OD&D Variants from 1974-1978

[Falconer]

Would it be possible to put together a complete list of known and extant OD&D house rule documents that date back to 1974-1978? I am especially interested in those that were published and/or widely circulated in that timeframe.

It would also be useful to keep track of where these house rules originated.

I have in mind “The Perrin Conventions” (Bay Area) and “Warlock” (CalTech), both of which assume that you actually own a copy of OD&D, but clarify and/or tweak the rules, to a lesser or greater degree. I should clarify that by “Warlock” I mean the 34-page version published in The Spartan #9. Later, “Complete” versions would not qualify, because you don’t need OD&D to run them. The same logic would obviously disqualify RuneQuest (and Chivalry & Sorcery, Tunnels & Trolls, Empire of the Petal Throne etc.).

So, what else qualifies, and why?

Melee+Wizard? (Texas—where exactly?)
The Arduin Grimoire? (also Bay Area)
Tome of Mid-Kimia? (U.C. San Diego)

I don’t have much/any experience with any of the above to say.

Let’s leave Holmes Basic and AD&D out of this, as well as leave aside the question of Gygaxian vs Arnesonian, please.

[talysman]

Is there a copy of the 34-page Warlock somewhere? I have a PDF of what appears to be a much later version of Warlock, but that just makes me curious what it looked like closer to the OD&D days.

By "Melee+Wizard", what do you mean? I associate those names with the Steve Jackson-designed microgames, published by Metagaming, but these aren't D&D at all; they are completely unrelated fantasy combat and magic rules that eventually became part of The Fantasy Trip. Some people may have used them as drop-in replacements for the D&D combat and magic rules, retaining the class/xp/level structure and monsters, but I don't know of anyone ever writing a house rule document specifying how they did it.

[Falconer]

Aug 9, 2012 20:27:31 GMT -6 talysman said:

By "Melee+Wizard", what do you mean? I associate those names with the Steve Jackson-designed microgames, published by Metagaming, but these aren't D&D at all; they are completely unrelated fantasy combat and magic rules that eventually became part of The Fantasy Trip. Some people may have used them as drop-in replacements for the D&D combat and magic rules, retaining the class/xp/level structure and monsters, but I don't know of anyone ever writing a house rule document specifying how they did it.

Yes, that is what I am referring to.

Melee
Wizard

I’m not sure (that’s why I asked), because I have no actual experience with it, but it seems to me from the latter link that it is just character creation and combat rules, and that it is meant to be plugged into D&D.

Players create wizard figures and send them into battle in arenas or underground tunnels.

If you have MELEE, you can involve fighting men (orcs, goblins, etc.) in your wizardly duels ... or send a group of fighters down the tunnel with a wizard along as Special Weapons Section.

Correct me if I am wrong in my interpretation.

[Otto Harkaman]

I think Melee/Wizard is heavily influenced by OD&D. Its a reaction to players wanting more and those players working for a company whose boss demanded clarity and profits. I think Howard Thompson of Metagaming is a fascinating personage in that boom era of gaming.

I think if you word count instead of page count you will find the metagaming rules as verbose as the OD&D ones, except for monster listings and treasure. Well and the spells are also more brief, etc.

[Zenopus]

Aug 9, 2012 20:27:31 GMT -6 talysman said:

Is there a copy of the 34-page Warlock somewhere? I have a PDF of what appears to be a much later version of Warlock, but that just makes me curious what it looked like closer to the OD&D days.

Not that I'm aware of. It appears on Ebay a few times a year, generally $30-50 depending on how many are interested at the time.

The 1978 "Complete Warlock" still required OD&D at the time it was published, as it only covers Men & Magic material. The two later books may have made it a complete stand-alone game, but I haven't seen those.

[talysman]

Aug 9, 2012 21:07:57 GMT -6 Falconer said:

Aug 9, 2012 20:27:31 GMT -6 talysman said:

By "Melee+Wizard", what do you mean? I associate those names with the Steve Jackson-designed microgames, published by Metagaming, but these aren't D&D at all; they are completely unrelated fantasy combat and magic rules that eventually became part of The Fantasy Trip. Some people may have used them as drop-in replacements for the D&D combat and magic rules, retaining the class/xp/level structure and monsters, but I don't know of anyone ever writing a house rule document specifying how they did it.

Yes, that is what I am referring to.

Melee
Wizard

I’m not sure (that’s why I asked), because I have no actual experience with it, but it seems to me from the latter link that it is just character creation and combat rules, and that it is meant to be plugged into D&D.

