Question to the group. What would you say are the major STYLE changes between Holmes (Blue Book) Basic and Moldvay (Red Book) Basic?
Back in the day, we played them both, often interchangeably, but now some 40 years later I want to go back and cover some of the nuances that a 10-year-old me would not have seen or really appreciated.
Not looking for scholarship here (although that is appreciated!) I am looking more for experiences and opinions.
markrollsdice.wordpress.com - Review: Blueholme Journeymanne Rules
ReplyDeletereturnofthedm.com - Review: Labyrinth Lord
ReplyDeleteThese two above reviews of OSR systems based on Holmes and Modavoy should help!
ReplyDeleteI responded on the Facebook post too, but here are my thoughts again:
ReplyDeleteIt sounds like you’re looking less for mechanical differences and more for differences in tone and feel. Is that accurate?
To me, Holmes has a much more open-ended, loosey-goosey feel like OD&D. There’s a feeling like you could be any kind of PC race you could dream up. It feels more closely linked to Tolkien and weird fantasy literature.
Moldvay is a tight, tight game. It works like a Swiss clock. It feels more firmly entrenched in a very D&D kind of fantasy, even though Moldvay included an Appendix N-like suggested reading at the back. It’s like D&D had become it’s own genre by then.
Holmes has more spells and more difficult monsters. Moldvay is a more complete system of rules. Holmes’ Fighting Man doesn’t get combat bonuses for Strength or the OD&D multiple attacks. Moldvay is the first appearance of the -3/+3 modifers which makes the game much more swingy.
Holmes has a weird, mysterious (somewhat wonky) arcane quality to it, for me. Moldvay feels solid and dependable - as a game, it hums.
Chris Hall Thanks. This is the sort of thing I am looking for.
ReplyDeleteMark Tygart Thanks! I have both games and played them a lot. So I'll see what these reviewers had to say.
ReplyDeleteThis is probably reductive to the point of stupidity, but I think most editions of D&D can be summed up by the artist most easily associated with them.
ReplyDeleteHolmes/David Sutherland: Rough, maybe even crude, but there's an open-ness that comes with that. It's easy to insert your own ideas into the gaps.
B/X/Erol Otus: Hypnotically weird and grody, more fully realized, more it's own thing but still inviting.
BECMI/Larry Elmore: Slick and realized to the point that it becomes less penetrable. There is so clearly a right way to do things that one feels the pressure to not do it wrong.
And AD&D is just a mish-mash, with no dominant artist (despite Trampier being in the mix) and often incoherent sub-systems.
Timothy Brannan I have no experience actually playing Holmes, but just reading through the rules I feel combat encounters must feel a bit different. Weapon selection in B/X becomes fairly important (with variable damage and initiative limitations), as are ability scores (especially strength), and success in combat often comes down to breaking the morale of opponents. A Holmes DM can actually adjust encounters to a certain degree by giving a certain number of opponents two-handed weapons (reducing the amount of attacks PCs face every round), but mostly I'd feel Holmes PCs would be looking to some sort of NARRATIVE advantage (ambushes, trickery, etc.) to overcome the lack of mechanical advantages available in the text.
ReplyDeleteI will say, too, that there is nice measured elegance to the phased approach of Holmes combat using Dex in the initiative determination.
ReplyDeleteThe earlier one is great for brevity the later for learning basics on your own which is good but once you've done that the earlier version is better. I do like the later ones design style and art but I'm fond of both.
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