What is this Archive?

This archive preserves many of the posts made to the Holmes Basic D&D Community on the late G+. I created this Community in late 2012, not long after Communities were added, and it existed through April 2nd 2019, when G+ was shutdown for non-commercial users. By the end there were over 600 members. While most were not active, there was always a core group of commenters to keep things interesting.

There are over 2100 posts included, made by myself and various members of the community, each accompanied by its original comments. While a number of posts (~500?) are shares and thus duplicative of posts on the Zenopus Archives blog, these have been saved because they include different comments. The other ~1600 posts fall into two broad categories. I often used G+ for quick shares of images and links of interest to the community, material often not posted to the ZA blog. And then there are the many posts by other members of the community. A big thank you to everyone who participated!

Due to limitations of the application (Google+ Exporter) used to extract the posts from G+, every post here is labeled as "Posted by Zenopus Archives", whether or not I was the original poster. However, the identity of the original poster is preserved as one of the labels, and as time allows I have been slowly adding this information to each applicable post. All of an individual's posts can be found by clicking on the relevant name in the Label list in the right sidebar (only visible in desktop format). 

Most of the originally posted images are preserved. I went through the entire blog and manually downloaded and re-uploaded the images so they wouldn't be lost. The harvester preserved a link to each image in the relevant users Google+ "Album Archive", but Google may delete these at any time going forward. A few images seem to be missing; I don't know if the harvesting program failed to grab them or the original source had been removed. I've also noticed that a number of links are missing as well, and I will eventually re-add these.

All of the posts originally made to the Holmes Basic G+ Community are tagged with the label "Holmes Basic: Discussion".

I added a few other posts of interest that I made to other communities or to one of my G+ collections. I will try to note these here:

~50 posts from the OD&D Community. These are each labeled with "Original Dungeons Dragon (OD&D): Discussion" or "Original Dungeons Dragon (OD&D): Links & Resources" or "Original Dungeons Dragon (OD&D): Classified".

~70 posts from the OSR Community. These are each labeled with "OSR: Discussion" or "OSR: Free Stuff" or "OSR: News".

~150 Public Posts. These are labeled only with "Zenopus Archives" without a "Holmes Basic: Discussion" label.

For each of the above, click on the relevant post to bring up all posts with that label.

Swords & Spells (1976) just slipped out in pdf today:

Swords & Spells (1976) just slipped out in pdf today:
http://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/17175/Swords--Spells-0e?it=1

There was a report on ODD74 that previous Drivethru purchasers of the Chainmail PDF (when it was on sale years ago)...

There was a report on ODD74 that previous Drivethru purchasers of the Chainmail PDF (when it was on sale years ago) received a note that it has been updated, which may mean that it is about to go on sale again.
http://odd74.proboards.com/post/192320

I've made a new one-page pdf reference sheet, designed for Holmes but perfectly usable with OD&D + Greyhawk as well.

I've made a new one-page pdf reference sheet, designed for Holmes but perfectly usable with OD&D + Greyhawk as well. This one compiles all of the Level 1-3 M-U spells from Holmes Basic. These are same spells appearing in OD&D + Greyhawk, plus a few new spells that Gygax debuted in Holmes and then appeared in the PHB the next year. The Holmes write-ups of these new spells are simpler than the PHB versions, so they are the closest we get to OD&D versions of these spells. #holmesref
http://zenopusarchives.blogspot.com/2016/05/m-u-spells-level-1-3-ref-sheet.html

In 1975 a group of Caltech students published Warlock, one of the first supplements for OD&D.

In 1975 a group of Caltech students published Warlock, one of the first supplements for OD&D. Holmes used this system for his personal OD&D games prior to editing the Basic Set. He was a fan of the Warlock spell point system and mentioned in Dragon #52 that he tried to get Gary to include a spell point system in the Basic Set. I've written up a summary of these rules if you are interested in trying them out, either in your OD&D game (particularly now the pdfs are publicly available) or in your OSR game.
http://zenopusarchives.blogspot.com/2016/02/the-warlock-od-spell-point-system.html

A while back I made a Balrog Reference Sheet for those of us with later printings.

A while back I made a Balrog Reference Sheet for those of us with later printings. It has all of the relevant info from M&T, GH & CM. Follow the link to download the printable pdf. Should fit in an OD&D box.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B-rvuyIrPEBCTXlJbVF1U1VUZnFRaE9XVkliRnZ6dw/view?resourcekey=0-c5-PVZGFkju1Baj0o8HEoA

I took my 20 random backgrounds for OD&D human characters (posted last summer) and turned it into a single-page pdf...

I took my 20 random backgrounds for OD&D human characters (posted last summer) and turned it into a single-page pdf reference sheet. See the blog post below if you are interested.
http://zenopusarchives.blogspot.com/2015/02/one-page-backgrounds.html

Giants Hogs were one of the Original D&D wandering monsters.

Giants Hogs were one of the Original D&D wandering monsters.
http://zenopusarchives.blogspot.com/2013/10/the-giant-hogs-of-greyhawk-and-blackmoor.html