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Right. At the beginning, armor class was just the heading at the top of a column in a non-linear chart. They could have named it anything. It was static in that it never changed unless your character changed his armor. There was no way to have a negative Armor Class in the original rules...

A couple years ago, my buddy Alex ran a 1e convention game where he made up a bunch of pre gens consisting of the various NPC classes from Dragon during this time period. I played a Half-Orc Bandit from this issue of Dragon. Don’t remember anything too fancy about the class. Played very...

De-coupling my game from the current TSR rule set back in 1992 was the best thing I ever did for my game. All you need is a set of rules you can all live with, a group of friends, and dice. Make the rest up or adapt whatever interests you, not just from game products, but from books, movies...

I don’t understand who WotC thinks OGL 1.2 is for. Without going into the rest of it, the morality clause alone covers both publications and acts of the publisher, is decided solely under WotC’s discretion, makes you agree not to litigate, and has no definitions of the terms that WotC could...

1. The Baron’s father could still be a big influence in the Baron’s life and has encouraged the Baron to look out for his sister. This could be positive - the father is a good influence who gives good advice and the Baron is doing it out of love. Or it could be negative - the father is a ne’er...

I understand the humor in GAZ10 Orcs of Thar is not to everyone's taste. It's really juvenile. But the bones of GAZ10 are really solid - the various humanoid player classes, the humanoid cults and their shaman, and most particularly the city of Oenkmar. A lost orcish city floating in a lake...

I certainly recommend getting the RC off of DTRPG instead of ebay. The ebay prices are astronomical. That said, I'd reiterate that the RC is a strangely edited book with several odd additions, omissions and alterations that do not seem to have been play-tested and may not have even been...

You’re kind of asking about three separate but related things here - the BECMI rules, the Rules Cyclopedia and the Known World/Mystara setting. There are a ton of products that fall under these headings that came out over a decade of time. So, I’ll address them one at a time. 1. BECMI rules...

Anyone who wants a legal “Unearthed Arcana II” without going through the hassle of making it yourself should check out this: The Heroic Legendarium: A First Edition Adventure Gaming Companion - Storm Fetish Productions | DriveThruRPG.com It’s a very well-done 1e-compatible compilation inspired...

Tenkar’s Tavern just recently updated his list of free-to-download OSR rule sets: Here Check a few out and pick the one you like best.

I prefer the B/X level range to the BECMI/RC level range, and thus prefer the B/X thief charts. Frank Mentzer has made a few statements in the past about not being overly fond of the Thief class. So it doesn’t surprise me that he didn’t think too deeply about how the change in power curve would...

I personally think N1 is overrated and N2 is…. Properly rated.

If you look at the 1980 Monster & Treasure Assortment, you can see from the upper levels (1-3), they had a pretty good idea what was going to be in the Basic boxed set and had most of the nomenclature dialed in. From the lower levels (4+), you can see that they were still hashing out what was...

Thanks for sharing.

Which just goes back to what I’ve been saying in this thread and was largely the entire point of the 5 part blog series that started this thread… The “OSR” of now is not the “OSR” of 13 years ago. It’s largely different people making game product for different purposes. No need to look beyond...

I haven't done a real close side-by-side between OSE and B/X. My brief look made it seem like the exact same thing. I'm sure there may be some slight textual nuances here and there, but it certainly appeared spot on to me. I did do a pretty in-depth side by side between LL and B/X when LL...

You know that Oliver LeGrand actually did make a game called Mazes & Minotaurs, which was based off of OD&D, but set in Greek mythology instead of Tolkien-ish fantasy? The first edition was released before OSRIC and the rest of the clones. The blog posts that started this thread references it...

It really sucks that DriveThru doesn't have the B/X rules for pod right now. You can get the Rules Cyclopedia for $21 right now, though. https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/17171/DD-Rules-Cyclopedia-Basic?filters=44828_0_0_44294_0 You can also get Labyrinth Lord, which is essentially the...

The initial goal of the OSRIC was to get 1e AD&D back in print. I was in discussions with Matt and Stuart and the rest about whether and to what extent people were going to use what they were working on to make products that clashed with our sensibilities, and the conclusion was that people...

I was deeply involved in the initial retro-clone phase of the OSR. I was the moderator for the Classic D&D forum at Dragonsfoot and was in contact with pretty much all the main principals. I actually advised the makers of OSRIC to take a different approach other than the retro-clone. (They...