 |
Lost on a strange planet?
Got extra muscles?
Don't get on with the locals?
(But like the babes?)
Really hate Giant Apes?
BRING IT ON!
p4 (non-TSR edition)
D&D Warrior's of Mars |
I've been having some fun raid-mining some links from the
OD&D Discussion boards
Original Dungeons & Dragons* supplements and similar are a wonderful resource for fans of any fantasy system, because they illustrate how a confident DM can remaster their prefer system to suit alternative settings. They're also of great use to retro/nostalgia/simulcrum clone market which is the closest many of us get to early fantasy role-playing. Given a choice to adapt sci-fantasy at the moment my head is stuck somewhere between Tunnels & Trolls, S&W Whitebox and Epees & Sorcellaire, since these all offer fastplay combat with magic whilst being simple enough to adapt to any setting. By the way, I'm avoiding T&T New Khazan here, since the conversion to sci-fi is almost too high-tech - "hi-sci-fantasy"? We're just talking swords, axes, clubs, maybe low powered rifles (like slow loading cross-bows) - simple armour types. As far as I'm concerned I'd be happy for the stats of orcs to represent green skinned aliens - maybe add a couple of arms and tusks ... carnivorous apes and dinosaurs can pretty much fill in for all sorts of classical beasties. I'm certainly not that worried about vehicle-to-vehicle combat when the action is mainly about leaping pirate style from one platform to another and beating the living daylights out of a tribal enemy with a hand-to-hand weapon. -Think Conan on a Tatooine skiff - no lightsabers please, we're sci-fantasy Cimmerian!
*OD&D is generally used to refer to the very original Dungeons & Dragons rules printed in 1974 from TSR (ref Acaeum) which also required the earlier Chainmail rules to play.
Links copied from the
Grey Elf's page of classic editions:
Dungeons & Dragons Warriors of Mars, (PDF)
"a Barsoom OD&D supplement by "Doc" from the OD&D forums--based off of the original Warriors of Mars Miniatures Battles
game put out by TSR in 1974! He did such neat work I decided to format
it to match the other OD&D booklets and offer it here (with his
permission, of course"
And since we're talking about Conan...
The Age of Conan (PDF),
Age of Conan II: Secrets of Acheron (PDF)
3-panel DM Screen for the Age of Conan (PDF)
(Grey Elf is also responsible for
Elf Lair Games who produce retro-clone
Spellcraft and Swordplay -see also my blog post
here)
Further expansion
Adventures on Mars posted by Gloriousbattle (on Scribd)
For more goodies from where D&D and Mars collide, be sure to visit the
Warriors of Mars board on on the OD&D Discussion forum
I'm terribly under read, and I'm aware there's a lot less snogging in the very original books (I've rediscovered a 1920 antique copy of Princess of Mars... but the pages are so yellow I can barely read the text...I'm sure the "princess" is actually the big lizard thing...) but, just for testosterone fueled fun and giggles - here's a
Yahoo image search of "Frazetta + Mars" (not always safe for work and hard to explain to the girlfriend) - some of the art are tributes to good old Frazetta.
Moebius- an eternal dream loop is cut
Okay, I know that's a bit cheesy, but hey. Whilst I'm on the subject of artists, I was slightly touched by the news that Moebius had died, whose work is just to vast to describe, so many favourites to list - and to be honest I was less aware of his superhero art, but I knew of graphic novels and film designs. Google, wiki, and tumblr him - be swept away by the dreamlike imagery, ignore photos of eternal loops.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/17327374
First Edition AD&D "Premium" Reprints
Look if you haven't heard about this yet, you really are reading all of the wrong pages! Wizards of the Coast appear to be receiving pre-orders for the reprints of the 1977
Advanced Dungeons & Dragons rules. This is a really interesting move for Wizards and raising money for the
Gygax Memorial Fund seems like a really sweet idea.
I always think that when WotC say that they looking back at earlier editions it's just a ploy to convince players of older editions that they'll like the new unrecognisable ten book system. "It's zee same game"
 |
As Dr Seuss would say:
"Old Hat, New Hat!"
-in a general approval way-
if you now what I mean. :)
The original covers for
the MM can be seen here |
So if you're not sure about buying smelly old editions from ebay or a shiny Lulu copy of
OSRIC has no interest for you, then this is your opportunity to read the texts many of us worshipped back in the way-back salad-years hazy-70s-80s day.
If they truly are identical, and you only want to buy one book, I really must recommend the
Dungeon Masters Guide, which is organised is the strangest of ways, but is a delight to read - also note that in the appendix is a full list of monsters stats -if you don't have the Monster Manual to hand. On the other hand the
Monster Manual would make a perfect gift the players and non-players alike, it's not everyday you get the see so many unique descriptions of so many creatures from so many different stories in one book, also Gygax claims to have started work on the MM first. It has been mooted on a few blogs and forums that it is possible to play many games with the player's guides alone, in this case maybe playing original AD&D is workable with just the
Player's Handbook - after all, it contains all of the classes equipment, spells, classes and rules for combat.
The forewords are always quite interesting. It took me years to realise that when Gygax refers to "Dungeons & Dragons", that he means the rules
before the "Holmes" and the coloured box sets (B/X and BECMI et al), and that he clearly saw Advanced Dungeons & Dragons as an expansion (replacement) and continuation of those rules. This may seem obvious, but the development of the boxed sets was a journey of D&D in a slightly different, parallel, direction - debates are still had about this, and it's hard to summarise here. Friends and I started with the purple and red Basic boxes - that was "Dungeons & Dragons" to us, we knew that they weren't just an introduction to AD&D, but it was pretty clear that Advanced D&D was written earlier, and some of the gaming conventions and assumptions didn't always tie up with Basic/Expert. But these observations are down to subjective interpretation, the more you dig into the history of editions the more confusing it gets. AD&D is a sort of culmination and zenith of the rules which survived for a significantly long time in that edition, which probably indicates it's success and popularity. However these rules were rarely played in isolation, they were endlessly adjusted, amended and supplemented by articles in Dragon, White Dwarf and Imagine magazine. It was popular, it was informed. Players knew the difference between a dungeon-crawl and character story led games. The appendices for converting AD&D to Gamma World and Boot Hill also tell you a lot about the broad mindedness of the author and editors (if not, at least an awareness of cross-franchise marketing ;) )
In many ways, by buying the reprints of AD&D (1st edition) its as far back as you can get to the original ideas and dice mechanics without going down the ebay-collector and retro-clone routesin that search for OD&D.
My only problem with the Premium editions (and I know I'm not alone here) is that they could have used the original art as opposed to these new tributes, but maybe they are actually trying to sell it as a complete game for a new generation, or maybe it's an art "rights" thing. The new art pays loyal tribute to the originals, though. By the time I was playing, the covers had been revised and replaced with the Jeff Easley art (with the exception of Fiend Folio). I was playing in a group which was borrowing from the, then frighteningly modern,
Unearthed Arcana (and later
Oriental Adventures) which was the first serious reorganising of the rules before the much needed and overdue 2nd edition AD&D was released.
So buy em before they change their minds and bury the original AD&D forever! ;)
DMG
PH
MM
AD&D Forever!!
(Just don't talk to me about Psionics ...)
Here follows a selection of role-playing game rulebooks and retro-clones on Lulu:
- Starships and Spacemen
- Tunnels et Trolls (French 8th Edition) 
