Somewhere on reddit recently, I saw someone casually mention the different types of fantasy implied by The Hobbit vs Lord of the Rings . And it set my mind spinning on isolating and bringing forth the world of The Hobbit' s Wilderland. What I mean is the Wilderland as seen in The Hobbit , without any reference to the rest of the legendarium. Let's forget the sagas of the Silmarillion  and the detailed tapestries of Lord of the Rings  and dwell for a moment simply on the world of Wilderland we are exposed to in The Hobbbit.  It's actually a rather different place. It's a world where Gandalf (correct pronunciation: "Jandalf") is just another wandering wizard, where the Necromancer is just an evil warlock in a tower in the dark forest, where Elrond is just a wise elf lord encountered on the journey. Wilderland is a world of goblins under misty mountains, trolls in the woods, giants in the mountains, shape-shifting woodsmen, capricious elves, good hearted but al...

There was a time when Old School gamers simply referred to those gamers who played OD&D, B/X and AD&D 1e back in the day and never stopped doing it. Then Grognardia started writing blog posts about it and before long a Renaissance movement was born. The Blogsplosion was supplanted by a flurry of G+ games and discussions and before long, people started making actual game products.  Zac became a a self-made billionaire and Matt Finch began pondering if he should simply buy Mattel in order to acquire the D&D brand or if Swords & Wizardry was now so much bigger that it wouldn't even matter. Shit went down over the years. G+ shut down and fragmented the community. Maliszewski went AWOL for 8 years when he couldn't deliver on the Dwimmermount kickstarter. Zacgate. Stuart amended the OSR logo to say dickheads weren't allowed to use it anymore. JB switched from B/X to AD&D. Tumultuous times all-round.  Many a blog post was dedicated to the meaning/demise/reforma...

Somewhere in the Dragon Magazine issues I've been perusing lately, Moldvay comments that the part of the Basic set he is most proud of is B60 "Dungeon Mastering as a Fine Art", where he gets to impart his own experiences as a DM to newbie DMs. I leave the entire passage transcribed here below without further comment: The success of an adventure depends on the DM and his or her  creation, the dungeon. The DM should have the dungeon carefully  mapped out before play begins. Even so, a DM will quickly find  that it is impossible to predict every possibility. After all, there are  several players, and only one DM! It is not unusual for players to  find a solution, or pose a new problem, that the DM has not even  thought of. It is very important for the DM to be flexible. It is important that the DM be  fair , judging everything without  favoring one side or another. The DM is there to see that the ad venture is interesting and that everyone enjoy...

I started doing some 1e comparisons when I wrote the previous entry, but it quickly grew out of control and I decided to section it off, so that 2e classes also get to be compared on their own merits. That said, let's look how classes stack up in 1e vs 2e: What has been left out from the accumulations of classes from 1e? Monks and Assassins were in the 1e PHB and dropped. Thief-Acrobats, Cavaliers and Barbarians introduced in Unearthed Arcana didn't make the cut either. I say to all of this - Good riddance. Let's take a closer look: Monks . Mechanically, Monk was probably the shittiest class ever devised for D&D, and conceptually too marginal to merit being salvaged for 2e. Are 3-5e really richer for bringing it back? I think not. Assassins ! The original edgelord class. In Gygax' own words, "The anti-thesis of weal." Bleeeergh. Having a core class that must, by the book, be of evil alignment in your core rulebook is just a recipe for bad group dynamics, i...

The AD&D appraisal show is back on the road. Today is about classes and it's a bit long, so here is the  tl;dr - a high level run-through and review of the classes, priests get the most attention, we look at the weird asymmetrical XP progression inherited from 1st edition where warriors are the slowest to advance from 7th to 14th level and wrap up with what racial requirements and certain classes means for the implied AD&D world.  Alright, let's get to it. Don't tell me you seriously believed we were done showcasing art from the revised core rulebooks? Few things are more defining for a DnD game than its take on classes. And in 2e, we find probably the best take on it that has been done. Presentation-wise, they are, finally, organised into the sensible class categories the game has been asking for ever since OD&D introduced the spuriously defined notion of 'sub-class':  Warrior (Fighter, Ranger, Paladin) Wizard (Magic-User, Specialist) Priest (Cleric, Dr...