Tonight's game: Part of Buffalo Castle using "D&D from Memory" and Lego Heroica as minis.

Tonight's game: Part of Buffalo Castle using "D&D from Memory" and Lego Heroica as minis.
http://www.gamebooks.org/show_item.php?id=2703

Chris Holmes has written about the wereshark, and I've got someadditional info on my blog. #wereshark

Chris Holmes has written about the wereshark, and I've got some additional info on my blog. #wereshark
http://zenopusarchives.blogspot.com/2015/07/chris-holmes-on-origins-of-wereshark.html

A local print shop took one of Holmes books and scanned it, added the Moldvay basic pdf I purchased from D&D...

A local print shop took one of Holmes books and scanned it, added the Moldvay basic pdf I purchased from D&D classics, and then made high res scans for the covers which completed a coil bound book.

J. Eric Holmes Basic set mention in The Wild Hunt #52

Jason Zavoda wrote:

J. Eric Holmes Basic set mention in The Wild Hunt #52

From Steve Marsh's The Heroquestor (1980)

Page #1 Paragraphs 4-6

"After the guys decided I wasn't too incompetent I began to do some real work. TSR is currently doing EXPERT SET and rewriting BASIC SET. These are rewrites of D&D (as opposed to AD&D which is a completely different system). There are very few changes except for format. The goal is to make the system understandable by a kid who is the only person on his block to have even seen the rules.

I am working on some modules on my own time (as per previous agreement and a current one) and have one (OLD SHARDS) in Gary's hands for a final gloss. I proofread BASIC SET and am doing parts of EXPERT SET (rewrote the monsters from ELEMENTALS to WYVERNS). I am currently on magic items.

D&D means the first three books plus Eric Holmes BASIC SET. We are tied to that because most of our sales are of that volume (over 500,000 this year for example). The "collector's edition" is not being pushed at all and there are enough in stock to last forever."

Miseries and Misfortunes is a 54-page zine-format supplement for Basic Dungeons & Dragons by Luke Crane (Burning...

Miseries and Misfortunes is a 54-page zine-format supplement for Basic Dungeons & Dragons by Luke Crane (Burning Wheel/Mouse Guard RPG/Burning Empires/Torchbearer RPG/FreeMarket RPG, etc.).

It contains six new classes, as well as weapons, spells and equipment for playing D&D in the first half of the 17th century. Rules describe fighting with rapier, pistol, pike and musket in small formations, hiring servants and exploring strange and forgotten places. 

https://www.burningwheel.com/?p=812

It is a FREE download. 

There will be only 22 zine-format copies available for sale at Gen Con (EXTREMELY LIMITED RUN!). 
https://www.burningwheel.com/store/index.php/miseries-misfortunes.html

Interesting post on DF on using Minecraft as a DM's tool to draw/stock/reference/visual aid for tabletop play.

Interesting post on DF on using Minecraft as a DM's tool to draw/stock/reference/visual aid for tabletop play. #minecraft
http://www.dragonsfoot.org/forums/viewtopic.php?f=11&t=71085

From the DM David blog:

From the DM David blog:
http://dmdavid.com/tag/4-popular-beliefs-dungeons-dragons-defied-in-the-70s

Yuggoth is still in our minds...

Yuggoth is still in our minds...
http://zenopusarchives.blogspot.com/2015/07/holmes-mi-go.html

Yup!

Yup! LBB Characters, Combat & Magic Version 11 is up! Zenopus' Random Character Backgrounds hacked for LBB! New shaded box entries! (Actually old entries recently shaded, as I had planned to do some of these for awhile now...)

A newcomer on this community, I ran Holmes for the first time thisSaturday and I learned a lot.

A newcomer on this community, I ran Holmes for the first time this Saturday and I learned a lot.

Originally shared by Eric Nieudan

21st Century Gamers vs Doctor Holmes
Actual play report with every fucking thought thrown in

Thanks to Greg Gorgonmilk I finally got to read Holmes Basic. I was so enthusiastic about it that I organised a game over hangouts - even on a short notice, I had five players from our amazing French-speaking community. People with different gaming backgrounds, motivated by nostalgia, curiousity or game designer interest. These brave heroes were Magi max Thomas Munier Arjuna Khan Sebastien Delfino and Tiburce Guyard.

tl;dr

- Dwarves, dwarves everywhere!
- The game is great, but needs house rules from the start.
- It was very educational to elfgame like my ancestors did.

