OSR Dr. J. Eric Holmes dungeon being printed by Pacesetter Games.

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

I’ve read Maze of Peril. Decent for what it was. One funny thing I noticed was how when a lot of OSR fans are sharing memes blasting newer players about how they want to play non-standard races, Holmes had a centaur PC. So yeah, exotic PCs existed since day one.

Yeah, over on the Shadowdark Facebook group, I'm seeing people blasting other fans for wanting to homebrew ancestries and classes. Uh, that's been D&D since 1975.

 

[Parmandur]

I seriously thought this was a dungeon based on serial killer H.H. Holmes who is infamous for his murder castle which operated during the World's Fair in Chicago in 1992.

To be fair, that is definite D&D material for an enemy.

 

[Parmandur]

I’ve read Maze of Peril. Decent for what it was. One funny thing I noticed was how when a lot of OSR fans are sharing memes blasting newer players about how they want to play non-standard races, Holmes had a centaur PC. So yeah, exotic PCs existed since day one.

I didn't know that Dr. Holmes wrote a novel: an interesting artifact of game history, at least, I'm sure.

 

[Joshua Randall]

I seriously thought this was a dungeon based on serial killer H.H. Holmes who is infamous for his murder castle which operated during the World's Fair in Chicago in 1992.

well that was a fascinating rabbit hole to go down - thanks!

 

[Alzrius]

well that was a fascinating rabbit hole to go down - thanks!

Fun fact: H. H. Holmes got the D&D treatment back in Polyhedron #146, for the Masque of the Red (affiliate link) setting.

 

[Alzrius]

I seriously thought this was a dungeon based on serial killer H.H. Holmes who is infamous for his murder castle which operated during the World's Fair in Chicago in 1992.

He was also a rogue time lord, which was how he managed to time-travel to 1992 for the hundred-year anniversary of his 1892 homicides.

 

[jdrakeh]

any case, I am definitely interested in hearing more about this dungeon.

Me, too.

 

[rgard]

Jeff Leason. But he was a human before dying and being reincarnated into a lizard man. Which is another point often forgotten by the old school crowd on this topic. It was not unusual for a PC to come back as something completly different since death as pretty common, and if you didn't have a cleric around.
I remember one of my PCs being reincarnated into an orc, and another into an ogre. Both of whom I kept playing. So sure, the AD&D rules were very much human-centric in their design, but to claim that the WoTC crowd suddenly wants to bring in all the unusual races to play simply isn't true (ignoring how in 2e, there was a complete handbook on playing monstrous demi-humans). It was there from the start.

In our party, it was always a race to see which caster (MU, Druid or Cleric) would bring the fallen fighter or thief back to life. The druid's Reincarnate brought the PC back as a woodland critter maybe a human or elf if you were lucky. The MU Reincarnation was the best I think as it had all sorts of fun results. My MU reincarnated a dead Gnome Illusionist-Thief as a Gnoll. Great fun.

 

[rgard]

well that was a fascinating rabbit hole to go down - thanks!

There's a theory that HH Holmes traveled to the UK and committed the Jack the Ripper murders. From what I remember, his whereabouts are unknown when the Ripper was murdering people in London.

 

[zenopus]

This thread has taken an unexpected and grisly turn...

To move back on topic:

I'm not directly involved in this project, but I'm excited that J. Eric Holmes' dungeon maps are finally getting published!

While we wait for the release next week, you can see a few snippets of his original maps in posts in my Maze of Peril book club series (sadly unfinished):

Maze of Peril Ch 1, Scene 6: "A Map of the Dungeons Explored So Far"​

Maze of Peril Ch 1, Scene 7: "The Grisly Business of Swallowing the Corpses"​

As you can see from those posts, the events in the book track fairly closely with his original dungeon map.