Holmes Basic D&D Setting Thread

I posted elsewhere that, for me, Holmes Basic D&D is clearly a different thing than OD&D, AD&D, or BECMI D&D. While it clearly shares some similarities with al of the aforementioned brands of D&D, it also differs from each of them in not unimportant ways. One thing, for instance, Holmes Basic D&D lacks that all of these other brands have is an official setting of some kind.

Have you homebrewed a full-fledged setting (as opposed to seemingly unrelated adventure locations) for Holmes Basic D&D? If so, is it available online? I'm working on one myself, though it promises to be a somewhat time-intensive affair that has put my tentative game play on hiatus for the time being*. The good news, I guess, is that I already have most of the setting created. . . I just have to present it in a useable format.

What I plan on doing is presenting one two-page player orientation document that describes how elves, dwarves, halflings, etc fit into the setting (as Holmes Basic D&D is devoid of many such cultural details), as well as providing a 'whole setting' overview to give players some idea of what the setting is about. From there, I'm revisiting an idea that I had originally planned to use with C&C a copule of years back.

Basically, I'm compiling a series of basic, two-page, traveler's guides dedicated to each realm of the known world. Each guide covers the basics of society, government, economy, etc of a given realm. And each guide presents, for players, any new rules that may come into play while visiting the realm (e.g., the desert-ish guide contains notes about heat stroke and dehydration).

Each guide (with the exception of new rules) is written as if by a denizen of the campaign setting (in fact, the publisher's own realm will be covered at a later date in the series). Issue 001 (New Midran) is almost finished, while Issue 002 (North Ward and Environs) is in the works. The former details a Roman-ike civilization very much inspired the (non-Dying Earth) fiction of Jack Vance, while the latter is very loosely based on Greyhawk and my current city of residence.

Anyhow, I'll start posting links to things after I code some more CSS and compile the PDF documents for download. When I get them finished, I would recommend any feeedback from community members in terms of obvious spelling and grammar corrections, as well as brainstorming ideas for future gazetteers (please wait until you read the orientation document, as some unusual-ish circumstances apply to realms).

* As I mention elsewhere, I have a demanding 60+ hours a week day job which means that I can play games or create stuff for them. . . not both.

I look forward to seeing this jdrakeh. I am about two thirds of the way through revising Holmes to include Meepo's Holmes Companion (which mainly uses OD&D to max out levels at 9) and zhowar's List of changes made to Holmes article. The latter pointed out a lot of inconsistencies, references to things not included in the rules (mainly monsters), hints of higher level play, etc., all of which I've included to make the document an internally consistent, stand-alone rule book that needs no other to make it playable (as opposed to being "an introduction" to AD&D).

I hadn't even thought about a setting dedicated to the Holmes rules itself. I'll follow this thread with interest.

[geoffrey]

James, I look forward to reading your stuff.

Do you plan to put Zenopus's tower, Quasqueton, and the Keep on the Borderlands (the three published adventure sites for Holmes) in this campaign setting?

[Stonegiant]

Just curious as to what the official setting for OD&D would be? AFAIK it never had one either.

[geoffrey]

May 7, 2008 7:14:46 GMT -6 Stonegiant said:

Just curious as to what the official setting for OD&D would be? AFAIK it never had one either.

The closest I can think of is the Wilderlands. The Wilderlands and Blackmoor are the only two settings that I know of that were written with OD&D in mind.

[Stonegiant]

May 7, 2008 22:20:06 GMT -6 geoffrey said:

May 7, 2008 7:14:46 GMT -6 Stonegiant said:

Just curious as to what the official setting for OD&D would be? AFAIK it never had one either.

The closest I can think of is the Wilderlands. The Wilderlands and Blackmoor are the only two settings that I know of that were written with OD&D in mind.

True but I would hardly call either one of them as "official"

[coffee]

The 'official setting' for D&D was whatever the individual DM came up with. It was meant to be a framework for one's own creation.

