dwarf, elf, halfling and so forth are not treated as a class. But that is just me born and raised on 2e it kinda stuck like most folks we appear to trend towards what we learned first and played the most.

At any rate I like playing and running basic.

I'm with GW. I started with 1st edition so I never got into the Race AS Class mechanic. But, even though I started with 1st, I enjoy the simplicity of the clone games which use the AD&D model with the B/X rules like Advanced Labyrinth Lord and Old-School Essentials Advanced Fantasy.

GreyWolfVT wrote:All I can say is I like running old Basic modules however I like using them in editions where a dwarf, elf, halfling and so forth are not treated as a class. But that is just me born and raised on 2e it kinda stuck like most folks we appear to trend towards what we learned first and played the most.

Hmm... AD&D 1st ed separated out race and class. I know somewhere in there the game's name dropped the "A", so not sure what you mean. I do prefer race and class be separate, but I also like limiting what classes a race can be. Not as much for story purposes, but because I've played long enough to see people abuse pretty much everything.

This morning my mind started to wander around creating an open source rule set that was extensible. Probably not a trivial task for some classes, but easy enough to get started. The main thing would seem to be providing parameters for class levels and spell levels, and a general "code of conduct" to encourage contributors to not Munchkin the system.

Of course, if it's reasonable and extensible, someone could take our base, pull in whatever they liked from another system, and it should mesh at the 75% level.

Leitz wrote: Hmm... AD&D 1st ed separated out race and class. I know somewhere in there the game's name dropped the "A", so not sure what you mean...

1974 - Dungeons & Dragons released (has become known as Original Dungeons & Dragons, Oe, 0e, Little Brown Books, etc.)
1977 - Advanced Dungeons & Dragons released (AD&D 1e); however the Monster Manual was released first. To fill the void, Dr. Holmes releases Dungeons & Dragons (blue box, Holmes edition)
1981 - Basic and Expert Dungeons & Dragons released (B/X, the red box, the blue box, etc.)
1989 - Advanced Dungeons & Dragons 2nd edition released (AD&D 2e)
2000 - Dungeons & Dragons 3rd edition (DnD3e)
2003 - Dungeons & Dragons 3.5 (DnD3.5)
2008 - Dungeons & Dragons 4th edition (DnD4e)
2014 - Dungeons & Dragons 5th edition (DnD5e)

Actually Holmes Basic was the transition from OD&D to AD&D. It laid the ground work for the Red Box Basic and for AD&D. The pre-gen characters that came with B1 (the module that came with the first printing of Holmes addition) listed both race and class (there was a halfling thief and a halfling fighting man). If you read everything that came in the box it was clear that was where they were going. It also made it clear if the DM and player agreed on running something not listed that was to be encouraged, the rules mention running a witch, were-shark and samurai as being possibilities. I have copies of the first and second printings (my brothers and my copies from the 70's) and most newer stuff based on it.

Rex wrote:Actually Holmes Basic was the transition from OD&D to AD&D. It laid the ground work for the Red Box Basic and for AD&D. The pre-gen characters that came with B1 (the module that came with the first printing of Holmes addition) listed both race and class (there was a halfling thief and a halfling fighting man). If you read everything that came in the box it was clear that was where they were going. It also made it clear if the DM and player agreed on running something not listed that was to be encouraged, the rules mention running a witch, were-shark and samurai as being possibilities. I have copies of the first and second printings (my brothers and my copies from the 70's) and most newer stuff based on it.

That is correct. I'm sorry if I was vague about that. Dr. Holmes had Gary's permission and blessing to create the Blue Box rules which did provide the transition between OD&D to AD&D while Gygax had the PHB & DMG written. It was TSR's attempt to get new players interested and old players transitioned to the new rules which were (at the time) a work in process.

Your chronology is actually a bit misleading and many sources list it this way. The 77 date for AD&D is the Monster manual, the players handbooks official publication date is June of 78 and the player handbooks sales didn't surpass the Holmes Basic sales until late 1980. In fact the Holmes addition ran into shortages at least twice and was on its fourth printing when the players handbook hit the shelves for the first time.

Thanks for clarification.

I played in one game of the little brown books; my character died. The next session was Traveller. Later I played the Blue book, and then the PHB came to our little burg. I still have the PHB and DMG on the shelves.

Yes thank you YBN & Rex that is exactly what i mean by AD&D. At any rate for something a bit different that i don't think i have seen anyone run on here would be D&D Rules Cyclopedia I played it briefly once and really liked it. I'd love to give it another go but I certainly don't know it well enough to DM. Dunno if we have anyone versed in it well enough on here to DM a game of it but it's on my "to do list" eventually to play it more than a couple of sessions.

GreyWolfVT wrote:Yes thank you YBN & Rex that is exactly what i mean by AD&D. At any rate for something a bit different that i don't think i have seen anyone run on here would be D&D Rules Cyclopedia I played it briefly once and really liked it. I'd love to give it another go but I certainly don't know it well enough to DM. Dunno if we have anyone versed in it well enough on here to DM a game of it but it's on my "to do list" eventually to play it more than a couple of sessions.

I ran a pretty successful game here using Dark Dungeons, an excellent (free) retroclone of the RC.

thirdkingdom wrote: I ran a pretty successful game here using Dark Dungeons, an excellent (free) retroclone of the RC.

Nice! I may have to look into that one.

GreyWolfVT wrote:

thirdkingdom wrote: I ran a pretty successful game here using Dark Dungeons, an excellent (free) retroclone of the RC.

Nice! I may have to look into that one.

Here's a post explaining the differences between DD and RC (written by the author of DD): https://forum.rpg.net/index.php?threads ... t-21459997

The free pdf can be found here: https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/17 ... k-Dungeons