Last time out, looking at Ghostbusters, I talked about the wonderful simplicity of the game’s system, and how it could only be betterered by one thing: taking that system and combining it with the greatest science fiction movie trilogy of all time. Well, at least, it was in 1987….

9) Star Wars

Remember how Traveller, well, just didn’t do it for me? Remember how I was essentially seduced by that image of a Luke Skywalker-lookalike on the box? (Damn you, GDW….) Well, it took five years or so, but finally my sci-fi roleplaying prayers were answered in 1987 with the release, on the (gulp) tenth anniversary of the movie, of Star Wars: The Roleplaying Game from West End Games.

If Marvel Super Heroes had opened my eyes to how a game system could work with you in creating a setting, Star Wars blew out of the back of my skull. Designed by Greg Costikyan, Curtis Smith and Bill Slavicsek, the simple D6 system in Star Wars expanded on the initial principles of Ghostbusters, and was an absolute joy to read. The original rulebook filled my head with the potential excitement of adventures across the galaxy, where the players would fight for the Rebellion against the evil forces of the Empire. Blasters would be fired! Quips would be uttered! Lightsabers would be drawn! Heroes would be made!

So naturally, in the first session of my campaign, the players stole a starship and then – I remember this quite specifically – spot-welded the ship merchant to the inside of his own safe.

Yeah, they weren’t really looking to be heroes.

Despite what you may think, that incident kicked off one of the best campaigns I’ve ever run, although it was a classic example of the lunatics taking over the asylum. The ring leader of this band of lunatics – the McMurphy character, if you will – had asked to play a rogue Imperial agent, a man who was only interested in looking out for himself, and wasn’t anxious to work for the Rebellion or the Empire. Thinking this would make for a kind of Han Solo-like rogue, I said yes; not knowing that what he was actually going to play was the classic Traveller or D&D anti-hero. Chaotic Neutral, in other words; everyone else can go hang, as long as I come out of it with cash.

Now, there’s a place for that kind of character, but not necessarily in a classic Star Wars campaign. The original rulebook suggested you set your game between the end of Star Wars and the beginning of The Empire Strikes Back, when the Rebellion has won a major victory by destroying the Death Star, but the stakes are high and there’s plenty of danger. I liked the sound of that, and I particularly liked the high drama inherent in the setting. But, we didn’t really get to that; instead we created some high drama of our own.

That was mostly because a latecomer to the game asked to create a Jedi – a very rare thing at this point in the Star Wars timeline, as you might realise – and I said yes, thinking that perhaps that with him in the group, we’d get some of that good-vs-evil stuff that I was craving. Well if you thought of him as good and the rest of the party as evil….

What happened was what always happens when you drop a Lawful Good Paladin into the middle of a Chaotic Neutral party: lots of arguing, scheming, backstabbing and ultimately, bloodshed.

The thing is, it was immensely entertaining to watch every week, simply because both of the players were very good at sticking within their roles. The rogue agent lied, schemed, double-crossed (the rest of the party) and generally acted in accordance with his personal code. The lone Jedi proselytised, argued, defended innocents (from the rest of the party) and generally acted in accordance with the Jedi code. I just sat back and occasionally prodded them towards something, and somehow that eventually led to them turning up to the battle of Hoth to help Darth Vader.

Mmm. Well, it was certainly a memorable campaign.

Long rambling personal reminiscences aside, Star Wars was (and really, is) a classic in roleplaying design, and to date is one of the few RPGs which I liked enough to actually buy supplements for. Unfortunately not long after my campaign started, it ended, as I moved away from the area and my roleplaying group. As a result my dreams of a classic Rebels vs Imperials campaign never came to light.

By 1992 I had an entirely new roleplaying group at my disposal – and West End Games released Star Wars in a Second Edition. However, on reading reviews at the time, I found out the Second Edition expanded the rules quite a bit, which frankly I never thought they needed. I understand now that Second Editions are a natural part of any large RPG line’s progression, but at the time, I didn’t see the point in buying into it. Besides, I hated the cover art.

Since then the Star Wars licence has proved perennial in RPGs, although I stopped paying attention long ago. Today Wizards of the Coast publish the official RPG, although the original D6 System Star Wars came from is still knocking around in various forms. For a good overview of Star Wars’ RPG history, I recommend this article on – where else – Star Wars.com.

Today, even after the wildly uneven Prequel Trilogy and the relentless exploitation of Star Wars by the Lucas Empire (Hey, it’s either that or Howard the Duck spin-offs), I still have a hankering to run a Star Wars campaign that evokes the classic era, the original trilogy.

Being realistic and boringly adult about it, I know there’s an element of wanting to recapture those glory days, when I felt like I was running a campaign by the skin of my teeth, barely keeping up with an older, smarter and wilier group of players. That’s unlikely to happen, but I still have my rulebooks – you never know.

It took Lucas 16 years to get back to the movies, after all….

… which is why if you are in the market for a supernatural RPG that won’t have you glancing nervously into dark corners, then don’t wait another minute. Pick up the phone and call the professionals!

