Today on the Barrowmaze Facebook page, Barrowmaze author Greg Gillespie mentioned a recent falling out he has had with Dan Proctor, who created Labyrinth Lord. Greg was a big supporter of Labyrinth Lord in the past, but now he seems to be looking to focus his support elsewhere, including tossing around the idea of creating his own set of OSR rules.
Greg wrote:
In the foreseeable future I may create my own BX / .75 Ad&d clone and publish to it. I havent decided yet. Thoughts?
https://www.facebook.com/groups/434718316655624
Old School Essentials seems to be the most popular B/X retroclone right now. Its quite the nice product.
Labyrinth Lord came before OSE, but it doesn't seem to generate much excitement these days. Indeed, Greg Gillespie seems to be disappointed in how the creator is letting the game languish with inactivity.
The D&D Rules Cyclopedia is available as a Print on Demand book. And Lamentations of the Flame Princess is more or less a B/X clone. As is Dark Dungeons. And there are a few others.
Greg is a great designer, so I'm interested in seeing what kind of rules set he would come up with, particularly his take on mixing B/X with AD&D. Labyrinth Lord Advanced does this, and so does OSE Advanced, but I think Greg could come up with something better. But is there room for yet another rules set?
BTW, Greg is anti-Woke, while Dan Proctor has made some woke statements in the past. I don't know if this had anything to do with their recent disagreements though. But I do like the idea of supporting anti-Woke authors, particularly now more than ever, due to WotC's current fiasco of re-writing D&D lore.
I was never a big fan of Labyrinth Lord. I didn't think it was particularly well written (which is one of the biggest selling points of B/X), and the AD&D elements were unnecessary and poorly integrated (no I'm not talking about the Advanced Edition Companion; there are AD&D elements in the core LL book). But it was one of the first clones to get into distribution, which seemed to be the main focus of the author, so it became the default thing to slap on modules to indicate they were written for B/X.
Lamentations of the Flame Princess is not a B/X clone. It's based on B/X, but there are some very major differences. Dark Dungeons is a pretty straight clone of the Rules Cyclopedia, which contains B/X (more or less), but also contains a lot of other stuff that Mentzer added in the Companion and Masters sets. Another not-clone of B/X (but closer than Lamentations) is Basic Fantasy, which has the virtue of being dirt cheap, and having a great community. It does add some AD&Disms that the author prefers, though (like separating race as class).
There are a lot of attempts to merge elements of AD&D and Basic D&D. That in itself isn't a selling point. It's going to be all about the details.
I hope not. We really don't need any more B/X clones. He should go with OSE or Basic Fantasy, both popular, active and well supported/maintained. Greg makes incredible mega dungeon modules. I'd hate to see his abilities wasted on traveling such a well worn road.
The world doesn't need anymore B/X clones with AD&D extensions. Let's see something new.
The only reason I backed the OSE Kickstarter is for the promised alternative genre rules on the core.
I was actually thinking about this recently because I backed Gillespie's forthcoming megadungeon but was leaning towards using my house-ruled version of OSE, which brings in stuff from ACKS & DCC, rather than Labyrinth Lord, to play it. Not sure we need yet another B/X clone or variation at this point. Labyrinth Lord could certainly benefit from an updating and better editing & organization. Dan Proctor has pretty much let it sit untouched for years so far as I can tell and various other games have now moved into the prime real estate it once occupied in the OSR.
And for me, the digest or A5 sizing of OSE is a selling point. Much easier to cart those smaller books around and use them at the table. Swords & Wizardry did that with their boxed set last year, though I skipped it since I prefer everything in one book if possible rather than a bunch of little books.
yeah, well OSE has pretty much come along and ate LL's lunch
Quote from: Palleon on December 17, 2021, 07:33:26 PM
The world doesn't need anymore B/X clones with AD&D extensions. Let's see something new.
The only reason I backed the OSE Kickstarter is for the promised alternative genre rules on the core.
https://necroticgnome.com/collections/coming-soon/products/old-school-essentials-post-apocalyptic
I wish him success, but another B/X-based sorta clone is not something that interests me in the slightest. At least not as a set of rules. If it turns into an entire game line that offers well-written adventure modules that are compatible with my games, then I'd welcome that aspect.
I'll be sticking with BFRPG and Swords & Wizardry. Played an online session of BFRPG on Wednesday and it is a very nice version of B/X, though I do like the S&W unified save a lot. If I want pure B/X I'll use B/X.
Edit: Not been particularly impressed by what I've seen of Gillespie personally, and I once saw a review of Barrowmaze by a student of his who said they had to have proof of purchasing the module to pass his teaching course! :o
What about Sine Nomine's Worlds Without Number?
People were clamoring for it for years. I expected it to make a serious splash in the OSR world. Did it make an impact, or just fade away?