If you have MELEE, you can involve fighting men (orcs, goblins, etc.) in your wizardly duels ... or send a group of fighters down the tunnel with a wizard along as Special Weapons Section.

Correct me if I am wrong in my interpretation.

Metagaming was a wargame company that specialized in microgames -- a set of maps, counters, tiny dice, and a small rulebook in a cardboard box about the size of a smallish paperback book. They had a number of science fiction games, mostly, but then came Melee, which is a man-to-man fantasy wargame. It's only vaguely related to D&D in that it has two stats, Strength and Dexterity, that have the same names. The combat system is actually quite different, and the fantasy creatures are limited to a couple from Tolkien or from fairy tales, so there's a slight accidental resemblance.

The turn is 5 seconds long and actions are spelled out in much more detail. It's simple, but not as abstract as D&D. It's more like Steve Jackson's take on just the man-to-man rules from Chainmail, but with inspiration from tactical board wargames instead of from minis.

Wizard adds an IQ stat and a spell system. A couple spells are arguably D&D inspired, but since spells are treated as skills with IQ prerequisites and a ST point cost, and some spells (Image and Illusion, for example,) work very differently, the magic system feels nothing like D&D. Plus, again, it's a tactical board wargame, so all the spells are designed to work without the need for a referee, as is Melee. Again, aside from the spell point system, it resembles magic from Chainmail more than magic from D&D.

When Howard Thompson told Steve Jackson "we need to get one of them RPG thingies," Melee and Wizard were used as core rulesets in The Fantasy Trip. Because TFT is more obviously built as a competitor to D&D, there are some obvious nods to luring customers away from D&D: reeks, for example, are renamed slimes and oozes, trolls regenerate. But there's weirdness: intelligent ambulatory octopuses, vampirism as a disease, no gods or clerical magic, gargoyles as a player race. Also, gunpowder. It winds up being less D&D-ish than either Tunnels & Trolls or Runequest, which makes sense, since the latter two started as direct responses to D&D, while TFT grew from different roots towards becoming D&D-like.

The closest thing to TFT today is GURPS, which is understandable; they aren't directly connected (Steve Jackson couldn't get the rights to TFT, so he had to start over,) but it is the same designer.

[Finarvyn]

Yeah, I didn't play much of TFT but it never seemed very OD&D-like to me. I agree that it has a clear GURPS feel to it.

[Falconer]

I guess I assumed, since the actual The Fantasy Trip RPG didn’t come out until 1980, that until then, people who liked Melee and Wizard might have used them with OD&D. But I guess I could scratch that theory if there’s no evidence of it.

[aldarron]

There's the '76 Gencon Judges Guild rules. It's pretty dang extensive, and while some of the rules are tournament play only kind of things, most of them are clarifications/additions to the 3lbb's.

[Falconer]

Is that published here?

[Finarvyn]

That's the booklet. It's interesting because it has tournament rules, which I suppose would be different in some ways from regular-play rules.

[Zenopus]

The Judges Guild Ready Ref Sheets (1977, but compiling material published earlier) could also be considered their own OD&D variant. They've got their own take on a lot different OD&D rules, e.g., Weapon Priority table for initiative.

[talysman]

Aug 10, 2012 7:54:36 GMT -6 Falconer said:

I guess I assumed, since the actual The Fantasy Trip RPG didn’t come out until 1980, that until then, people who liked Melee and Wizard might have used them with OD&D. But I guess I could scratch that theory if there’s no evidence of it.

I suspect someone may have. I know I considered it, back when I ran both D&D and TFT, but never got around to doing it. I think I've heard some people in various forums say they tried it, but I can't confirm. But that's more like taking rules from some other board game or unrelated RPG and dropping them into D&D. Like, say, some people using more than just the map from Outdoor Survival, or using the combat system from Magic Realm. But Melee and Wizard were never designed as a D&D variant.

Aug 10, 2012 15:55:47 GMT -6 Zenopus said:

The Judges Guild Ready Ref Sheets (1977, but compiling material published earlier) could also be considered their own OD&D variant. They've got their own take on a lot different OD&D rules, e.g., Weapon Priority table for initiative.

I just recently bought these, based on recommendations I read here, and I agree that they are almost a whole D&D variant. I didn't know about them back in the day; only JG products we used were Frontier Forts of Kelnore and maybe one other I've forgotten. They are actually quite interesting, even if many things (like the social system) is stuff I won't use.

