Quote from: Justin Alexander;864775All of the clones, pretty much by necessity, take all of the interesting questions raised by the original books and answer them for you. They're books of crossword puzzles where all the answers have been filled in by somebody else.

First printing White Box Swords and Wizardry has all the ambiguities and then some intact.

Quote from: Phillip;864380The Holmes edition was pretty close to the original set so far as it went (which was not into the details of wilderness, naval or aerial expeditions, or higher levels).

At first glance, Mazes & Perils looks like a promising elaboration on Holmes. I'm not well enough acquainted either with it or with Delving Deeper to make a comparison, though.

The Holmes Manuscript was indeed close to OD&D but the published version was not - it was a weird hybrid of Holmes's interpretations of OD&D, half-formed rules that didn't necessarily make it into AD&D, and some cool innovations that must have come from Holmes himself (or the Caltech rules he also played with).

Mazes & Perils takes the conceit of Holmes being an introduction to AD&D (which was just TSR marketing hype in the original) and runs with it, so it's much more of a bridge between OD&D and AD&D than Holmes ever was.

There is another Holmes clone, though.

Quote from: Spinachcat;864477Considering the ease in finding the actual OD&D pdfs online, everyone can see what the hoopla was about. What I found notable about reading OD&D word for word after decades of playing "my OD&D" (an amalgam of 0e, 1e, Red book, whatever) was how different OD&D RAW was compared to any OD&D I played back in the day with various DMs.

Definitely, and that's the thing I reinforce to friends who decide to join me in delving into earlier versions--you're not going to stumble upon some ur-version of the game that is going to recreate a golden age of gaming. The game, as played in 74, 75, or whenever is a collection of the rules as they appeared on the books, the way that players read those rules, the culture of each gaming group, and so many other things that are lightning that cannot be bottled.

Quote from: GameDaddy;864788It's also easy to buy 0D&D books, even now the original white 1974 bookset in good condition can be found for less than $100...

https://www.acaeum.com/forum/viewforum.php?cache=1&f=3

For a collector, its a decent price. For someone curious just to read the original game, its a tad expensive these days.

Quote from: Phillip;864377The main thing as I see it is grasping the larger form and how one should approach it. Perhaps worth getting if you can are Chainmail by Gygax and Perrin (TSR Hobbies), Best of the Dragon Vol. I (TSR), Ready Ref Sheets (Judges Guild) and Arneson's The First Fantasy Campaign (Judges Guild).

This list is spot-on. I keep copies of all of these on my desk for reference. Chainmail has the pre-OD&D history of the mechanics, BotD has those awesome early variant articles, the Ready Ref sheets are chock full of neat tables, and Arneson's FFC is a great example of pre-OD&D campaign play.

Quote from: Phillip;864377Swords & Wizardry is not so much a rigorous clone as a free adaptation to suit the author's preference, very intentionally a "house rules" set. (Rather oddly, some spell names got changed for the "White Box" edition, as I recall, but maybe that has been fixed.)

Honestly, a few things happened to cause some of this. (1) A "steering committee" had some say into what rules options went into the theing, and (2) as WB was one of the first ever clone games, I was really nervous about copyright and lawsuits and felt that some cosmetic changes would make WB different without really changing anything. (I thought that changing spell names wasn't a big deal but most folks wanted a more exact copy, so some of those things were tweaked in later printings.)

I've started a thread going through the original booklets and pointing out differences from the 1981 "BX" edition, according to my own sense of what's significant enough to go into in detail about. I also throw in some commentary along the way.

http://www.therpgsite.com/showthread.php?t=33511

Please pitch in if you've got the old texts and think I've neglected something.

Probably S&W White Box, but I am very partial to Iron Falcon, which is 100% amazing.

What makes Iron Falcon amazing? I looked through the first few pages of the PDF and it didn't leap out at me why I should keep reading.

What am I missing?

All the clones are different games then the original.  Yes, people could have house ruled there campaigns "back in the day" into one of the clones, sure.

If you do not mind going quasi-legal, look for the one volume of OD&D with the Franzetta cover.  It is great.

Want clones that are actually clones?  Check out FULL METAL PLATE MAIL.  You can get it on LULU.  It is pretty much the three little booklets written by a guy who understands English.  TORCH & SWORD (beta) is basically a minimalist version of the three little booklets but it is missing stuff.  Look it up on Google.