tl;dr A giant-sized core ruleset that nonetheless offers the best take on an Advanced version of D&D you are likely to find. I never really looked at the Adventurer Conqueror King System, though I had heard good things about it, as an elaboration of classic D&D with a proper domain game. When the new Imperial Imprint (II, aka v2) came out, I decided to spin up my drivethrurpg account and plop for the pdf. Let's start by saying this is not classic D&D. It is evidently based  on BX/BE D&D, with its math and level progression advancing only to 14th level.  But the scope and detail of this game is far more ambitious than anything Classic and those who enjoy the restrained core of Classic D&D will find the wealth of options and systems overwhelming.  It is rather an alternate attempt at making an Advanced D&D, based on Classic D&D.  And it is epic/monstrous in scope. Let's look at word counts of core rulebooks (not including monster manuals): ...

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...

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...

One simple houserule I use during character creation is to simply treat any 1 rolled as a 2. "The House Rule Register" might become an ongoing feature on this blog, so I made a tag for it. It means that: The minimum ability score is 6, which I think should be the baseline anyway. But the chances of getting extraordinary (15+) scores are not increased, and there is only a +2.77% added chance of rolling a 13 and a +1.39% increased chance of rolling 14. No one starts with 1 hp unless they have also have CON 6-8 and rolled a 1 or 2 for HP. Minimum starting gold is 60 gp. I initially went with re-rolling all 1s as that seemed a bit more fun, but the implications of that are a bit wider reaching. For clarity, here's the chart for proabilities for "at least" outcomes in anydice, respectively for "3d6", "3d6 treating1s as 2s", "3d6 re-rolling all 1s" and "4d6, drop lowest". There is a whopping +16,47% of rolling a 13 when you re-r...

There will be interludes between the AD&D Appraisal series, to keep my own writing motivation going. I was going to do a 3-mile hex post outlining the virtues of it, but turns out Silverarm did that already and stole all my points  (even down to the "Outdoor Survival also uses 3 miles") and added more points I wasn't aware of myself. So go read that excellent piece and come back here. What I instead want to talk about is how the 3 mile hex is a very close fit to our natural sense of distance and visualisation and how the that makes the 3-mile hex the perfect blend between immersion and usable game artifact and how to actually bring that into your game.  Minaria hexmap. Scale: 1 hex = 50 miles. Not what we're going for here. A while back, Noisms contemplated the difficulty of creating a sense of wonder in journeys . The difficulty with journeys in RPGs is the scale of it. It becomes too big, and thus too abstract, to visualize, to immerse oneself into.  I tried, un...