This is the first entry in a series on Mythic Greyhawk. Upcoming entries will include Religion & Cosmos and History, Kingdoms & Cultures and what else I end up thinking of. One of my favorite GH illustrations. A baroque wizard sitting on an owlish griffon on top a ruin with an adventurous landscape in the background - somehow the image still has an earthy naturalistic character. All very Greyhawk. M ythic Greyhawk takes the Greyhawk Folio as its base (and looks at the boxed set more often than not) and borrows freely from other sources, whilst discarding and altering just as freely. The starting year is 576 CY, although most lands outside the great kingdom use Oeridian Record, of which the year is 1220. Mythic Greyhawk is a world much like a medieval Europe. The following paragraphs are obvious truths to all its inhabitants: The strange exotica of faraway lands usually more exotic than the tales told of them. All the faerie tales are terrifyingly true.

The original Greyhawk Folio states of itself: "The world of greyhawk is yours now -- Yours to do with as you wish. You can mold new states out of old ones or inflame ancient rivalries into open warfare as you tailor the world to suit the needs of your players." To me, this is a feature of Greyhawk worth more attention. Of course, there is implicit permission to do so with any setting embedded into the very nature of roleplaying, but few settings put it out as their Raison D'Etre and then follow through. As I mentioned  in my previous entry , part of the beauty of Greyhawk is how many things it leaves unsaid. This is what the makers of the boxed set wanted you to see when thinking of Greyhawk The Folio is a scant 55 pages, and was never originally meant to be a fully fleshed out world. It is presented as a skeleton for DMs to  "use as the backdrop of a new campaign without changes; or, as an alternative, city, country or geographical descriptions can be

Writing the GM's guide for Into the Unknown  has definitely been the biggest challenge of the project, forcing me to examine hard my own assumptions and understanding of what is good game mastering. But at this stage, I think we're close enough that playtest is only a few weeks away. All sections are laid out, page count is finalised - It just needs some text added to a handful of sections. Blending 5e and B/X has been an excellent study in the differences between the two and trying to understand the implications of some of the changes. Reaction rolls and Morale for example, are among the more beloved parts of B/X that were abandoned in 3e and haven't been seen since. I've spent a fair bit of time examining both sides of the fence and figuring out which way to go. Here's a sidebar I ended up adding to the section on social interaction that sums up how I feel social interaction should work in D&D: “Social Combat” The reaction roll is not a structured

Short follow to my previous post  on this. I think I've arrived at a good format that strikes a decent middle ground between the simplicity of B/X and the long format of 5e. Note the addition of Morale and numbers appearing. Those rules should never have become 'OSR'. No idea why they were cut from 3e nor why they didn't return for 5e. They are lifeblood of D&D encounters, imo, and certainly for B/X and are back for  Into the Unknown . On this note - What do grognards make of the numbers appearing stats in B/X? Do you use them as is? I've always felt they tended to be on the high side. ---------------- Thankfully, Labyrinth Lord's monster descriptions are open content (though I am shortening them), since the SRD has none - Another one to add to the credits. It's all formatted pretty tight now. Only thing left now (groan) is find the right monsters to cut, add descriptions for the remaining 180 critters and rewrite the overly verbose "

Precis: Dying Earth + He-man & Thundarr + Science Fantasy + Mythago Wood with boundaries stripped + all your favourite myths and stories from any era. In the far far future Earth, indeed the universe, is slowly dying. Man lives under a bloated red sun in the inherited ruins of former ages and the decadent nihilistic fatalism of the end times have set in long ago. Time itself is like a torn rag and the planetary memories of decrepit Mother Earth have long bled into the world without rhyme or reason, as Mother Earth hazily dreams half-remembered myths and long forgotten truths from its youth into the world again. The Fading Earth is chimerical, as if seen through a shamanistic dreamlike lens where truths and fiction are mixed without order, and reality often follows a more narrative than physical order. Facsimiles of the Knights of the Round Table ride out of the mist in a crusade against the Old Ones stirring as the end of time approaches. Archetypical elves stalk the da

The Dwarf is up for review. Full version at the bottom of page The Dwarf in B/X is basically the fighter with better saves. I decided to let Extra Attack be a unique feature of the fighter in Into the Unknown.  So the Dwarf is instead based around being a a good mook horde breaker (from 3rd level onwards) and otherwise being a reliable hard damage dealer against solitary foes, who can also take a good amount of punishment. I've tried to focus on mechanics that doesn't require extra die rolls or new mechanics to learn (or if they do, ride on existing ones - two abilities look at the ignored die of advantage/disadvantage for their effect - And two other abilities involve invoking advantage and disadvantage for nice synergies). Oh and I added favored enemy. Because it's well known that dwarves carry a mighty grudge against their enemies. Overall, I am really happy with the result. I think it would be would to play (combining free shoves on advantage with opportuni

Once you boil 5th edition of D&D down a bit, it is actually a very simple game. So much so that you can outline the basics of the whole and all the needed terms in one page. So I went ahead and did that for Into the Unknown , since the aim of this 5e hack is to make it as simple and easy to play as B/X was - But using the more streamlined and balanced engine of 5e. Into The Unknown - Quick Intro & Common Terms (PDF) Only real variances here from 5e are use of the term "magic-user" instead of wizard and "Proficiency area" instead of "Skills"

