The first post to my blog was on Sept. 22, 2013. That was four years after I had gotten back into the same old-school gaming I had enjoyed as a kid, thanks to one of a handful of the first retro-clones Swords & Wizardry White Box (link is to a PDF of the first printing, no longer available in print).
That first post had an image of my gaming collection – just one bookshelf! Now that has increased to four shelves. Of course this is just what I wanted to collect in print over the years – like many in this hobby, I have a large digital collection of games as well. But I still prefer print copies of the classic games.
Much has changed with the OSR in the past 10 years, and much is the same. Mainly I think there is more fragmentation as people joined groups on various social media platforms when some of the original forums, along with G+ went away. But I’m happy that there seems to be a resurgence in OSR blogs, and forums are definitely not dead, with some of the largest from 10 years ago (or longer) still online. In my opinion the blogs and forums are where the old-school gaming community should congregate, discuss and share ideas, as they are indexed by search engines and the Internet Archive. Facebook, MeWe, Discord and the like are not public in that sense, and anything posted to those platforms is lost when they go away. I created my own public forum in 2016 in reaction to the Swords & Wizardry forums being taken offline, and in 2017 I created a static snapshot of the Goblinoid Games forums, just before they too were taken offline.
2013 was also the year our current gaming group was formed, and it’s still going strong today. It’s not a overstatement to say that these games, gaming friends and the OSR in general have been a major part of my life for the past decade. So thanks again to the OSR and the many people that make it fun, and here’s hoping to another 10 years!
I’ve created a character generator for Labyrinth Lord (LL). I had created one for LL OEC some time ago, so this was overdue. I may work on some of the more complex games (as far as character options) next, perhaps LL AEC or S&W Core/Complete.
For this generator, there were a few assumptions I made, most due to the expanded weapon and armor tables in LL as compared to B/X.
It is possible to generate a thief with studded leather armor. The rulebook says they are limited to leather armor, but does not say precisely which type.
Magic-Users can use darts as a missile weapon. The rules just say they can use “small weapons such as a dagger”, so I added the dart to the mix in keeping with the AD&D weapons table that LL is based on. In practice the dart and dagger are pretty closely matched as missile weapons anyway.
I’ve created a character generator for Moldvay Basic D&D. It generates a random, level one character and is similar to my other generators. I did this pretty much by-the-book, although I did make one change to use the Expert set saves for Dwarves and Halflings. As far as I can tell, these are considered the “correct” saves for those classes (OSE chose to do this, for example).
I’ve created a version of my player quickstart just for Labyrinth Lord. As with the Moldvay Basic D&D player quickstart, I haven’t added any house rules into this version, apart from the equipment packs. Click on the image or links below for the PDF and LibreOffice versions.
While a lot of this is identical to what is in the Moldvay version, there are quite a few differences between Labyrinth Lord and Moldvay Basic. But that is a subject for another blog post.
I’ve created a version of my player quickstart just for Moldvay Basic D&D. I haven’t injected any house rules into this version, apart from the equipment packs, everything is completely rules-as-written. Click on the image or links below for the PDF and LibreOffice versions.
You’ll note there is some vague wording around the racial abilities like the Halfling’s ability to hide or the Elvish secret door detection – that is because if you’re a player, you don’t need to know the specific mechanics of those abilities. The DM will roll secretly for their success or failure, and I thought it was clearer just to state the ability rather than the underlying mechanic (it also saves a line or two of space, keeping the quickstart to one page). As a new player, if you really want to know, you can always look in the rulebook, but it won’t change the way the game is played.
Our gaming group has had a fun couple of sessions playing Moldvay Basic D&D (I’m calling it B/X even though we never used the Expert rules) in the past two weeks. B/X was a game I never played or even owned in my youth, I started with Holmes Basic and, like most people back then, quickly moved on to AD&D 1e. When I got back into role-playing around 2009, it was first with Swords & Wizardry White Box. B/X never really hit my radar until a few years later, when I joined in on some play-by-post games on the Labyrinth Lord forum. Some of the first games I ran for our gaming group were Labyrinth Lord games (the Village of Larm).
