I've never run OD&D without Chainmail, though now I may have to (my copy of Chainmail having been destroyed due to a burst water pipe). That said, OD&D is largely self contained (and includes the alternate system for determining hits in combat).
The one thing that OD&D does not seem to be clear on is the order in which charcters take action during combat (it only mentions that it's based on Dex). And I cannot, for the life of me, recall how Chainmail handles this. Could somebody fill me in? Thanks much!
Also, while I'm at it, I picked up copies of the Role-Aids supplements Dark Folk and Arch Magic today with an eye toward using them with OD&D (Dark Folk looks particularly good). Any thoughts on good ways to implement either?
I don't have my Chainmail handy, but in Holmes Basic (bridging O and OA), characters went in the order of Dexterity, which was rolled for monsters every encounter. That's not the Chainmail system, but probably in the spirit of the game. I usually just roll a d6 when running one-offs.
[edit]IIRC, Chainmail uses d6s, higher wins, but gives special considerations to missiles and artillery.[/edit]
Quote from: MelanI don't have my Chainmail handy, but in Holmes Basic (bridging O and OA), characters went in the order of Dexterity, which was rolled for monsters every encounter. That's not the Chainmail system, but probably in the spirit of the game. I usually just roll a d6 when running one-offs.
Yeah, I own Holmes (in PDF and print), but I was shooting for a 100% Original D&D feel. That said, I may end up using the Holmes "first blow" system (which also uses a d6 for characters whose Dex scores are within q-2 points of each other) just because it builds on the idea of first blows trading on Dex (which is, actually, briefly mentioned in OD&D but never explained).
Also you can pick up Chainmail as a PDF over on paizo.com, that would solve the problem of not having the book handy.