8 ) Ghostbusters

I’ll forgive you for thinking – like so many other high-minded roleplayers before you – that Ghostbusters is just some stupid movie tie-in game. Because on some levels, it’s exactly that. It’s got the hallmarks – very few rules; lots of pretty cards and handouts to play with; an almost cavalier attitude to the oh-so-serious activity of roleplaying.

When you take a closer look though, not only has Ghostbusters got a design that is being emulated by today’s ‘story-driven’ roleplayers, but it’s also got a campaign background that could spawn a million adventures. Not bad for some movie tie-in.

Created by the multi-talented guys who also brought you Call of Cthulhu – who were probably glad for the break – Ghostbusters: A Frightfully Cheerful Roleplaying Game was released by West End Games in 1986. These days, a two-year gap between ‘product’ and ‘tie-in’ would seem suicidal, but we forget what a global phenomenon Ghostbusters was – not to mention how long it would have taken to materialise on ‘home video systems’. Those two years were well spent however, as Sandy Petersen, Lynn Willis and Greg Stafford had created a game that perfectly emulated the original movie, while also expanding its potential.

With four statistics and four skills per character, all of them simply given a number to represent how many six-sided dice you threw to beat a difficulty number, Ghostbusters’ system was so simple… that I just described all of it. Except one thing I suppose; the infamous Ghost Dice, which was just a D6 with the Ghostbusters’ logo (AKA Casper, the Friendly Ghost) replacing the ’6′. Used whenever a roll was made in the game, if you ‘rolled a Ghost’ that meant Something Bad Happened. Beat your difficulty number and we’re talking minor setback; fail your roll and get a Ghost, and it’s major disaster time.

This mechanic, coupled with the liberal use of Brownie Points to let players fudge things, gives an appropriately freewheeling and cinematic feel to gameplay. The average game of Ghostbusters basically rattles along as fast as you can take it, which, in my view, makes it absolutely brilliant. Want to do something? Pick a number, roll it, bam – done. Next!

Apart from the smart but simple system, Ghostbusters has one other massive trick up its sleeve. Not content with just describing the science-meets-spooks setting of the original film, the designers realised that in the Ghostbusters universe, anything goes. And I mean anything. Aliens? Check. Dimensional travel? Check. Time travel? Check. Science experiments gone awry? Check. Essentially, if it’s been seen in science fiction or comics, it’s fair game to appear in a Ghostbusters adventure.

With that one background tweak, Ghostbusters suddenly becomes a multi-genre game with a system that can handle everything… because it doesn’t try to handle anything. The rules are almost Zen-like in their simplicity; the inherent comedy in the setting is a free pass for the GM and players to do anything they like, because the aim of the game is just to kick back and have fun.

While I didn’t pick up Ghostbusters until a few years after its debut, and didn’t run it until many years later, I’m almost in awe of how good this game is today, and how it’s still so relevant to my style of gaming. So many games since have borrowed or stolen elements – not least the one I’m going to talk about next – that it’s no surprise I still feel it’s a gold standard by which others should be measured.

And what could be better than Ghostbusters? Why, the Ghostbusters system, but with another famous sci-fi movie as background….

7) Call of Cthulhu

It seems to me, at least in recent years, that Call of Cthulhu has finally taken a place alongside Dungeons & Dragons as one of the pillars of roleplaying. While it’s always been a great game – and unlike D&D, has never needed to radically reinvent itself – I think sheer longevity, perhaps coupled with the fact that it matures exceedingly well, has given it a near legendary status. It’s well deserved.

I should be clear from the off that I’m no Cthulhu scholar. I’ve played it fairly infrequently in my 20-odd years of gaming, and generally I’ve enjoyed it, although I never wanted to run a game myself. I’ve always been aware of it though, as right from the start Cthulhu had something about it; a sense of being ‘grown up’ for lack of a better term.

If you’ve never encountered it, then as the covers say, Call of Cthulhu is a roleplaying game set in the worlds of HP Lovecraft, an early 20th century novelist who was probably a few hammers short of a toolbox. Created by Sandy Petersen for Chaosium in 1981, and then later revised and expanded upon by Lynn Willis, the game won multiple awards from its inception.

Players take the role of investigators into the occult and the supernatural, with what may start off as ‘conventional’ ghouls and ghosts ultimately giving way to much more powerful and mysterious eldritch horrors – the Great Old Ones, Lovecraft’s ultimate evil from beyond the stars. These ‘gibbering horrors’ have been so influential over the years that Lovecraft probably deserves to be put on a plinth next to Bram Stoker, but when CoC first debuted, the idea of fighting monsters who were so terrifying that mortal man could not even look on them without going mad was still pretty revolutionary.

Especially in RPGs, of course, where every foe was ultimately just a collection of statistics that needed to be defeated somehow, so you could steal its stuff. It didn’t matter how terrifying the creature, there was always a way to beat it, and whether it involved some sort of clever ruse (“A-ha! We need a mirror!”) or just overwhelming firepower (“I cast fireball!”), you were going to be victorious in the end. Right? Heck, even if you died, one quick resurrection spell later and you’d be back in business.