Later I was able to add B/X to my collection thanks to EBay – a Basic Boxed set with B2 and dice, an Expert booklet, and a copy of X1. I perused the books and modules but never played them. Labyrinth Lord and BFRPG seemed to scratch the Basic itch for a time. But lately I’ve been steering away from the retro-clones and back to the original games they were based on. The easy availability of the PDFs is one reason. Even if the players don’t have the original books, they can get a PDF for five bucks or so. Another is just for something different, and also to see what I’ve been missing all these years. I am sure none of my observations are new, a trip around the old-school forum-verse and blogosphere will turn up many, many discussions on B/X. But when did that ever stop a blogger!
Towards a More Understandable OD&D
The first thing to note about B/X is that it is a wonderfully clear restatement of OD&D. It fills in the gaps left by that game and clarifies a lot of poorly detailed rules. Holmes Basic tried to do this as well, but it still had problems, mostly left there due to the hackish insertion of AD&D-isms (still, Holmes has hands down the best prose and introductory dungeon of any edition of D&D). Labyrinth Lord was a restatement of B/X, but there is a lot that is different about Labyrinth Lord, and it largely forgets the OD&D base that B/X was forged from, both in rules and feel. B/X keeps the coin encumbrance of OD&D (it’s a shame all of the B/X or OD&D retro-clones discarded such an elegant system in favor of tracking equipment weight in pounds, effectively ensuring no one would track encumbrance) and also keeps the coarsely-grained OD&D alternative attack tables. It keeps the underworld adventuring rules and three-point alignment. It clarifies the Chainmail morale system that is only referenced in OD&D, fully details the combat system, keeps the four core armor classes, and fills in rules around retainers and morale. It keeps intelligent swords and stronghold encounters. Oh, and level titles! B/X keeps the OD&D level titles. All while still explicitly making sure you know that you can make this your own game.
The D&D game has neither losers nor winners, it has only gamers who relish exercising their imagination. The players and the DM share in creating adventures in fantastic lands where heroes abound and magic really works. In a sense, the D&D game has no rules, only rule suggestions. No rule is inviolate, particularly if a new or altered rule will encourage creativity and imagination. The important thing is to enjoy the adventure. – Tom Moldvay, from the forward to Dungeons & Dragons
As an aside, this was in sharp contrast to Gary Gygax, who by now had come out as strongly against taking any such liberties with AD&D (see Dragon #26).
What do you mean I can’t play a Halfling thief??!!
Race-as-class is perhaps the largest deviation from OD&D, but as a simplification of “Halflings can only be fighters” it is an understandable change for the time. It also fixes the issue of low level caps and deals with the multi-class Elf by giving players a single advancement chart to use. I used to dislike race-as-class, but I can see the appeal if you think of the demi-humans each as their own bundle of special class skills. There are also plenty of additional race-classes for B/X, and should one of your players want a thief-like Halfling I’m sure you can find one.
Crack Suicide Squad
Another way B/X deviates from OD&D is in the dungeon wandering monster tables. In OD&D you have a meta-table, used to determine which level of monster table to roll on, then the actual monster tables, one for each level of dungeon. In B/X you have the latter but not the meta-table, so wandering monsters become much less threatening. You can no longer encounter a wraith or gargoyle and TPK on dungeon level 1, for example. If you’re a player this is probably better, still it does give quite a different feel to a dungeon crawl. Mike Mornard, a player in Gary Gygax’s original D&D games from the 1970s, has said that wandering monsters in OD&D were meant to be terrifying. In B/X they are definitely less so, still the game itself is quite deadly as written. In our first game, we had three PCs die in a two-hour session.
When am I Gonna be Level 2?
