White Box: Cyclopedia Review

OSR Stalwart James Spahn kickstarted White Box: Cyclopedia this summer and raised a whopping 50k. I missed it and have now paid 25 dollars for the pdf, when I could have paid 15 in the summer.

It's a 290 page product and let me start by saying it's a ridiculous game. I mean this in the best possible way. The idea of a 290 page rulebook with "whitebox" appended is of course in itself a ridiculous notion - whitebox is D&D shaved to the bone, so what can a "Cyclopedia" edition of such a game possibly be if not the antithesis of whitebox?

It's not though. What it is, is the OSR from its loveliest side. Not artpunk reinterpretations or pushing-the-limit [color] hacks on just how lite an RPG can be and still be an RPG. It's about loving the old games and applying your craft, experience and creativity to that; flexing your DM moves in a blog or forum post for others to +1 and say "stolen!".

With the Whitebox Cyclopedia, James has flexed all his DM moves and thrown it all together into one game. 

There's a six page chapter on becoming a knight which you could decouple and add to any D&D-derived game really, and it rocks. If you like knights in your game. If you don't, nothing is broken or degraded by not using those rules.

You can play as a dhampir, troll-kin, Spite and "river halfling" (is this some sort of Gollum homage?). Besides familiar D&D classes, it's got classes like Jester, Metaphysician, Spiritualist and Errant Fool (which is straight up playing as Don Quixote). 

There's rules for arcane duels; psychic ability; for wizards smoking pipes; for wielding frying pans in combat; genre rules for city-of-thieves campaigns and fairy story campaigns. And on page 134, after the rules for seafaring, we get a 5 page long example of play. 

Like I said, it's a ridiculous game. But I love it for that. It's 100% unpretentious. It does not try to be something other than old school D&D with unbridled creativity and craftsmanship on top. The spirit of this game captures the original edition spirit marvelously.

This is a modular toolkit game more so than a "everything fits together into one whole" kind of game.
You can play a version quite similar to un-modded whitebox if you simply ignore all the options presented. Few, I imagine, will employ all the bells and whistles. But it's a compelling rulebook to play a game out of, however much of it you want to use. More still will find joy in simply stealing stuff they want to use for their own non-WB:C games. 

As a toolkit game, it is, as far as I can tell, mostly complete. You won't need to dip into supplements to get a usable monster/equipment/spell/magic item list. It tells you how to hexcrawl, build strongholds and run hirelings. I am perhaps missing chapters for the DM on how to build dungeons and hexcrawls. That's the only omission I can think of really, for a D&D game. 

The layout is clean, unprententious and accessible. The b/w art generous, genre-appropriate and well done. It isn't pushing any limits in this arena, but it knows what it wants to be and delivers to a suitable level where these things don't inhibit the quality of the product. Modest praise perhaps, but commendable effort in this department nonetheless.

The game this reminds me most of is Fantastic Heroes & Witchery. But properly grounded in original edition D&D, more old school and no d20 shenanigans.

Verdict

I doubt I will be throwing away my current B/X-modded game for WB:Cyclopedia. But I could definitely see myself doing so. And I definitely will be stealing from it. Moreover, if you could only ever game from a single rulebook for the rest of your life, it's hard to imagine a game that would yield more good times at the table than this one. I don't think I can give higher praise than that really.