Not so in Cthulhu, and you can imagine the reaction my young mind had to this new set of playing circumstances. ‘Investigation’ in CoC meant, well, actual investigation; talking to NPCs and trying to figure out clues, not sticking a torch into a darkened room. When the bad guys were ultimately revealed in CoC, if you were lucky they were human – but if you were unlucky they were many-tentacled monsters, usually very deadly, and you could only ‘win’ by getting out alive. As players, it didn’t seem to matter how much we stacked the odds in our favour; we were destined to fail – and to go mad as part of the process, rendering your character useless for much beyond a few games.

Yes, my young self didn’t really quite get Cthulhu, and why should I have – after all, the idea of life being a long drawn-out struggle with no guarantee of a happy ending wasn’t exactly my worldview at 12 years old. I remember distinctly arguing with my friends that there was little to no point in playing this stupid game, because ultimately our characters were all going to die, go mad or just fail somehow – where was the fun in that?

Ah, how your definition of ‘fun’ can change, because these days as I’ve mentioned previously, I’d much rather roleplay a long investigation than spend the evening rolling for damage.

Thinking back on it, there was one other element that put me off Cthulhu, and that’s the fact that I’m a bit of a wimp. While I’ve read a few horror books and comics in my time and even seen the odd movie, generally speaking I steer clear of stuff that goes squelch in the night, and I know that one too many Cthulhu games would probably have made an unfavourable impression on my young mind.

Nevertheless, these days with the benefit of hindsight, experience and a slightly braver mindset (Hey, the news is scarier than anything Lovecraft could create) I’ve been enjoying Call of Cthulhu more and more. It’s one of the best roleplaying games I’ve ever played for pure roleplaying, given the huge likelihood of death, failure and/or insanity at the end of a session. With those sorts of odds, what’s written down on your character sheet almost seems to become irrelevant – and the game is all the better for it.

Still, subject matter wise, it’s kind of a bummer, ain’t it? I can solve that with my next pick….

1. Dungeons & Dragons
2. Traveller
3. Champions
4. Skyrealms of Jorune
5. Top Secret/S.I.

Feel free to go read that as a primer.

This post was originally going to contain five more games, but it grew so much it became obvious that if I didn’t hack it up into smaller pieces no-one was ever going to read it. So, here’s the first of five parts, with the others turning up in the next week or so. Don’t worry, your favourite is probably included.

6) Marvel Super Heroes or DC Heroes

Yes; I’m cheating a bit here, and giving you a choice. Why? Because both of these games simulate their respective comic book universes so well, and c’mon – everyone’s got a favourite from The Big Two. Deep down.

Let’s start with Marvel Super Heroes though, which is easily my favourite superhero RPG. Marvel holds an eternal place in my heart for a number of reasons, but overall it’s just because I’ve had the most fun with it. I had fun with it when I was 11 or so; fun when I was 17; fun when I was 28… and I’m pretty sure I’ll have fun with it again.

As you can tell, it’s been something of a constant companion, the old reliable game system that I keep coming back to when others have come and gone. I’m sure it’s similar for those who are long-time lovers of Dungeons & Dragons, who know the system back to front and can practically name page references for rule checks. I’m not quite at that level – not any more – but for a while, it was pretty close.

Marvel’s beauty, for me, was always in the simplicity of the Universal Table – the appropriately named table on which you completed just about every action. These days, having one mechanic for everything in an RPG isn’t that big a deal, but back in 1984 it was a bit of a revelation to young Stephen.

Coupled with the absolutely genius idea of giving statistics descriptive ranks (admittedly, attached to numbers), which made it immediately clear that with a Fighting rank of Amazing, Captain America was pretty much capable of kicking anyone’s ass (unless they had Amazing Strength), Marvel was incredibly easy to pick up and play. It helped that the original, yellow-boxed Basic Set had an introductory feel easily as good as anything that ‘red box’ Basic D&D could conjure up.

And besides all that… you got to play Spider-Man. It doesn’t get cooler than that. Or didn’t for me, anyway.

I’m sure I’ll come back to Marvel Super Heroes – it’s really my game, and nothing else comes close to it, even though I see more flaws in it as the years go by. For now though, despite the slightly dodgy legal ramifications, I will happily point you towards Classic Marvel Forever (.com!) who host freely downloadable PDF versions of just about everything ever published for MSH. Try the original Basic Set; I’m pretty sure you’ll be happy with it. Of course, if you’d like physical books, there’s always eBay, and excellent out-of-print sites like NobleKnight.com (who were offering an MSH Basic Set at $35 when I wrote this).

DC Heroes, on the other hand, I can’t recommend as whole-heartedly. Mayfair Games put it together, debuting in 1985 after the original Marvel set hit, and while originally I was enamoured by the cluttered box art (not what you see here, which is Second Edition) and the impressive roster of character cards included, for some reason it never quite clicked with me.

Built around what’s now known as ‘MEGS’, or the Mayfair Exponential Game System, to accomplish the very difficult feat of having Batman and Superman in the same system, DC Heroes had one simple rule; a single point increase in anything is double the previous point in values. Therefore, someone with 10 Strength was twice as strong as someone with 9 Strength, and someone with 11 Strength was four times as strong as the 9 Strength guy, for instance.

Even my young mind was somewhat blown by the maths when I looked at the character card for Superman (50 STR) compared to the one for Wonder Woman (45 STR).