While the character and monster XP charts in B/X are similar or identical to OD&D (using supplement I, Greyhawk for monster XP), advancement will be slower unless the DM fudges rolls on treasure tables, or follows the advice in the rules to place special treasures before using the tables. The treasure tables are nerfed in B/X as compared to OD&D when it comes to values of individual gems and jewels. These are the best way to carry wealth out of a dungeon in OD&D, and the gem/jewel value table in Monsters & Treasure can lead to some pretty hefty value rolls, giving huge XP gains at low-to-mid levels. Not so much in B/X.
In the 1974 D&D rules, encumbrance was tracked in coins. The PC’s miscellaneous equipment was assumed to always weigh 80 coins. To that, one added armor and weapon weights (in coin equivalents), and the actual number of coins carried to come up with a total, which could be mapped to a movement rate. Ostensibly 10 coins weighed one pound, but you did not need to know this fact to calculate encumbrance. In that system, 3000 coins is the maximum a PC can carry.
This is an elegant system, because it did not force the player to track individual equipment weights. I think one of the biggest mistakes later systems and various old school D&D clones made was discarding this system and providing a weight in pounds (or kilograms, stone etc.) for every single bit of equipment. I’ve noted before that tracking encumbrance this way is a fun-sucking exercise, and I have never used it when I run games. Using it as written slows down character creation to a crawl.
The system I’ve settled on is an even simpler one, and in the finest old-school tradition is a mix of rules from OD&D, Pits & Perils, and Holmes Basic. A PC can carry a reasonable amount of gear, armor, and weapons, plus 1200 coins – no more. In the original game, strength does not directly affect attack or damage rolls, or give any direct bonuses or penalties at all. What I do is give PCs with a STR of 15 or more an added 600 coin carrying capacity (so 1800 coins). With a STR of six or less, they can carry only 600 coins. 20 coins of any type weigh one pound, but again this fact is not needed to calculate encumbrance. I think this directs the player attention away from miscellaneous equipment weights back to coins, where it should be. After all, when 1GP = 1XP, treasure becomes more important than defeating monsters, and is the end goal of any dungeon or overland expedition – to gain XP and advance levels. But what is “reasonable”? Here we can take a tip from Holmes and have players note on their character sheets where their equipment lives. To do this quickly the character sheet can be sectioned by container – so one heading would be “backpack”, another would be “large sack”, and then maybe “belt”. Then the players just list the items in each section.
How does this tie in with movement? In line with the original rules, there are three movement rates, corresponding with armor worn.
None/Leather/Magic or Elven chain: 12″ Chain/Magic plate: 9″ Plate: 6″
You can see that magic armor in this system is treated as the next higher category to reflect its lower encumbrance.
A character can carry up to their maximum allotted coin weight with no change – but once they hit 1200 coins, they drop 3″ to the next lower rate. So, for example, if Drizzle the M-U has a STR of 9 and carries 1,200 coins, his move rate is 9″ and he can carry no more. To make things even easier, a large sack holds (you guessed it) 1200 coins.
Apart from keeping track of coins, which players do anyway, and being aware of armor worn, there is nothing more to do as far as figuring out movement rate. You might also like to figure coin-equivalent weights for other common items of treasure, like gems or jewelry. But it’s not strictly necessary unless your players stumble onto a dragon’s hoard.
I love random character generators. As a DM, they are great for quickly generating a party for a spur-of-the-moment pickup game, or for that henchman or major NPC. Here are the old-school RPG character generators I know of, let me know if there are any more out there and I’ll add them to the list (updated 2025-06-04).
Lots of ideas and adventures ostensibly for Labyrinth Lord and Swords & Wizardry – but really this stuff is adaptable any old-school fantasy game, that is one of the best things about the OSR (I know others do this – I play and/or DM a few different retroclones – Labyrinth Lord, Swords & Wizardy and Delving Deeper, so this adaptability is great).
