Post by geoffrey on Sept 1, 2009 0:05:26 GMT -6
I'm an OD&D (the little brown books) man. As some already know, I've sold most of my RPG collection ( www.dragonsfoot.org/forums/viewtopic.php?f=11&t=37536 ). I originally intended to keep my 1974 OD&D boxed set that included balrogs and hobbits. But the problem was that the set is worth a good $140, so I was never 100% comfortable handling the books.
That's when the epiphany of Swords & Wizardry White Box hit me. I spent a night reading through it, very impressed at what Matt and Fin accomplished with it. They took 1974 OD&D and presented it in the way it actually gets played, leaving aside the more abstruse stuff that OD&D players typically ignore. Matt and Fin further made the not-always-easy-to-understand OD&D rulebooks easier to understand. In short, they gave us an OD&D rules set superior to the one published in 1974.
I then put my OD&D set up for sale (selling it a week later for $140), and downloaded the Word document of Swords & Wizardry White Box. Then I set upon it, deleting and editing like mad, making it into my ideal D&D rulebook (click here for PDF: www.mediafire.com/?arny2ztmwd3 ). When I finished, I formatted it to be the same dimensions as the LBBs, ending up with a booklet a mere 36 pages in length. Here's the brief table of contents:
The Dice (p. 3)
Ability Scores (p. 3)
Alignment (p. 4)
Character Classes (p. 4)
The Cleric (p. 5)
The Fighter (p. 6 )
The Magic-User (p. 7)
Equipment (p. 8 )
Armor Class (p. 10)
Cleric Spell List (p. 10)
Magic-User Spell List (p. 11)
Spell Descriptions (p. 12)
Experience (p. 34)
Movement (p. 34)
Combat (p. 35)
Healing (p. 36)
As one can see, it breaks down something like this:
8 pages for character creation
24 pages of spells
3 pages for playing the game
"Wait a minute! Where are the pages for monsters and magic items?"
First of all, I wanted a book that I could give in its entirety to the players. I didn't want any "DM's secrets" in there. Second, James Raggi has converted me to the view that monsters and magic items should (generally speaking) be unique. Instead of lists of monsters, I use James's 26-page Random Esoteric Creature Generator (now available in a slicker format from Goodman Games: www.goodman-games.com/4375preview.html ). For magic items, I just make them up out of whole cloth (at least until the day that James publishes a random magic item generator).
Thus, my "core rules" for my (non-Carcosa) D&D consists of the 36-page rulebook I cobbled together and the 26-page monster generator. That' s it.
It is liberating to have such slender rules, and to not have to worry about the players knowing things they shouldn't know. They can't possibly know my monsters in advance, since each one is unique and randomly generated.
Thank you very much, Matt and Fin, for making my task of making my own D&D rulebook pretty darn easy rather than nightmarishly difficult.
Here are the books. The monster on the cover of the D&D rulebook is taken from p. 6 of the RECG, and was drawn by Aino Purhonen.
That's when the epiphany of Swords & Wizardry White Box hit me. I spent a night reading through it, very impressed at what Matt and Fin accomplished with it. They took 1974 OD&D and presented it in the way it actually gets played, leaving aside the more abstruse stuff that OD&D players typically ignore. Matt and Fin further made the not-always-easy-to-understand OD&D rulebooks easier to understand. In short, they gave us an OD&D rules set superior to the one published in 1974.
I then put my OD&D set up for sale (selling it a week later for $140), and downloaded the Word document of Swords & Wizardry White Box. Then I set upon it, deleting and editing like mad, making it into my ideal D&D rulebook (click here for PDF: www.mediafire.com/?arny2ztmwd3 ). When I finished, I formatted it to be the same dimensions as the LBBs, ending up with a booklet a mere 36 pages in length. Here's the brief table of contents:
The Dice (p. 3)
Ability Scores (p. 3)
Alignment (p. 4)
Character Classes (p. 4)
The Cleric (p. 5)
The Fighter (p. 6 )
The Magic-User (p. 7)
Equipment (p. 8 )
Armor Class (p. 10)
Cleric Spell List (p. 10)
Magic-User Spell List (p. 11)
Spell Descriptions (p. 12)
Experience (p. 34)
Movement (p. 34)
Combat (p. 35)
Healing (p. 36)
As one can see, it breaks down something like this:
8 pages for character creation
24 pages of spells
3 pages for playing the game
"Wait a minute! Where are the pages for monsters and magic items?"
First of all, I wanted a book that I could give in its entirety to the players. I didn't want any "DM's secrets" in there. Second, James Raggi has converted me to the view that monsters and magic items should (generally speaking) be unique. Instead of lists of monsters, I use James's 26-page Random Esoteric Creature Generator (now available in a slicker format from Goodman Games: www.goodman-games.com/4375preview.html ). For magic items, I just make them up out of whole cloth (at least until the day that James publishes a random magic item generator).
Thus, my "core rules" for my (non-Carcosa) D&D consists of the 36-page rulebook I cobbled together and the 26-page monster generator. That' s it.
It is liberating to have such slender rules, and to not have to worry about the players knowing things they shouldn't know. They can't possibly know my monsters in advance, since each one is unique and randomly generated.
Thank you very much, Matt and Fin, for making my task of making my own D&D rulebook pretty darn easy rather than nightmarishly difficult.
Here are the books. The monster on the cover of the D&D rulebook is taken from p. 6 of the RECG, and was drawn by Aino Purhonen.