(Bear in mind, when the original DC Heroes debuted, Crisis on Infinite Earths had just finished, and Superman was still powerful enough to push a planet out of orbit. After John Byrne’s reboot of Superman, the DC Heroes Second Edition reduced his stats considerably – but still kept him as the most physically powerful hero in the game.)

While the ‘every point doubles power’ rule did mean that Superman and Batman could be on the same team, when it came to creating your own characters, I found that the lack of granularity didn’t work for me. After all my gaming group had been playing with Marvel Super Heroes for the better part of a year, where having ‘Amazing’ in an attribute was pretty special, and getting up to the ranks of ‘Monstrous’ and ‘Unearthly’ was pretty much unheard of.  The idea that every point doubled power just seemed over the top.

I’ve seen many people praise DC’s simplicity in this regard, and also because the same scale was applied to everything – speed, time, range and so on. It worked pretty much the same way in Marvel though, and the Universal Table felt considerably easier to read from where I was sat. Needless to say, despite some enjoyable enough adventures playing Batman and friends (no, we never did run Superman as a character), DC Heroes never quite caught on with my gaming group, with the exception of my friend Tim, who liked it enough to run a campaign, and ended up giving me his Second Edition of the game. I’ve still got it, but more as a curio than anything else.

Over the years DC Heroes managed to make it to a Third Edition (although I’ve never seen it) and even spawned a stand-alone Batman Roleplaying Game off the back of the 1989 movie. Eventually the licence disappeared, and West End Games produced the DC Universe Roleplaying Game in 1999, but that seems to have failed, a bit like the various Marvel follow-ups.

Today there are no current licenced roleplaying games for Marvel or DC, although of course the DC Universe Online and Marvel Universe MMOGs prove that there’s still potential interest in ‘living the comic books’. Unlike Marvel Super Heroes and DC Heroes, however, these MMOs will fall short of doing the one thing you all want to do: play your favourite hero.

For that alone, these games are worth playing.

About as scrappy and loosely organised as the original roleplaying hobby, retro-clone roleplaying games (or ‘simulacrum games‘ to some) are spreading across the web, gradually gaining converts to their cause: a return to fast-paced, imagination-led roleplaying.

Most of them have a lot in common:

• They’re inspired by the early editions of Dungeons & Dragons.
• They use Wizards of the Coast’s System Reference Document, under the terms of the Open Gaming License.
• Best of all, most of them are free to download, with no strings attached.

Just add dice and you’re ready to play.

Why play a ‘retro-clone’?

You might ask why anyone would want to play these games, when Dungeons & Dragons now has a 4th Edition, and thirty-plus years of recognition behind it.

Well, the reasons are as varied as the players, but for most, it seems to be simple: they want to get back to something that they feel has been lost. Away from enormous rulebooks and mountains of supplements, they want their imagination to take hold again, to run things fast and loose, and to experience roleplaying as they remember it.

While you can easily argue that roleplaying games don’t ‘force’ you to play any particular way, it’s also hard to argue with history and tradition. So if you’re fed up with people throwing rules in your face, or you just fancy getting back to the ‘old school’ way of playing without hunting down out-of-print rulebooks, there’s probably something for you here.

Secret origins

While there may be some people who’ll come to these games completely fresh, perhaps even as their first roleplaying experience, I think it’s more likely that they’ll be introduced to them by someone else – someone who played the original games that inspired these clones.

As one of those people myself, when I first heard about these games, I wanted to know which retro-clone was inspired by which original game. I figured that would help me gauge whether I was interested in using them, based on my memories of the original game, and frankly, I was also just curious.

Unfortunately, most of the retro-clones don’t explicitly state their ‘inspirations’ – basically because of the legal terms of the Open Gaming License, which do not allow them to position themselves as direct replacements for those Other Trademarked Games which usually feature an ampersand in their title. As a result, I had to do some research to determine exactly which game, and which edition of which game, inspired what. (Then I made some pretty pictures to make it really clear.)

As I haven’t agreed to any binding legal license, however, I don’t have to be coy as to what inspired what – even though it’s just that, inspiration. I want to be clear that while most retro-clones use the System Reference Document and will therefore have very familiar mechanics and systems, that does not mean they’re direct copies of Dungeons & Dragons. Instead, they’re inspired and derived from it, and that means all of them will be slightly different from the original… even while they feel very much the same. In other words, my use of an ‘equals’ sign in the pictures below is meant to be interpreted very loosely.

Games inspired by Dungeons & Dragons

Easily the biggest category, and mostly responsible for kick-starting the ‘old school movement’, these games are all to some degree based on Dungeons & Dragons. I’ve ordered them based on which edition they draw most inspiration from.

Swords & Wizardry: White Box

Inspired by: Dungeons & Dragons (1974)

Publisher: Mythmere Games

Download it: Directly from Mythmere Games (PDF file)

Buy it: From Lulu.com, in softcover

Swords & Wizardry: White Box is inspired by the original three-volume rules for Dungeons & Dragons, first printed in 1974 and made available in – you guessed it – a little white box. With no supplemental rules, no extras and no twiddly bits, this is about as close as you can get to the original fantasy game from 35-odd years ago.

