No skewering here! One of the fun things about Holmes (for me) is that there is so much ambiguity and outright errata. I freely admit that some of the things I like about Holmes are probably typos, edits inserted after Holmes wrote the manuscript, or simple errors. We'll never know how much of that stuff was intentional and how much was simply poor quality control. :-)
I once tried to write an errata document for B/X, but I simply couldn't find any (I have found some since, due to my investigation of Holmes, OD&D and Chainmail). When I tried to write an errata document for Holmes, it ended up a full-scale OGL simulacrum, BLUEHOLME™*.
Peter, I always enjoy reading these first impressions. Something is always pointed out that I didn't notice before. In your case, it is the bit about the weight of the coins on page 34. That was added to the second print, presumably by someone at TSR. It's actually inconsistent with what is on page 9 under encumbrance where 300 gp = 30 lbs. This comes from OD&D, Vol 1, where the weight of a man is stated to be 1,750 coins (thus equal to approx 175 lbs). I believe 1st edition AD&D used 10 coins to 1 lb too, more of a half-dollar size, so I'm not sure where the "quarter size" came from. You could attempt to reconcile the two statements by saying that the 1 lb "encumbrance" weight for 10 coins comes from the bulkiness/unwieldiness of a bag of coins as well as the actual weight.
Oh, I didn't notice the rule on page 9, lol. I brought the later rule up because I thought it's a lot better than the usual 10 gp = 1 lbs. Personally I am partial to Daniel's "stone" encumbrance system which actually has 1000 gp = 14 lbs = 1 stone. http://deltasdnd.blogspot.com/2010/09/stone-encumbrance-detail-example.html
No skewering here! One of the fun things about Holmes (for me) is that there is so much ambiguity and outright errata. I freely admit that some of the things I like about Holmes are probably typos, edits inserted after Holmes wrote the manuscript, or simple errors. We'll never know how much of that stuff was intentional and how much was simply poor quality control. :-)
ReplyDeleteI once tried to write an errata document for B/X, but I simply couldn't find any (I have found some since, due to my investigation of Holmes, OD&D and Chainmail). When I tried to write an errata document for Holmes, it ended up a full-scale OGL simulacrum, BLUEHOLME™*.
*Check out my BLUEHOLME™ community: https://plus.google.com/communities/107363141061262465815).
Peter, I always enjoy reading these first impressions. Something is always pointed out that I didn't notice before. In your case, it is the bit about the weight of the coins on page 34. That was added to the second print, presumably by someone at TSR. It's actually inconsistent with what is on page 9 under encumbrance where 300 gp = 30 lbs. This comes from OD&D, Vol 1, where the weight of a man is stated to be 1,750 coins (thus equal to approx 175 lbs). I believe 1st edition AD&D used 10 coins to 1 lb too, more of a half-dollar size, so I'm not sure where the "quarter size" came from. You could attempt to reconcile the two statements by saying that the 1 lb "encumbrance" weight for 10 coins comes from the bulkiness/unwieldiness of a bag of coins as well as the actual weight.
ReplyDeleteOh, I didn't notice the rule on page 9, lol. I brought the later rule up because I thought it's a lot better than the usual 10 gp = 1 lbs. Personally I am partial to Daniel's "stone" encumbrance system which actually has 1000 gp = 14 lbs = 1 stone. http://deltasdnd.blogspot.com/2010/09/stone-encumbrance-detail-example.html
ReplyDelete