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

I've written about Greyhawk before without ever telling the story of my own relationship with the setting. I came to it rather late, in the late 90s when it had been long discontinued (even the From the Ashes  reboot had been discontinued), at a time where I considered myself savvy in the worlds of Dragonlance (my first D&D world), Forgotten Realms (cool things in there, but why is it that  popular?), Dark Sun and Ravenloft, and the only thing I knew of Greyhawk was as the red-headed stepchild of TSR. My first real encounter with Greyhawk though was through a Danish magazine, SAGA, written back in 1992, that did an "intro to greyhawk" article titled "Greyhawk - The oldest of all worlds" that caught my imagination. Scan of the original article from Saga #14 Click here to read an English translation in pdf This seemed like a setting that had room for all the things I expected from a genuine D&D fantasy setting. More room for medievalism, more k

Into the Unknown  is an Old School game that seeks to blend the Basic & Expert rules and style of play of the '80s with the current 5th edition ruleset of the world's most popular roleplaying game. Get it here in print and pdf! (Also,  Pick up your free character sheet here ) What does the Game have? The game is divided into five digest-sized booklets, optimized for use at the gametable: Book 1: Characters  holds all you need to quickly create a new character (52 pages) Book 2: Playing the Game  has all the essential rules for players to get going (28 pages) Book 3: Magic  is strictly for those players whose characters are spellcasters (54 pages) Book 4: Running the Game  has everything a Game Master needs for running old-school games (85 pages) Book 5: Monsters  holds a selection of ready-to-use critters, complete with morale scores and treasure types (65 pages) These are all laid out and edited to be as quick to scan and find what you are looking for

I took the rear cover art from Keep on the Borderlands and cleaned it up for a 3200x1800 resolution. Clicking the link below each image takes you to google drive where the full 4k image is stored. Click here for 4k resolution Then I ran some filters and played around with those to create four variations on it. Enjoy! Click here for 4k resolution Click here for 4k resolution Click here for 4k resolution Click here for 4k resolution I think I like no 3 and 5 the best.

Writing a bit again for the Mythlands of Erce, I am contemplating alignment languages again.  I wrote on this topic a while back  and I am still a fan of them.  For one because I like the idea of alignment having tangible impact on the game world in a world of "alignment as [cosmic] faction". Secondly, because having a multitude languages are mostly just a sucky obstacle to problem solving in D&D - Having a few pervasive languages that chart well to the broadest possible enemy/ally lines in the setting is a big positive. Thirdly because it's D&D and I am somewhat committed to making sense of the various D&Disms in my game world. I find myself wanting to re-work it from "granted by divine inspiration" model I previously went with due to it failing a critical litmus test: Anyone walking up to the [secretly chaotic] cleric in the Keep on the Borderlands and speaking Lawful to him would instantly know he is a fake. SO... Something a bit m

when it comes to non-Advanced D&D, The internet, and in particular the OSR blogosphere, has deserved praise galore for the B/X sets for D&D. And whilst not quite as enthusiastic, the Mentzer editions for those Basic and Expert sets also get plenty of praise for its art and way of introducing the game. The Holmes set also has its fair of passionate fans. And of course the original brown booklets themselves. Of newer releases, the Rules Cyclopedia also has a large following of fans. One release that hardly ever gets a mention is the 1991 'black box', by Timothy B. Brown and Troy Denning. Actually, the Rules Cyclopedia was published as a sort of companion to this set. Together  they represents the fifth and final edition of non-advanced D&D. "The New Easy to Master Dungeons & Dragons Game" also labelled "Classic Dungeons & Dragons" It's short, 64 page booklet, so much the same as its predecessors, comes with a simple dungeon m

"You all meet in a tavern" is classic stale D&D fare that no one minds and no one loves. Reading  Martin Kallies' gripe with tavern meetups over on Spriggan's Den  not long after reading  Blackrazor's musing on Luln, the original B/X home base  got me thinking. Let me first re-quote the passage about Luln before we get into what that says about the assumptions of the starting setting: "Composed primarily of persons who have fled Black Eagle Barony, merchants who have come to trade with the Baron, and some non-humans who have left the wilderness, Luln is a base town for adventurers exploring the Haunted Keep, also called Koriszegy Keep and the surrounding land. Somewhat lawless and open, the town can provide most of the basic needs to any group of adventurers. The town is poorly defended, relying on the goodwill and capabilities of both the Baron and the Duke for its defense. Approximately 500 people live in the town." (from Cook/Marsh, page X60)