[coffee]

Aug 10, 2012 7:54:36 GMT -6 Falconer said:

I guess I assumed, since the actual The Fantasy Trip RPG didn’t come out until 1980, that until then, people who liked Melee and Wizard might have used them with OD&D. But I guess I could scratch that theory if there’s no evidence of it.

I read an interview with Steve Jackson where he said he liked D&D but hated the combat system. I don't remember if he specifically said or if I just assumed, but that's why he created Melee and later Wizard.

[derv]

Maybe this would be of interest:

www.thedelversdungeon.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=37&p=753

[Falconer]

Yes, thanks! Do we know if Bob Blake wrote that?

[increment]

I'd say there are quite a few of these out there, though it depends on exactly how we understand the definition of "house rules." A number of common variants made more substantial changes to the base D&D game than, say, first printing T&T did, and although first print T&T is supposedly playable independently, it surely assumes a great deal of material from baseline D&D. Even "Warlock," as it appeared in the Spartan quarterly, is subtitled "How to Play D and D Without Playing D and D." But could you play it without playing D&D?

In the mid to late 1970s, I'd say that most commonly house rules circulated in periodicals. Many early campaigns had newsletters that promulgated their house rules - I'm thinking here of zines like the Ryth Chronicle or the Haven Herald. In the first years of its existence, Alarums & Excursions carried so many house rules that you'd be hard pressed to enumerate them all, and some are quite extensive - comparable to "Warlock." Mostly new character classes, monsters, hit location systems and spell point systems. Also in Alarums you will see occasional notices for house rulesets made available for sale, like say the Realm Fantastic by Richard Schwall.

Conventions and especially tournaments also prompted the publication of house rules. In my collection I have a sixty-page set of rules that were attached to the third annual Princeton University D&D Convention (1979), thoroughly illustrated and well organized, which attempted to summarize "all systems and ideas in use here at Princeton" for the benefit of convention attendees. Many dungeons published their own house rules, and some became canon - Peter Aronson, a player in the Boston dungeons of Edwyr and Gorree, snuck his Illusionist into later D&D rulebooks, for example.

Some house rules did aspire to independence from D&D - take for example Eric Roberts's Boston-area Mirkwood Tales, a game famous for its connection to the development of Zork. It tied itself far more closely to Tolkien than D&D did, but its system is still obviously derivative of D&D. The surviving 1977 Mirkwood Tales rulebook outlines a more or less complete system, though.

If you include things like the Arduin Grimoire in your list, then surely you should include the Manual of Aurania (from Aero Hobbies). There are a number of similar anthologies of variant rules.

The thread already correctly concluded that Melee & Wizard are tactical simulation games that don't belong on this list.

[machfront]

Aug 12, 2012 2:27:15 GMT -6 increment said:

A number of common variants made more substantial changes to the base D&D game than, say, first printing T&T did, and although first print T&T is supposedly playable independently, it surely assumes a great deal of material from baseline D&D.

I'm not sure where the assumption comes from, but T&T is certainly its own game. Even the first printing.
I also wouldn't call it a D&D variant. Inspired by D&D? Insomuch that it's a rpg and its author, after reading D&D once was fascinated by the concept and wrote his own the next day.
T&T works very differently from D&D and even knowledge of D&D would do little to help T&T play.

[Sean Michael Kelly]

Aug 12, 2012 9:20:29 GMT -6 machfront said:

I'm not sure where the assumption comes from, but T&T is certainly its own game. Even the first printing.
I also wouldn't call it a D&D variant. Inspired by D&D? Insomuch that it's a rpg and its author, after reading D&D once was fascinated by the concept and wrote his own the next day.
T&T works very differently from D&D and even knowledge of D&D would do little to help T&T play.

I'd agree. Though I still haven't played T&T yet, apart from some semantics, the mechanics seem quite different. Just last night I read about 1/3 of the "7th Ed."

[thorswulf]

Ken StAndre's bio in Different Worlds #1 relates that he was impressed with what he saw, but he didn't care for polyhedral dice, and he felt he could do better. In a nutshell at any rate as I'm vastly paraphrasing. So yes it is it's own system, but it was inspired by oD&D.

[increment]

Aug 12, 2012 9:20:29 GMT -6 machfront said:

I'm not sure where the assumption comes from, but T&T is certainly its own game. Even the first printing.
I also wouldn't call it a D&D variant. Inspired by D&D? Insomuch that it's a rpg and its author, after reading D&D once was fascinated by the concept and wrote his own the next day.
T&T works very differently from D&D and even knowledge of D&D would do little to help T&T play.