A 72-page PDF (only 10 pages shorter than Swords & Wizardry: Core Rules, below) everything you need to play is included, from character creation to spells, equipment and monster listings. The text is well-laid out with suitably ‘vintage looking’ illustrations. It’s also dotted with sidebars including many ‘house rules’ that long-time players will recognise, such as auto-hit on a natural 20, and so on. There’s not too much advice on running a game, except “It’s your game, do what you like” – and frankly that’s probably all that anyone needs.

Compact and brief it may be, but that’s sort of the point. This excellent quote from author Matt Finch’s introduction sums things up:

… this game contains within itself all the  seeds and soul of mythic fantasy, the building blocks of vast complexity, the kindling of wonder. The game is so powerful because it’s encapsulated in a small formula, like a genie kept imprisoned in the small compass of an unremarkable lamp.

Reviews: There seem to be very few reviews, specifically, of the White Box edition of Swords & Wizardry; there are a few reviews of S&W: Core though, some of which I’ve listed below.

Swords & Wizardry: Core Rules

Inspired by: Dungeons & Dragons (1974) and Supplements (1979)

Publisher: Mythmere Games

Download it: For free from Lulu.com (PDF file), or as a Word .doc from Mythmere

Buy it: From Lulu.com, in softcover or hardcover editions

Chronologically, Swords & Wizardry: Core Rules is inspired by slightly later editions of Dungeons & Dragons, and more specifically, supplements for it – however, it was released before the White Box edition seen above.

Using entirely unscientific methods (i.e., my best judgement), Swords & Wizardry seems to be gaining a fairly strong following in the ‘old school roleplaying’ movement, and gets a lot of praise. Publisher Mythmere is also putting their money where their mouth is with ongoing support of the product, so far including a module, a spells supplement and a dedicated magazine called Knockspell. As I’m sure Mythmere would point out, however, Swords & Wizardry is easily compatible with just about all the other games here, so you can use that supplemental material for just about any retro-fantasy RPG.

Swords & Wizardry: Core Rules is a little larger in size than the White Box, being an 82-page PDF. Most of the extra material will be familar to anyone who’s played D&D since 1979, considering the rules are based on those ‘later’ editions. For me, it certainly felt more familar than the White Box, although the differences really are minor. Layout and artwork are again of professional standard, with the cover in particular feeling ‘right’ for an old-school game, mostly because it draws obvious inspiration from the original AD&D Player’s Handbook (appropriately called the ‘Best Cover Ever‘ by Grognardia).

Reviews:

“Return with me to the days of high adventure… The approach is refreshing and the love and care put into the project is obvious. You can’t lose if all you do is check it out; indeed, you might find a new favorite game.” – I Waste The Buddha With My Crossbow

“While I’m one of those weird old-school players who happens to like 4th edition D&D, Swords & Wizardry has re-ignited an old smoldering ember in my gaming heart…. it’s nice to go home for awhile to a game that is made for the hobbyist, by hobbyists, just like 0E was.” – Dragonsfoot Forums

Microlite74

Inspired by: Dungeons & Dragons (1974)

Publisher: RetroRoleplaying.com

Download it: Directly from RetroRoleplaying.com or in print-ready form, from Lulu.com

Living up to both the ‘micro’ and ‘lite’ implied in its title at a mere 20 pages thin, Microlite74 nevertheless manages to pack everything it needs into its page count, assuming that is that you’ve previously played some version of its inspirations. These really are skeletal rules; more of a suggestion of how to play than a Bible for your personal reference.

In a way though, that’s sort of the point, as Microlite74 almost spends as many pages explaining the point and principles of old-school roleplaying as it does giving you rules to play with. There are even two pages of suggestions for other games (including all of those I’ve listed here).

While you might want a bit more detail to run a game with, I’d actually recommend grabbing Microlite74 as an excellent introduction to the ideas behind the old-school movement and style of play. You can read the whole thing in a coffee break, and darn it, the selection of medieval-era artwork is quietly inspiring, too.

OSRIC

Inspired by: Advanced Dungeons & Dragons (1978)

Publisher: Knights ‘n’ Knaves

Download it: For free directly from the OSRIC website (PDF file)

OSRIC, or ‘Old School Reference & Index Compilation’, doesn’t do itself any favours with that name – not exactly evocative of thrilling pulp fantasy adventures, to my mind – but nevertheless, for those of you who want a bit more heft to your game, OSRIC’s got it.

Inspired specifically by the Advanced Dungeons & Dragons ruleset (usually referred to as ’1E’ in old-school circles), OSRIC’s aim is to be “nothing more than a tool for old-school writers” according to the creators. What that seems to translate into, according to commentators, is essentially a ‘readable AD&D’. (How ‘readable’ AD&D is in its original form depends on your tolerance for what fans call ‘Gygaxian’ – Gary Gygax’s uniquely ornate writing style.)

As a result, you get a 400-odd page PDF to swallow, opposed to the sub-100 page counts of Swords & Wizardry, with masses of tables, loads of spells, and a menagerie of monsters. Whether 400 pages of rules makes you freak out or fill with excitement, well, your mileage may vary according to your personal history with the Advanced game.