I've already shared write-ups for the  Halfling [Race-as-class] ,  Fighter & Rogue classes  and  Book 2: Playing the Game  for my B/X-inspired 5e hack, Into the Unknown. Without further ado, here are write-ups for the last two core classes. The Magic-User (PDF) The Priest (PDF) Here, I am making use of the categorisation employed from OD&D all the way to 2nd edition - of later classes, such as druids, being sub-classes of the four main classes. Except, I've simplified the distinction even more and not even made them sub-classes but different class features. So sorcerers, warlocks and wizards are all the same class. The magic-user class feature only shows up at 1st and 2nd lvl and basically just defines how a magic-user learns spells. I feel each feature is still very thematically distinct without needing to be separate classes. With the priest class, I am stretching this a lot more - as druid/cleric as class feature shows up on a lot of levels and they

I've been doing most of the grunt work with layout and art and so forth on the five booklets I plan to release. So here is a sneak preview of the covers of all five booklets. I am doing five booklets because this is meant to be as usable and easy to use at the table as possible. So one book for character creation (and during the game, equipment - The weapons table, fx, is on the last page. Real easy to look up), another for all the shared rules, a third for magic and spells, a fourth for all the GM specific stuff and a fifth reference work for monsters and treasure. And a lot of effort has been put into the formatting, layout and writing to make sure it is simple, non-superflouous, broken into easy to scan paragraphs for important bit and broken into easy to scan sections on each page. You can check out the full  Book 2: Playing the Game  to see how you like it. The juiciest book, character creation, is getting near to be done. Stay tuned. PS. As you can te

I did it - I actually managed to finish a project. Or part of it at least. Available for your consumption is Book 2: Playing the Game   of  Into the Unknown - A 5e compatible game for OSR gaming. Download here This is basically the rules for 5e D&D, excluding magic, chargen and DM specific stuff packed into a mere 24 large-font pages of rules, with artwork on top. Probably could have made it into 22, if not for the 2½ pages of attribute descriptions I wanted to include. Rule differences from 5e in this booklet:  Harsher rules for healing Looser definition of long and short rest Dropping to 0 hp causes exhaustion Proficiency areas based on class and background instead of skills (this will be detailed more in Book 1 for chargen) Proficiency advantage Fighters get proficiency bonus to improvising stunts in combat A few optional rules for firing onto melee and succeeding at a cost The main differences will be found in the other booklets

I've finished my write ups of both the Fighter and Rogue for my B/X-5e "RedNext" hack. Unlike the  Halfling , which was mostly written from scratch, these were a lot easier. Copy-paste from the SRD, trim and re-organise to make it easier to scan and fit into 3 pages each. The Figher (PDF) The Rogue (PDF) There are a few differences from the 5e PHB version though. No sub-classes, no feats, no race to be chosen (since race is a class), skill lists dumped and only the four core classes (+3 optional race-classes), trims a lot of the fat from the character dev mini-game that modern D&D so wants to become. There are two changes I use to cover the difference: A much increased focus on the simple combo of (4 core classes + background)  to define your proficiency and 'adventuring identity' as opposed to a proliferation of classes and long lists of skills (I do appreciate that 5e vastly cuts down on the skill lists. Still a bit too long for my taste). A choic

This is part 2 of three parts. For intoductory notes on all three, see  Religions of Erce, pt 1: The Old Faith. The New Order Unlike the individualistic mystery cults of the Old Faith, the New Order is strongly community oriented and wholly focused on the rise and betterment of mankind. Over 1700 years ago, just prior to the founding of Nydecia, the Nine Gods of the New Order joined to make something wholly new: A unified pantheon working for a common goal: The  undeterred growth and expansion of civilization. Where the Old Gods were satisfied with their co-existent hegemony over Chaos, the Nine proposed a new world order: To altogether drive Chaos from human lands and establish realms where denizens of Law could do more than just exist; where civilization could grow, prosper and develop entirely free of the threat of the monstrous forces of Chaos. Thus were the Dominions of Law born, with Nydecia the first and mightiest of its kind. With the rise of the empire, the

Ponderous Introduction There are three major religious streams in Erce - The Old Faith, The New Order and the Hearthstone Church. Each represents an evolution (in the context of the setting, meant here in a neutral sense) of the human worldview and its relation to Law, Chaos, Others and Oneself. Briefly, the Old Faith reflects the fragmentary tribal warrior societies where survival, personal glory and achievement and prosperity for one's nearest are at the forefront - It is a religion where Law is the strongest, but not necessarily dominant, hegemony that lives in proximity to the forces of Chaos and must need be flexible in its dealings with these. The Nine Gods of the  New Order are more akin the Roman gods - A state religion (though, rather than state-sponsored gods, it is a case of states sponsored by gods) whose devotion and spread is intimately connected to the welfare and prosperity of the realms it patronises. It is community oriented and seeks the greater good