Keep reading for actual play and a few rules considerations.

Return to Zenopus

I decided to run Zenopus, the sample dungeon provided in the book, but couldn't resist experimenting with random dungeons procedures. So I set the adventure about 5O years later in my post-apocalyptic setting, and repopulated the dungeon with dog-men and hyena-men (kobolds and gnolls), some more undead (the magic-user died looking for Zenopus' knowledge, but that didn't stop him), a couple of mechanical spiders from the elemental plane of smoke and a band of dust mutants looking for a better hideout. These all came from a mini-sandbox I created beforehand to get a few things going in and around Portown (that's what the pic is).

Character creation

After a short introduction to the rules and the OD&D mindset, we proceeded to roll up characters. As I expected, non-humans dominated the party: we had three dwarf fighters, a halfling thief (I thought these could only be fighters but someone found a reference in the book) and a cleric.

To save time, I proposed they rolled backgrounds on Zenopus Archives' table, which proved a winner. We ended up with a colourful party (a cave dwarf, a merdwarf and a half-orc hobbit) and some interesting character motivation (both the last dwarf and the cleric got the Spy background).

Logistics and information gathering

Before they spent the rest of their gold, the players wanted to know about the dungeon. I explained the setting and gave them common knowledge about the Zenopus ruins. This is when they decided about a backstory for the adventuring group: they were coastal explorers who lost their ship in a storm. Their motivation for dungeon delving was therefore simple: boats are expensive.

Play started with a montage : the characters split up to gather information, buy equipment and recruit another cleric. I was generous with the info and gave them most of the rumours I had prepared, especially the false ones. Since this was a one-shot, I wanted the players to make informed choices.

Tough going underground

They elected to approach the dungeon via the smugglers cave. They got a rowboad from Portown's mayor (who happens to be a much older, Lemunda the Lovely) and sent Marsouin the merdwarf scouting ahead. Another good hunch, as he was able to notice the giant octopus without being snatched. He also noticed some kobolds dismantling old boats on the beach inside the cave (that's room M for those of you following at home). The party decided for a stealthy approach and attempted to row the boat as quietly as possible, hoping the octopus would stay in its hiding hole. I didn't want the first encounter to end in a TPK so I ruled there was a 4 in 6 chance of success.

This is where the ruleset's main flaw kicked in: no all-purpose resolution procedure. Holmes is a system that needs to be patched from the start.

Relying on infravision (which meant the clerics had to be led about) the adventurers landed their boat quietly enough to avoid being heard by the kobolds. They decided to play it safe and explore the southern exit. The passage led them to the river caves, where they found a dead giant crab and (surprise !) a swarm of hungry baby crabs. With half the group still on the other side of the river, the first fight of the night was relatively tense, even with 1hp monsters dealing only 1 damage. In the end the merdwarf lit a torch to frighten the aggressive seafood. (I rolled reaction here.)

Further exploration led the party to the sundial room (area L), where they immediately grokked how to get the mask to speak. They asked it about the dangers they should avoid at all costs. The mask told them about the undead wizard (who they assumed was Zenopus himself because of a false rumour they had heard) and its minions to the east. The party wisely decided to go the other way.

The experience gets less realistic from here. It was starting to get late and we all knew it was a one-shot, so caution was thrown to the underground wind.

One of the dwarves kicked the door, surprising a group of six hyena-men making camp in room H. Some heroes talked about running, but the door wouldn't lock anymore. Plus I think the players wanted to test their mettle against real monsters. The spy dwarf fled by himself, thinking his king wouldn't want to lose all the information gathered. (So, despite what his fellow adventurers said, he was not being a coward).

The rest of the party decided to defend the doorway. As most of the gnolls moved in across the river, arrows started flying. The hobborc thief caught one, survived it but kept firing. He was promptly killed by another arrow. Nevertheless, some tactical action and good rolling kept most of the gnolls out. One managed to get in and killed the cleric (platemail is great, except when you have 1hp). With all the gnolls but the two archers injured, the heroes resolved to charge in after throwing their oil flasks - the center of the room was turned into a fiery hell and both the gnolls were killed. Man, flaming oil is the ultimate weapon in Holmes! After that, the party had no problem dispatching the demoralised hyena-men, shooting some in the back.
Meanwhile, the spy dwarf was backtracking fast. He avoided the crab babies but was swept in the river, barely avoiding drowning and having to lose his hauberk. He managed to swim outside and I decided that he was able to climb the cliff and make it back to town.