There’s plenty of supporting material available if you want it, with 41 products available to buy online – and let’s not forget, just about everything published since 1978 or so for That Fantasy Game. Considering the size of the rules in PDF form, it seems odd that there’s no print version available, but there’s nothing stopping you from DIYing your own version.

Reviews:

“… this isn’t 1E within the OGL, it’s 1E with prettier tables and an actually readable presentation… OSRIC is good at what it does – making AD&D readable.” – Turbulent Thoughts

“This certainly is the most ambitious retro-clone project yet undertaken, both in its scope and in the boldness of its approach.” – Grognardia

Labyrinth Lord

Inspired by: Dungeons & Dragons Basic and Expert sets (1981)

Publisher: Goblinoid Games

Download it: For free directly from the Labyrinth Lord website (ZIPped PDF file)

Buy it: From Lulu.com, in softcover and hardcover editions (two alternate covers available)

Labyrinth Lord shares a lot with Basic Fantasy (below), in that it’s based upon the D&D 1981 Basic-Expert rules, arguably the ‘last bastion’ of the old-school before those new-fangled red-blue-cyan-black-gold ‘BECMI’ sets. Unlike Basic Fantasy though, Labyrinth Lord is trying to make it as a commercial venture, with the publishers Goblinoid Games working to get the rules into games shops across America, at least. (The rules are still available as a free download, though.) Their aim is to try and ignite interest in an older style of fantasy roleplaying, and while I commend their efforts, I’ve got to say I think Basic Fantasy would look better alongside other modern RPGs.

On the other hand, Labyrinth Lord definitely has the D&D nostalgia factor down pat. I mean hey, look at the title typeface for one thing. It’s also a very accurate recreation of the D&D 1981 rules; apparently you can play just about any adventure or use any existing supplement with it. Everything’s covered in the game’s 138 pages, right down to a sample ‘labyrinth’, the game’s term for dungeons (hence the title), and like Basic Fantasy, it’s got some nice illustrations and a good layout.

Unlike Basic Fantasy – and possibly because I believe Labyrinth Lord came out a little later – there’s not as much supplemental material for Labyrinth Lord, at least not from the publishers. However, it’s frequently mentioned alongside Swords & Wizardry when talking about the old-school ‘movement’, so I’m sure it must be getting played out there. There’s actually a comparison between Labyrinth Lord and Basic Fantasy written on this blog, so if you want to know the differences, check it out.

Reviews:

“I’m very happy with LL. The product is a good one and I wouldn’t hesitate recommending it to newbies just starting, experienced gamers looking for something that allows them more freedom, or those who want to remember what BD&D was like at its best.”- RPG.net

Basic Fantasy

Inspired by: Dungeons & Dragons Basic and Expert sets (1981)

Publisher: Chris Gonnerman

Download it: For free directly from the Basic Fantasy website (PDF file)

Buy it: From Lulu.com in softcover, hardcover and coil-bound editions

Of all the retro-clones, for me, Basic Fantasy is the one that feels most like a ‘modern take on an old classic’. As you can see from the cover, there’s a real attempt here to at least style the game like something you’d see on a bookstore shelf; unlike Labyrinth Lord, it doesn’t acknowledge its origins quite as explicitly. However, the two games do share a lot in common, as they’re both modelled off the 1981 Dungeons & Dragons Basic and Expert rules.

Basic Fantasy weighs in a little heavier than Labyrinth Lord, at 159 pages, but the rules read much the same – especially because they’re in the same typeface! There are some small differences; Basic Fantasy chooses to allow players to combine class and race in various combos, for example, whereas Labyrinth Lord goes with the more old-school alternative of having races actually serve as classes.

Production wise, Basic Fantasy is certainly well laid out, with appropriate ‘old-school style’ illustrations. About the only thing it’s missing is a sample adventure, but this is where the publisher – Chris Gonnerman – really shines. The Basic Fantasy website has over a dozen adventures available to download by a variety of authors. There’s also more than ten supplements available to download, too. Considering they’ve all been written by a variety of people, it’s obvious that Basic Fantasy is enjoyed by more than just the author, which moves it from the realm of amateur publication almost into the professional. The only difference is, it’s all for free; even the Lulu printed editions are not making any money for the authors.

If you want a retro-clone that’s got a bit more to it than the rulebook alone, you definitely want to take a look at Basic Fantasy.

Reviews:

“This is a great fantasy game that captures the feel of the classics, without some of the issues that I always had to houserule.” – Dragonsfoot

“The Basic Fantasy RPG is an excellent game, with rules simple enough to pick up by young children but with enough “meat” for older players to enjoy.” – Random Acts

Coming up next: other simulacra

That’s it for the current crop of D&D-inspired games, but while researching this post I found a few other simulacra of other games. I’ll be taking a look at those in a future post, so stay tuned.

One last thing; a lot of the images of D&D rulebooks above came from the excellent TSR Archive. Visit if you want a trip down memory lane.

Back then, playing a game which heavily lent on figures, maps, counting out range squares and throwing around spectacular powers and feats with abandon – while rolling very, very high modified numbers – would probably have thrilled me no end.

By contrast, playing a game which heavily lent on talking, investigating, puzzling, finding clues, trying to put those clues together, and sweating over Library Use checks did, in fact, bore me to tears.