[doc]

My OD&D pulp fantasy is about 77% done, with another 23 sessions left. My next campaign is going to be a Holmes campaign. I was inspired by a wonderful thread on Alive and Out of Print:

aliveandoutofprint.org/forums

Follow the links through Classic D&D to the Holmes thread and you will see that Greyharp and others have posted a great deal of information about the Holmes campaign, including the source material. Not just Maze of Peril, but also three short stories that appeared in old Dragon magazines (31, 46, and 58). I really want to play this. Heck, I really want to run this!



Doc

[geoffrey]

A number of people have given valuable insights into a Holmes campaign on this thread that I started:
www.dragonsfoot.org/forums/viewtopic.php?f=15&t=27128&st=0&sk=t&sd=a

;D

For those who might be curious, but aren't inclined to go to another forum to have a look, here's what I posted there:

If you're looking to develop a Holmes campaign setting, probably one of the best places to start, other than with the "quirks" in the rules themselves which offer a wealth of material, is with the author's Boinger and Zereth stories. I've just finished reading his book The Maze of Peril (which can still be purchased from the publisher), as well as the three short stories in the early Dragon magazine (31, 46 & 58). I know he published some more in Alarums & Excursions, but I haven't seen those.

These stories paint a great picture of Holmes' view of his gaming world:

Somewhere beneath the surface of this ancient land the tunnels and corridors of some prehistoric race coiled and raveled, delved and probed unimaginable depths into the core of the world. Corridors of wealth, they were also tunnels of deadly peril, for many of the rash adventurers who set forth for the secret entrances to the fabled Underworld were never heard from again.What race or races had built the original maze no one knew. It seemed, in the opinion of the sages and magicians of the time, that there must have been many layers of dungeons and underworlds laid down, one atop the other, as the world crust was formed, so that now no one knew, or even guessed, how many levels it extended below the surface.

Above ground, Boinger the halfling comes from "the Meadow Country to the south", his mate Bardan the Dwarf from "the Cold Mountains", and Zereth the "dark elf" is of the Elidel, the Old People. The novel starts in the town of Caladan, in the land of Labolinn. Other lands include Amazonia "a great island kingdom", pirate isles to the south of that, and the "island citadel of the Frog-Heads and the Fish-Heads, the worshippers of Dagon" to the north.

Races are quite diverse and freely mix, with humans, demi-humans, centaurs, serpentmen, satyrs and things with antennae all drinking together in the town's taverns.

There is also a strange mixture of the real-world and fantasy. The elves follow the pagan "Goddess" and are are attuned to the moon, whereas human religion is Christianity, complete with crosses and Latin prayers.

There is probably enough information in these stories to build a skeleton of a Holmes world.

and here's my second post:

OK, here's some more elements from his Boinger stories and his 1980 Psychology Today article Confessions of a Dungeon Master:

Places: The Enchanted Forest, Southern Jungle, Desert of Irem, slave market at Mar'koosh, old Suloise city buried under Witch's Hill outside the town of Caladan. The coast is barely 100 leagues east of Caladan.

Gods & Demons: Khalk'ru the Dissolver, Ozymandias, the Mi-Go, the Fungi from Yuggoth, Artaban, Asmodeus, Mithra (used a lot), Hastur, Cthulhu, Azathoth, (Church of) Saint Mellon, Gor, Thor, Odin, Crom, Hypnos, Morpheus and Ishtar.

Races & Classes: Gnome, Samurai, Viking, Naga, Gremlin, Angels, Lilliputians, "black sons of Elendil". Paladins are Knights of the Cross and take vows of chastity and purity.

More on the Amazons: The Amazons are a sea-faring nation, with the Queen's Navy consisting of a fleet of purple and red-sailed longships, armed with catapults and "Greek Fire". The Queen's Own Cavalry are virginal warrior maidens who ride unicorns. Amazon archers remove one breast. Their men are considered "effeminate" if they pursue non-domestic roles. The Queen consults "the Oracle" and as a nation, they worship "the Goddess". The frog-men have been disrupting the shipping lanes between Amazonia and the mainland.