I'm sorry, I wasn't intending to pick a fight there, it was a pretty offhand remark that I should probably qualify and elaborate. To be clear, I didn't say that T&T wasn't its own game - I said that there exist variants of the era that change baseline D&D more than T&T did, and that T&T assumes its players' familiarity with D&D's baseline material. I maintain that both those statements are defensible.

I was referring to the first printing of T&T, and in particular to the early criticisms (which I cite in my book in Section 5.6) from people who were trying to figure out how things like movement or time worked in T&T, or even simple questions like how many silver pieces made up a gold piece. St. Andre conceded then that there were plenty of aspects of the system that he neglected to specify simply because they were too obvious - I suspect that is a way of saying that D&D filled in the gaps around T&T when it came to some of those fundamentals. The lack of monster specification, lack of magic items and other things that were omitted in order to keep the rulebook small also created big gaps that, at that time, only D&D would really fill. I can also show you early advertisements for T&T that include statements like "if you already have D&D, T&T has some great ideas for new spells, etc." (that's from Wargamer's Information #9), suggesting that initially T&T was marketed as both a standalone and as an aid for D&D.

So it's not just an assumption on my part to say that T&T wasn't as independent at its inception as its creator argued it was - I said it because the evidence I see supports it. I would certainly agree that it rapidly grew and became an independent game, but I believe there is a good argument to be made that in its first printing it was not as independent as its author sometimes maintains.

There are plenty of other early variants/games that change D&D at least as much as T&T does. Most people aren't yet familiar with Grasstek's Rules to the Game of Dungeon, the 1974 Minneapolis game that is actually the second RPG (again, it's in my book, Section 5.3, though the unpublished "Castle Keep" predecessor is discussed in 5.1), but it represents a similar simplification of the dungeon adventure system. I'd also venture that if you compare first-printing T&T and the Spartan #9 "Warlock," I think you'd have a hard time judging which one makes a more fundamental shift from the mechanics of D&D.

[machfront]

increment,
First of all, please don't apologize. I didn't think you were picking a fight. Nor was I. Exchange of ideas an' all that.

You make a lot of sense. Still, I'm not so sure. I own a copy of first edition and its every bit as "clear" as the 3LBBs are.
Ken and the Phoenix Circle didn't really give two craps about wargamey stuff like movement. These weren't mini wargames players who became enamored or otherwise engaged in this new kind of game...these were folks that dug late 60s S&S paperbacks and S&S comics who wanted to pretend to play roles in such a sort of world, etc.
Monsters, as far as I know, were always something that the folks of the Phoenix Circle wanted to do 'from the hip' at their own table without the constriction of standardized monster stats (hence the MR15 dragons and MR200 orcs in games and solos, etc.).

I suppose it would make sense to compare T&T to D&D in ads, since there was nothing else to compare it to, yes?
Heck, the Circle referred to what they played in the early months as "D&D" despite it being not really anything like it.

In fact, if we were to imagine T&T as a sort of 'expansion' of D&D, cool...but...what would we glean that's appropriately applicable to T&T? I'd imagine that we'd be more confused and conflicted. So much so that we'd simply choose one or the other.

Even first printing of T&T, while using most of the attribute names, and even "experience points" (as opposed to the games' later "adventure points"), and "Magic user" as opposed to "wizard" and having three classes and levels, the similarities such as they are, end there.
Class abilities are different. Attributes work differently. In fact, attributes in T&T cover everything that 'to hit' and saves and hit points cover in D&D. Spell point system, totally different spells with totally different effects and attitude. "Saving Rolls" for whatever else. It's as far away from D&D as it could be as a game that came out so soon while being inspired by D&D. In fact, to be fair, I'm surprised it's so far away from D&D.

Besides, D&D is 'stuffy' and T&T games with its tongue out. ;D

[cadriel]

In the first couple of years, from what I've seen, T&T was pretty much seen as the cheaper, rules-lite equivalent to D&D. It only cost a few dollars, where D&D was $10, which in today's money would be at least $40. The differences didn't matter too much, since people made of the games what they wanted anyway, and T&T had the added advantage that you only needed six-sided dice. It was seen as being better than just pirating D&D as many people at the time were doing.

Of course these games were entirely new and totally different - there wasn't much of a baseline yet, and people felt free to express their ideas as basically "D&D but different." This changed rapidly as roleplaying went from a sideline in wargaming to its own thing, of course. The big shift was around the change from OD&D to AD&D, as I've seen it, with the three hardcovers cementing TSR's role as the dominant voice.