Hence, D&D 4E is about twenty years too late for me; and I first played CoC twenty years too early.

This isn’t entirely a revelation. My gradual conversion to a more freeform, casual style of play which emphasises story and character over stats and carnage probably started 20-odd years ago; I just haven’t been in practice since then. Playing CoC for the first time in forever recently just reminded me of what I like. I really enjoyed the fact that we spent most of the game just talking, interacting in character, and poking the GM for more information. The gradual emergence of a story, indepedently forming from the actions of four people with the guidance of a fifth, is what roleplaying is all about – at least for me, these days.

While I was never a big ‘dungeon basher’ in my youth, I certainly enjoyed the constant dice rolling, miniature moving and stat-checking a lot more. Perhaps it helped my imagination, those rules that defined how the world worked. I still find enjoyment in it today – but more in a tactical, boardgame-like sense, than because it helps transport me to a fantasy world.

To be fair, I did enjoy last night’s game quite a bit, and it’s not right to compare it directly to my CoC experience. We were low on time, running pre-generated characters, and both players were strangers to each other. In that situation – not unlike a tournament game, I guess – it makes sense to focus on kicking in doors and killing monsters. In the end however, I probably could have had just as much fun playing an elaborate boardgame, or a miniatures skirmish game.

Having played it though, there’s now no doubt in my mind that D&D 4E is very definitely a miniatures-focused game, and would probably play badly without some form of tactical representation. While D&D’s original roots are in wargaming and miniatures, I’m still of the belief that your imagination will always trump a few painted figures, and if your discussion turns to things like “line of sight” then the magic has been diminished somehow. Sure, sometimes it really is important to know if the dragon can see you, but clear communication, plus perhaps a scribbled map, usually did the job for me. Now I can’t see many people trying to play D&D 4E without minis or square-overlaid maps.

D&D 4E is part of a carefully constructed product line which includes official miniatures, maps and a subscription-based character generation service. Interestingly, that seems aimed at both the older generation who have less time (and don’t mind paying for shiny stuff) and the younger generation who arguably have less experience in stretching their imaginations, having grown up with 3D gaming and photo-realistic CGI.

From one point of view that’s a damn smart business plan. For me though, it loses something fundamentally important about roleplaying. I’m not going to argue that one approach is ‘better’ than the other; like I said, I had fun playing both D&D 4E and CoC. Given the choice of which to play, however, and going forward into running my own games again, I know which style I’m going to pursue.

I’ve been lurking on the Brighton Roleplayers Yahoo! Group for a very long time, and had played before with a couple of other list members. I even knew they had a regular meet-up, venue and all. What with all this internal thinking about roleplaying, I figured I should bite the bullet and, y’know, actually go do some roleplaying.

I got a warm welcome, not least thanks to Kelvin, who found the blog here from some trackback I suspect and emailed me to helpfully point out what I already knew, but just hadn’t vocalised. As a result I ended up taking a seat in Kelvin’s off-and-on-again Call of Cthulhu game, which was a whole heap of fun, and very well summarised by Kelvin himself over on the BRPG blog.

Following that game, fellow player Ben asked if I was interested in playing a Pendragon campaign he was planning to run, using the rules from Green Ronin’s new A Song of Ice and Fire roleplaying game.

Pendragon? Talk about your magic word. I’ve wanted to play in a Pendragon campaign for about twenty years, and never quite got there, so I jumped at the chance. Thanks to the Easter weekend we’ve managed to squeeze in two sessions so far, and my only regret is that I already know I won’t be sticking around for the long haul. Perhaps my knight can perish in one glorious final battle… after I secure his bloodline, of course.

Ben has been writing up our sessions and circulating by email, but so far hasn’t posted them anywhere for you to peruse. Suffice to say I’m having a blast. It probably helps that Ben issued me with a lethal archer for the first session, Perin, who can fire off two arrows without blinking and put each of them through the smallest chink in armour from several hundred yards.

He’ll be moving on soon though due to the ravages of old age, but in his place I’m playing Alein, who I’ve described as “Prince George from Black Adder III, as a knight”. Yes: he does have ‘naive’ as a drawback….

It’s all good stuff, and I’m deeply indebted to Ben, Kelvin, Ad, Manoj, Rich and especially Paco for getting my butt back around a gaming table, and making the return so fun. The only sore point? I should have done it six months ago.

More on all this soon, especially on Pendragon itself – the great game I never quite seem to be able to get to play….

Taken this weekend in mid-roleplaying session. I wasn’t even using the die, it just looked good in the light.

Very happy with how this turned out considering it was off my cameraphone.

After a false alarm earlier this week, I wake up this morning to read that sadly Dave Arneson, co-creator of Dungeons & Dragons (along with Gary Gygax), passed away late on April 7th, at 61 years old, falling victim to cancer.

In another part of America, Aaron Allston, who I raved about just the other day as author of many Star Wars novels, plus Champions 5th Edition and my personal all-time favourite RPG book, Strike Force, suffered a heart attack while on his latest book tour. He required a quadruple bypass operation – not exactly an easy procedure – but I’m thankful to say, is on the mend.