More on the Dagonites: Worshippers of Dagon consist of two races, bronze armed and armoured humanoid frog-men and Weresharks. One of their "places of power" is a temple to Dagon, the evil sea god, which is a black pyramid located on an island, in an underground lake. The lake is connected to the coast by an underground river. Dagonite priests are toga-wearing frog-men, with fish headdresses. The arch priest wears a "mask-headdress of jade fins and scales" and carries "a tall staff, carved at the top into writhing tentacles", which operates like a Snake Staff, turning into a ten foot long purple octapoid creature.

Within the pyramid is a massive statue of Dagon, depicting him as "a tentacled being with a crested head and bulbous fish eyes, gaping shark fanged jaws, and an expression of utter malignity." "Huge plates of mother-of-pearl were his eyes; great overlapping sea shells covered his body like scales." The Dagonite priests can cast a collective spell, calling on Dagon to animate his statue in defence of the temple.

Literary Influences: Holmes said he included in his world, bits from A. Merritt's The Dwellers in the Mirage, Barsoom, Hyperborea, Edgar Rice Burroughs, Robert E. Howard, H. Rider Haggard, H.P. Lovecraft and Clark Ashton Smith.

Hope this is all helpful.

[blackbarn]

Thanks for compiling all that, greyharp! I really like Holmes' style, and it's cool to see these little glimpses into what his D&D campaign must have been like.

[grodog]

Nov 19, 2008 23:09:31 GMT -6 @greyharp said:

Literary Influences: Holmes said he included in his world, bits from A. Merritt's The Dwellers in the Mirage, Barsoom, Hyperborea, Edgar Rice Burroughs, Robert E. Howard, H. Rider Haggard, H.P. Lovecraft and Clark Ashton Smith.

Nice work, greyharp!

To the list of influences, I'd add Frank Herbert (for Caladan, from Dune), and Gary Gygax (for the "Suloise" city, from Greyhawk of course).

I'll dig up the A&E materials to see what additional details can be mined.

Nov 20, 2008 14:08:57 GMT -6 grodog said:

I'll dig up the A&E materials to see what additional details can be mined.

I was hoping you'd say that, thanks grodog. ;D

Now, if anyone has a copy of Holmes' book Fantasy Role Playing Games and can do the same with it, that should complete the set and give us a good idea of what was going through the man's mind before and after he edited our beloved blue book.

[badger2305]

Nov 20, 2008 14:19:31 GMT -6 @greyharp said:

Nov 20, 2008 14:08:57 GMT -6 grodog said:

I'll dig up the A&E materials to see what additional details can be mined.

I was hoping you'd say that, thanks grodog. ;D

Now, if anyone has a copy of Holmes' book Fantasy Role Playing Games and can do the same with it, that should complete the set and give us a good idea of what was going through the man's mind before and after he edited our beloved blue book.

Well, as a matter of fact, I do.

[grodog]

Ditto. I'll let you tackle that one, if you don't mind, though, Victor

[grodog]

Nov 20, 2008 14:19:31 GMT -6 @greyharp said:

Nov 20, 2008 14:08:57 GMT -6 grodog said:

I'll dig up the A&E materials to see what additional details can be mined.