We relied on fictional positioning as much as possible, but I couldn't always rule that a character was able to do something. Crossing the river together with enough time and a length of rope was okay, but when a PC crossed it in a hurry and without assistance, I came up with a roll-under mechanic with 3d6. (Why not d20? I don't know. It felt more old school and I figured it would give a better chance to people with above average stats). We used that rule quite a few times during the session.

It was 2am and we called it a night, but we agreed to say that the delve would have ended there, with the characters trying to make it back out (tough break, the kobolds on the beach had found their rowboat) with no treasure and grand total of 160 xp between them... There is a chance the spy would have brought back some help, but we'll never know.

Would I play again?

I don't think so. If I was to run old school D&D, I'd probably go back to the slightly more balanced and actually somewhat organised B/X rules. Or give Blueholme a spin. For the moment, I'm content to run Odd Dungeons, which has the advantage of considerably speeding up fights.

That said, it was a great experience for all involved, including me. I may set up other archeogaming sessions in the future. Also, these last few months I had been avoiding running games for health reasons, and Saturday proved that I'm up to GMing again. I know of a Lost City that will soon be explored again.

"Major Wesely was literally present for the birth of our hobby, hell, he delivered the baby!

"Major Wesely was literally present for the birth of our hobby, hell, he delivered the baby!  And one of the many pleasures of working with him is hearing his FIRST-HAND accounts of what went down back in the earliest days of role-playing."

Originally shared by Olde House Rules

History 101 for gamers...

Holmes used Yuggoth - Lovecraft's version of Pluto - in his campaign.

Holmes used Yuggoth - Lovecraft's version of Pluto - in his campaign.
http://zenopusarchives.blogspot.com/2015/07/yuggoth-resolves.html

"Ye Olde Lande of Badmap" from the Mythcreants blog athttp://mythcreants.com/blog/crafting-plausible-maps/

"Ye Olde Lande of Badmap" from the Mythcreants blog at http://mythcreants.com/blog/crafting-plausible-maps/
This actually looks like more fun than his example of a realistic map.
Thanks to Russell Flowers for linking this on DF.

Sometimes the most overlooked part of the rules that explain so much!

Several firsts last night.

Several firsts last night. A player in our regular group ran a session for the first time, in which I got to play in the Forgotten Realms for the first time, specifically Menzoberranzan. I ran a 2E M-U for the first time, an Alteration Specialist favoring Color Spray & Shield.

RPG Retro Review tackles the Blue Box:

RPG Retro Review tackles the Blue Box:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uhug8E7s210

The AD&D Players Handbook was released on pdf yesterday. A few thoughts:

The AD&D Players Handbook was released on pdf yesterday. A few thoughts:
http://zenopusarchives.blogspot.com/2015/07/ad-1e-players-handbook-pdf.html

A review of Blueholme Prentice Rules. A viable retroclone for Holmes lovers.

Part 50 (!), covering Room N in the Sample Dungeon.

Part 50 (!), covering Room N in the Sample Dungeon.
http://zenopusarchives.blogspot.com/2015/07/part-50-dancing-dagger-is-hard-to-hit.html

Zach H ...curious as to your knowledge on the Silver Anniversary re-print of the Holmes rulebook...I of course still...

Zach H ...curious as to your knowledge on the Silver Anniversary re-print of the Holmes rulebook...I of course still have my original box set from my younger days and a few other copies of the original rulebook...I remember reading somewhere this re-print had some errors in it?..was thinking about buying one to just add to my collection. thanks!

One plus to the Holmes magic missile requiring a to-hit roll: you can give a 1st level M-U a Wand of Magic Missiles...

One plus to the Holmes magic missile requiring a to-hit roll: you can give a 1st level M-U a Wand of Magic Missiles with 100 charges and it is not unbalancing.

The Wizard of Spot Tower

The Wizard of Spot Tower
(sketch done today while waiting at the car shop)

Just saw Fury Road. Wow.