After hearing about those two roleplaying icons, it felt slightly spooky to read a blog entry from Jeff Grubb (designer of Marvel Super Heroes, amongst many other things, and now a designer for Guild Wars 2) talking about his health, which in his words is “pretty sound”, but “could be better in many ways”. I’m sure Jeff’s going to be designing for many years to come, but all of this reminds me how far the roleplaying hobby, along with everything that span off from it, has come.

Dave Arneson was born in 1947, so he was approaching 30 when Dungeons & Dragons began to really take off. Thirty odd years later the roleplaying hobby has been an industry, and is now shrinking and maybe changing back into hobby it was, but it gave birth to something else: the computer-based descendants of RPGs, both single and multiplayer.

Those games, I’d argue, are struggling to find their defining moment, when they’ll break out of the original mold roleplaying formed for them. They’ll get there, but it might take a while. After all, today’s independent RPGs are fairly radically different from the original dungeon delvers.

Today though, there’s time for some reflection. I’ve never met Arneson, Allston or Grubb, and of course never will meet Arneson now, but all three of them have had a huge impact on my life. Perhaps I should start acknowledging that with more than a blog entry.

There are plenty of kind words for Dave Arneson around the web, by people who knew him and some who didn’t. I’ll list a few below, but this quote from Jeff Grubb summed up Arneson and Gygax’s legacy for me:

Gary and Dave were the Stan Lee and Jack Kirby of our hobby, the names by which later generations would conjure. They created what would be modern roleplaying, and the rest of us are caught up in their wake.

More on Dave Arneson:

Ken Hite: “Dave Arneson invented role-playing games.”

Grognardia: In Memoriam: “It was Dave, after all, who created the concept of the dungeon, without which D&D as we know it would not have been possible.”

RPGBlog II: “Just as you cannot have D&D without Gygax, you cannot have it without Arneson.”

The Escapist: “The game industry would not be the same today without his work.”

GameSpy Interview in 2004: On what he’d like on his tombstone: “I don’t know, ‘Father of role-playing games?’ I got a sign that says that somewhere.”

Grognardia on The First Fantasy Campaign: “… this is an invaluable document, not just for the information it provides about the earliest campaign setting in the history of the hobby, but also for the way it presents another way to play OD&D, making Arneson the patron saint of rules modders and home brewers.”

Why? Apparently, they’re trying to crack down on piracy. By, umm, cutting off people’s only legitimate way of buying these hard-to-find products.

I am, understandably, not the only one shaking my head here, not by a long shot. While arguably this move is aimed at cutting off the ‘ready-made supply’ for those who are spreading bought-PDF copies of Dungeons & Dragons 4th Edition all over the interwebs – and they have the lawsuit to show for it – it’s also had the knock-on effect of stopping anyone from legitimately owning vintage D&D material.

This shows a remarkable lack of understanding over at Wizards as to how the modern web works – indeed, how modern economics seem to work, at least from my chair.

Look at it this way. Warner Bros. recently had a brainwave; they dug 150 lesser-known movies out from their vaults, and made them available as on-demand DVDs. You order them online at WarnerArchive.com, they burn and package them for you, they send them to you. Job done.

This isn’t a million miles away from what Wizards was doing – at least for their older, out-of-print products. Admittedly they’re not actually printing those products (although wouldn’t that be a smart move?) but instead sending you a PDF. And yes, that means the file in question is only a few clicks away from your local torrent site.

However, it’s not as if Warner Archive movies can’t be digitally ripped from the DVD you’re sent, and then spread around. In fact, some of the movies on Warner Archive are available to download directly as a digital file. The question is, what are people more interested in sharing with the internet: Abe Lincoln in Illinois (1940) starring Gene Lockhart, or The Keep on the Borderlands (1980) by Gary Gygax?

Well I know what camp I’m in, but I’m betting there are just as many people interested in the movie as the module. This is a classic ‘Long Tail‘ selling scenario – push out your inventory to as wide an audience as possible, for as low a cost to you as possible, and even if only a few are interested, you’re going to make some money.

Yes, I’ll admit those people interested in obscure Warner Bros. movies might not have any clue what a ‘bittorrent’ is, as opposed to the audience for out-of-print D&D modules which is probably very internet-savvy, and maybe more interested in getting stuff for free.

Regardless, reacting to filesharing in this way – by taking your toys and going home – is surely just going to push more of those potential customers to search out other sources to get their fix. Let’s face it; most people are totally unaware that sites like RPGnow and DriveThruRPG exist, and probably even less aware that hidden away in their digital vaults is material that hasn’t seen print for 25+ years.

The fact is, unless I want to go hunting on eBay, if I want something that’s out of print – chances are someone’s scanned and uploaded it somewhere. I’m sorry, but I’m going to go looking for pirate sources before I go to eBay. Even if I bought a second-hand copy from someone, no-one’s getting any money for it except the seller.

However – if Wizards and those like them were smart, if they were motivated, if they understood that with some marketing muscle and some internet smarts, they can get the word out about their products being available for low prices in PDF form (and preferably, print-on-demand; yes I will pay for paper!) then yes – I’ll buy it.

If you cut off that legitimate avenue? Well, I guess I don’t have any choice anymore, right?