The Fantasy Game - Yet another OD&D clone...

[Deleted]

Greetings everyone!

I hereby would like to announce (yet another) clone project of the OD&D white box rules. While working on my Gamma World clone (Gaia Gamma, www.gaiagamma.com) I became more and more interested in actually taking an in-depth look at the OD&D rules as laid down by the White Box (and nothing else).

This is a subject matter I have not dabbled much with in the past (besides reading various other old school blogs) and I hope I will be able to keep up a decent post speed (as currently Gaia Gamma is still running at one post per day minimum).

The clone project can be found at thefantasygame.org in the form of a live design blog. This format has worked very well for me and I intend to post regular updates together with the slowly growing rulebook. The idea behind The Fantasy Game is to build a clone with nothing but a string focus on the original LBB, enhanced by the statements of Gary Gygax I could find about his personal house rules. Otherwise I want to examine the game with the eyes of someone having it discovered shortly after publication (which is kind of true for me since I never played OD&D or met anyone in person who actually did - my RPG history starts in 1983).

I'll be happy for feedback of any kind and now will go to studying these boards and collect materials from various blogs for later discussion.

Greetings

Thomas Biskup

[aldarron]

Hey Thomas. Well, have fun, first of all! I'd point out two things that may not have caught your attention. The first is that Gygax was one of two authors of the LBB's, and the other author - Dave Arneson - also had a house rule or two - a few of which he posted on this very board. Some of Gygax's "house rules" as Rob Kuntz, also on this board, has pointed out, were basically rules found in Greyhawk.

The second is that Gygax obviously disliked and discredited the rumor that the OD&D draft was ever called "the fantasy game". www.rpg.net/news+reviews/columns/lynch01may01.html
FWIW I know that Arnesons unpublished draft had an entirely different title (unique to him I think), which I'm not at liberty to reveal except to say it did include the word dragon in the title.

FYI - I also know that Arneson "furnished" a lot more rules than what Gygax' implies in the interview, and that Gary's page counts are no where near correct for 8 1/2 by 11, but its quite interesting to read his brief comments.

[Deleted]

Thanks for the information. I have adjusted the description beneath the blog title a little bit - and I now find the name even more appropriate, even if it just occurred on the first draft ;-)

As for the house rulings - as my intent is to keep pretty close to the original rules I was going for a very moderate number of adjustments, probably with optional parts in the sidelines of the rules in order to be able to customize the game to an even more original feel.

As for the rules themselves - I know about the imbalance between the actual and implied amount of input between Arneson and Gygax. Personally I tend more towards the Gygaxian way of playing D&D (as far as I know it that is), as Arneson's later designs where a little too complicated for me (at least in the way they were published) and I'm not too fond of percentile dice. For Gygaxian house rules I so far have been relying on the stuff gathered by Robert Fisher and Cyclopeatron (cyclopeatron.blogspot.com/2010/03/gary-gygaxs-whitebox-od-house-rules.html).

Are there any better / more complete collected rulings out there for Arneson and Gygax? Going through all the forum posts would take more time than I probably will find in the near future ;-)

And I'm currently not even sure I'd want to pursue that ad infinitum as I imagine the design process for "The Fantasy Game" as one of implying casual communication with TSR - so some input, but not endless. But we'll have to see what kind of life the blog takes up ;-)

[aldarron]

Cool.

Unfortunetly, there aren't really any better collections of house rules for Gygax (unless you count Greyhawk). Arneson's are scattered about in many places (such as fatigue rules in Garbage Pits of Despair). Probably his best known ones were the use of the + rating of swords as an attack ability against negative AC and the rule that if ability scores did not total 50-60 points, the player should drop and reroll high and low scores. Going through Arneson's web posts won't take as long as you might think. There's only about a hundred of them, all on this board. Not like the thousands of scattered posts by Mr. Gygax.