[increment]

I think we're close to the same page here, machfront. Bringing it back around to Falconer's original topic (which we're at some risk of derailing), my first note was trying to say that when authors presented their work as either merely house rules or as an independent game, they were making a value judgment. With hindsight, we can see that different authors used very different criteria to make that value judgment. It is therefore hard to really say what were "house rules" and what weren't. I'm sure an author like St. Andre began with small changes, and for some time, as you note, the PCC still called the game "D&D." How far you need to go to mark a departure from D&D is the tough question.

Some cases are easy to call. When Nicolai Shapero published four pages of the house rules for his Stormgate dungeon in Lords of Chaos #2, it's pretty clear that he didn't make a clean break from D&D. If we take a look at a variant like "Warlock," though, we see that it changes class (collapsing class and race into type, so "Elves" and "Thieves" are different types), replaces spell memorization with a spell point system, changes the spell list dramatically, completely refactors combat (into a percentile roll, with critical hits/fumbles), but doesn't say anything about magic items (despite redoing the basic equipment list) or monsters. It's unclear from the "Without Playing D and D" quip whether the authors really intended it to be a variant or a game separate from D&D. Perrin made similar noises about his own house rules potentially breaking off into a new game, especially as TSR began to exert more pressure on the community to prevent fans from reselling any copyrighted material.

Beyond the works I mentioned earlier like the Manual of Aurania and the Realm Fantastic, I would probably also add to this list the "World of Arches" (Mike Gilbert, 1977) and "Sir Pellinor's Game" (Mike Brines, though possibly this wasn't for sale until 1979). But again, pick up any issue of Alarums from 1975 to 1978, and you'll find a number of authors describing their house rules, some serializing them out over months or even years.

[jcstephens]

Aug 12, 2012 9:55:42 GMT -6 thorswulf said:

Ken StAndre's bio in Different Worlds #1 relates that he was impressed with what he saw, but he didn't care for polyhedral dice, and he felt he could do better. In a nutshell at any rate as I'm vastly paraphrasing. So yes it is it's own system, but it was inspired by oD&D.

So it's the AK-47 of roleplaying games? Mikhail Kalashnikov is reputed to have said much the same thing about the German Sturmgewehr, just before inventing the Avtomat Kalashnikova.

[talysman]

Since I brought it up in another thread, I thought I'd try to list what I remembered of the changes to D&D that were on the mimeographed sheets we were using when I first played. I really wish there were a printed or PDF scan version of these rules, so that I could fill in the blanks and maybe figure out where the different elements came from, but I haven't found anyone who remembers seeing something like this.

- Fighter, Magic-User, Cleric. No Thief, that I recall.
- Wisdom was replaced with Piety.
- There were Piety Points and Magical Conductivity Points, for a spell point system.
- Spell point costs were based on spell level, with a progression something like 1d3, 1d4, 1d6, 2d4 ...
- I seem to remember at least some of the Greyhawk spells were on the list, and that there were spells above 6th level.
- Human, Dwarf, Elf, Hobbit, plus Dufflepud (one-legged dwarf swiped from the Narnia books.)
- There was a write-up for a Leech (healer) class, which was sort of a bonus class with four levels. We didn't actually use this, and I never typed up that part. I wished now I had, because it's intriguing; I'm not sure how it worked. You couldn't be *just* a Leech.

[vladtolenkov]

Curiously I was in my FLGS the other day--The War House in Long Beach, CA--and I noticed a pile of copies of Warlock in the spinner rack at the front of the store. I leafed through the copy, and glancing at the back cover I saw that the War House itself was listed as the publisher on the back cover! I think this is the later fatter version, but they seemed to have a bunch of Warlock stuff in the rack which I didn't really take the time to go through. I really should have asked about them, but the store was being minded by a 16 year old who was engrossed in a MMO, so I let it go.

Just a note in case any body is interested.

[aramis]

(Sure, this reply is 9 years late.)

The best known published variants of OD&D in the early days were Empire of the Petal Throne and Metamorphosis Alpha... both released by TSR.

As for T&T, Ken St. Andre, with Liz Danforth and Bear Peters were not just SF fans and avid readers... but librarians. Also, Ken was at GenCon because he was a wargamer. (Gen Con was all about the TT boardgames until the release of D&D OE)... Ken still is a wargamer. Not a "serious" one, but a lifelong player of a variety of games.

Ken was not a minis-gamer; Dave Arneson and Gary Gygax both were.

[Finarvyn]

aramis -- good to have you back! Seems like we used to be on all of the same boards, not so much lately. (I haven't posted much on the Star Trek board in a while.)