I was hoping you'd say that, thanks grodog. ;D

OK, here's the scoop: there are two stories, the second a sequel to the first. Here's the first:

The Adventure of the Lost City: Part One

This story mentions:

PCs: Walla-Walla the Witch Doctor (from a jungle, uses Voodoo), Xoreth the Elf (who has Sigfried an intelligent parrot-hawk, perhaps a familiar), Zatoshigi the Samurai, Murray the Mage, Mergatroyd the Magnificant (MU), Jose (Clr), Brother John (Clr), Boinger the Hobbit, Mr. Bond the Elf, Elmer the Elf,

NPCs: El-Borak (a caravan master), slaves, Holgar (a slave), courtesans (6 of the slaves are 2nd or 3rd level courtesans, and being a courtesan raises Cha by +5; each courtesan was also, respectively, a warrior, cleric, sage, hypnotist, psychic, and witch; also, one seems to be a vampire, too...),

monsters: allosaurs!, griffons, giant spider, triceratopses, horses, camels,

magic: Voodoo doll decapitates allosaur, ESP used, charm monster used,

items: magaphones (likely a typo or magical analogue for megaphones), Murray has an invis ring, the plague flag (a black and yellow flag in honor of the black death and yellow fever, which shows that the plague is present in a camp/caravan/whatever and presumably scares away intelligent folks)

places: oasis in teh desert en route to Byrithium, Byrithium (a city with a slave market),

[grodog]

The Adventure of the Lost City: Part Two

The Sorcerer's Tower

This story mentions:

PCs: same as before plus: Glorfindel (Elf), the "African" witch doctor (same as previous tale), ; note that entire PC party consists of 3 elves, 2 hobbits, 1 dwarf, 1 viking, 2 clerics, 3 MUs, and "several" fighting men including Zatushigi the Samurai (total of 13 named PCs + more unnamed fighters)

NPCs: captain of the 'Castle (see below under items; has a wooden leg and talks using an incoherent set of unmatched nautical terms ), 4 of the courteans are now named (and accompnay the PCs: Moona the Witch (blue skin!), Reeva the Psychic, Mai-Ling the Sage, and Silith the Serpent Woman [she was the one I thought was a vampire before: she drinks 50cc of blood per day from her beau!]), prisoners from the tower (hobbit, priestess of Isis, and another viking, along with a giant turtle, talking dolphin, and a merman),

monsters: dragon turtle (killed by catapult), pirate galley (with an MU!; renamed Sea Cow after PCs capture it), sea trolls wielding tridents (in tower), giant spiders, black tower sorcerer (named Zort), armored Atlantean mummies, evil lamia (in sorcerer's bed...), wererat (hiding under bed...), tiny kraken in fish tank, the Spawn of Cthulhu,

magic: Brother Jose marries Mr. Bond to Moona while on ship, swiftly followed by Boinger marrying Reeva, sleep spells (also used in previous story), Walla Walla the Witch Doctor can poly self once per week (this time into a manatee/sea cow to recover the fallen pirate MU's staff), charm arachnid spell (used to charm giant spiders to replace ones killed in desert, which had been mounts for Xoreth the Elf), Hold Person (holds Walla Walla),

items: The Itchcliff Castle (a ship, has a catapult on upper deck, and 26 galley slaves too), tuberculosis (the galley slaves have it, therefore the PCs are less inclined to try to free them...), Exceprts from the Necronomicon, book to summon monsters/demons with 50% chance to control it, book to animate dead, helm of water breathing, flaming sword, chain mail +1, miniature ship in a box (bronze magic galley, returns to full-size when placed into the water),

And that's it. Unfortunately, the story says that it's continued, but if so, JEH didn't send me that episode. Anyone else with A&E able to confirm/deny that more episodes than these two exist?

places: Byrithium (desert city with a slave market as well as a harbor), the Iranian coast (north of Byrithium), Desert Island, Jungle Isle, Sorcerer's Isle (has a black tower

Thanks so much for those posts grodog, I'm amazed at how substantial those two stories must be. They certainly sound larger than I had expected. I guess I'll have to try and track down copies of those issues of A&E one day. I don't suppose you've uncovered which issue numbers the stories appeared in during your research?

[grodog]

I haven't, alas; in fact, I pinged zhowar to see if he had ID'd the issues yet

[grodog]

His response:

www.dragonsfoot.org/forums/viewtopic.php?f=11&t=23769&p=659006#p659006

Great stuff.