It hasn't made a huge splash, no. I've barely looked through my Kickstarted copy.
Greg clarified a bit more on the Barrowmaze Facebook page:
I was asked to expand on the .75 D&D comment.
Many of my generation grew up using the B/X Engine with the chrome of the Ad&d books. I'm poaching the term .75 D&D from my friend James Mal at Grognardia (tips cap).
We used group init and never bothered counting segments for spells etc. So, it played fast but included the races, spells, magic items, and monsters of Ad&d. No weapon speed factors or othe lr stuff that bogged down the game.
It also included tweaks like a saving throw for Sleep (which I still do) and Shadows as undead. Among other things.
I adore miniatures, as you know, and I much prefer movement rates of 5 foot squares (whether you use minis at the table or not) over TSR movement rules. We use a rules-lite miniature approach at my table that works great.
My books have been written for my own table (with my players) using LL as the base but those with a close eye can see I used AC10 (bc the math is smoother) and I incorporate a lot of house rules (you can see some on the inside of my DM screens etc).
It's all easily ignored if you prefer btb.
My approach makes it easy to play your ruleset of choice with an edition that has TSR-DNA, forwards or backwards.
I'm tired of looking at crappy art that, honestly, isn't set in the culture and history of the game or inspired by it. Granted, that's question of subjective taste, and I'm ok with that.
So, just a wee bit of context.
If I did this, I'd do it inbetween adventures cycles so it wouldn't slow my rate of publication.
So, a B/X and AD&D hybrid. When OSE was brought up, Greg mentions he doesn't like the art or the digest size of the OSE books.
After reading Greg's clarification, I'm still not really seeing the need for yet another B/X clone, even with the AD&D stuff bolted on unless he just really wants his house rules in print, which he might. Pretty much any of the available clones or related games like Labyrinth Lord, Swords & Wizardry, OSE, BFRPG, Dark Dungeons, Adventures Dark & Deep, Castles & Crusades, Hyperborea, or the originals can be used to run any of his megadungeons on the fly as is.
Like most of us here, I suspect, I've tried a bunch of these and ended up still cobbling together house rules to my liking from all of them. So now we run Castles & Crusades for the AD&D experience and OSE (with DCC/ACKS infusions) for the B/X experience. And I still have one Swords & Wizardry campaign going on because we want to play their forthcoming high level megadungeon. That has only a couple house rules, like criticals.
But not sure I'd go for yet another similar game if the megadungeons are still compatible with all of the above. I also disagree with Greg pn digest-sized books, which I like. OSE's artwork is more of a mixed bag for me, however.
Quote from: Crusader X on December 18, 2021, 04:18:57 PM
Greg clarified a bit more on the Barrowmaze Facebook page:
I was asked to expand on the .75 D&D comment.
Many of my generation grew up using the B/X Engine with the chrome of the Ad&d books. I'm poaching the term .75 D&D from my friend James Mal at Grognardia (tips cap).
IMO this niche is already filled by Swords & Wizardry Complete, but others may feel differently.
Honestly, I'm surprised that OSE is even a thing, let alone another B/X variant coming into the picture.
I concur with the consensus that if someone makes another B/X clone, they'll have to do something radically new. Just sticking a few rules from AD&D isn't going to cut it.
Quote from: S'mon on December 18, 2021, 05:08:26 AMEdit: Not been particularly impressed by what I've seen of Gillespie personally, and I once saw a review of Barrowmaze by a student of his who said they had to have proof of purchasing the module to pass his teaching course! :o
Yeah. Greg pissed me off over some silly thing years ago after I had backed both of his Barromaze kickstarters and used it as the main dungeon of my B/X campaign.
I don't really think there's room for any clone. Any one that sells now is mainly because of art/look, because THE RULES ARE ALL THE SAME in a clone.
I can't understand what kind of idiot would own the B/X or RC stuff, and then also get Labyrinth Lord, and OSE, and S&W, and then think "Man I sure need another identical fucking game as those from the guy who made barrowmaze"!
Meanwhile, the OSR is full of games that actually do AWESOME NEW THINGS with the D&D basic rules. Buy those.
Well, actually OSE Advanced is different, as it B/Xifies the advanced classes, in some cases pretty significantly. In that sense, in addition to the obvious changes in layout & presentation, it represents an advancement over Labyrinth Lord.
B/X Essentials, which morphed into OSE, not so much. In that case, it's likely a matter of aesthetics and personal preferences. For me personally, I like everything in as few volumes as possible (preferably one) and I like the smaller sized books. Certain rule tweaks, like the single saving throw of S&W and some other games are nice too.
That being said, I do think we've hit the saturation point as I noted above because you can basically take any of the aforementioned games and easily house rule it your tastes.