[aldarron]

I'll toss in a few bits from Holmes Fantasy Role Playing Games book, but this list doesn't inclued anything from chapter 4 of the book where he presents a sample game and dungeon. That info is already posted in the "Holmes Other System" thread.

Here goes;

Characters:

Wingfoot the Thief (has a collapsable bambo pole for probing)
Egbert the Dwarf
Sareesa the Sorceress
Anvill the Dwarf of the Iron Hills (S 17, I 10, W4, D 12, C 16, CH 5)

NPC's:

Izurath the evil magic user with a booby trapped black tower
Badrach the bold, robber baron of Blackwood Forest

Places:

Ironbound Castle

Monsters:

Stone Gargoyles
Goblins
White Dragon
Hobgoblins
ghouls

And then there is this quote on page 41:
"Hidden somewher on the referee's map are the treasures, the gold, the magic ring, the laser cannon.... Perhaps an ancient magic race created a city or a temple which subsequent ages have buried. The original inhabitants have all died or migrated off, although their magic spells remain in full force. Bands of wandering orcs move into the upper chambers. Giant rats infest the corridors, feeding ton the bodies of unlucky adventurers. An evil wizard finds new magic powers in the ancient city, and he sets up his own guards and traps.... Dragons and giants loot the surrounding countryside, and over the ages they accumulate fabulous wealth."

Lastly, there is an unkeyed sample dungeon map on page 38 that shoes a revolving room, a lava pool and hot rock island, a lizard king throne room, a gila moster cave, a whirlpool, ochre jelly, gelatinous cube, green slime, skeleton room, troll rooms and more all on the same level.

[Zenopus]

A few more from his FRPG book:

"For all the Adventurers ... who have marched through the Black Forest, plumbed the depths of the Wizard's Tower, scaled the walls of Castle Kroger, saild the Inland Sea to the Magic Isles, shot up the bars of Tombstone, looted the Lost City of Irem and dared the shores of R'yleh" (pg 6)

[this is from the dedication to the book & presumably refers to Holmes' personal campaign; the "depths of the Wizard's Tower" may be the same as the Zenopus Sample Dungeon in the Basic rulebook].

"A player character sitting in the Green Dragon Inn ... does not overlook a slighting remark from the cat-man at the next table" (pg 23).

[another reference to the Green Dragon Inn, also mentioned in the Basic rulebook and Maze of Peril]

"A fifth level fighter with a belt of giant's strength and a magic sword and a magic suit of armor. He's slain a white dragon and taken on a whole kingdom. He rides a talking warhorse named Balthus and has a band of twelve nights and archers who travel with him from kingdom to kingdom" (pg 36).

"The dwarf you have just met tells you there are caves in the mountains where ghouls wait to attack unwary travelers at night" (pg 44).

"The player may wander from the dragon's lair to a vampire's castle, cross the dinosaur-infested swamps, storm the gates of Troy, fly over Baghdad on a magic carpet, teleport to Mars, or descend to the bottom-most pits of Hell" (pg 71).

"There is a taxidermist-furrier in the town. You want to buy an owl-bear skin? .... Well how about 300 gold pieces?" (pg 80).

"the entire history of the long extinct race of lizard kings ... painted on the walls of the wizard's tomb" (pg 218).

[Zenopus]

Perhaps an ancient magic race created a city or a temple which subsequent ages have buried. The original inhabitants have all died or migrated off, although their magic spells remain in full force. Bands of wandering orcs move into the upper chambers. Giant rats infest the corridors, feeding ton the bodies of unlucky adventurers. An evil wizard finds new magic powers in the ancient city, and he sets up his own guards and traps.

I was skimming through Holmes' FRPG and I noticed these sentences again. It struck me how these sentences can almost be read as a summary of the Zenopus Sample Dungeon in the Basic Rulebook (just replace orcs with goblins).

[Zenopus]

*bump* for bogeyman and other new members.