Advanced Labyrinth Lord

 

So I heard about Advanced Labyrinth Lord, which is basically a "all the books in one" edition of the game. I love this game because it replicates my first encounter with D&D. Starting with the basic D&D set, adding the Expert set, mixing in AD&D parts as needed, and generally loving the dangerous mess until AD&D 2nd edition came along and sanitized the game for the mainstream market.

And I will call the game AL&L in this discussion, since I am getting a laugh out of saying Advanced Labyrinth and Lord out loud.

Yes, I picked up the Flossing Orcus cover for AL&L, since that is the coolest. The notion of Hell should always be hovering over an old-school game since in those days your parents forced you to go to church on Sunday, but the night before you and your friends were just in Hell fighting the forces of Satan. There is also the notion of "why Satan isn't listed as a monster" in these games, because honestly, that is the character the Dungeon Master plays.

That was a joke. But the metaphor fits perfectly.

That Cover Though

Yeah, that Orcus cover on AL&L is pure metal. You have sex, violence, and an elf who doesn't know what they are doing and firing off the page. There is also a sharp object pointed at Orcus' private parts. Seriously, since the fighter and the elf are looking away from Orcus, I get the feeling the wizard is summoning Orcus to help with this fight. Boss fight or summoning a greater demon to deal with a TPK, your choice, and just as metal each way.

There is another cover with a dragon head, but that to me looked like a party fighting a giant hand puppet so I opted for Orcus. A party fighting a giant hand puppet is also an apt metaphor for the game as well. The Orcus cover has that "evil" feel and also a mystery and open question hovering over it. It invites you in to see why, who, and how. The dragon head is a nice cover too, it just did not sing to me as much as this illustration of Orcus, which I feel is one of the iconic images for AL&L and Labyrinth Lord in general.

This is honestly a piece of art that elevates the game, even if the rules inside are 100% the same as the two-book edition. I love the two-tone tan and blue shading on the Orcus cover, along with the PCs who pop against that unholy blue fire. Excellent job here.

No Learning, More Room to Grow

Compared to some of the rules I have been working through, most notably Rolemaster Classic and Zweihander, there is nothing to learn here. There are no articles to write to decipher rules, no real way of getting a combat wrong, very little ways to create a character incorrectly, no complicated combat action system, no conditions, no crit charts, no complicated armor systems, no arcane magic systems, no game terms that leave me scratching my head, and interrupt based play is limited to holding actions after winning initiative.

The game is also free to grow with plenty of B/X supplements, and the rules framework simple enough I could write my own. If I wanted a sanity or corruption system for a dark fantasy game, write one myself or bolt it on from another game. I could take GURPS Horror's fear and sanity system and port that over with minimal effort, or even Call of Cthulhu's sanity system and add that as a d100 score and be all good to go. To explain that to players would be something like, "B/X with Call of Cthulhu's sanity system, let's play." 

Nothing to pour over, and nothing to learn.

I have add-on books with classes such as bards and hundreds of others made for this game. I have dungeons. I have books of monsters. I am ready now and let's just play.

Now, I do like reading and playing new things, and the B/X style of combat can feel a little dry at times. But there is a huge red line between dry and gets the job done, and complicated and you will rarely play it right. A lot of games are like that, I just have no hope of ever feeling I am playing it competently. There is too much to learn. They drag and drone on forever. At least in a simple game, I have the room to expand in the places I feel the game lacks detail. In a complicated game, you need to take everything or leave it.

Labyrinth Lord = Core B/X

I keep returning to Labyrinth Lord as the essence of the B/X experience. I have other games, such as the great Dungeon Crawl Classics, but again that game feels heavy with charts and add-on concepts (which I know people love), when all I want for B/X is the core experience. I need to get into DCC more to understand it, since that game has a huge amount of love in the community and I respect that. I kind of get the feeling DCC is the "most popular mod" to B/X that has captured the hearts of millions and enhances the core experience.

More on DCC soon as I have recently found my copy that was lying around here.

But for book-standard and simple B/X that runs like a well-oiled machine, I feel Labyrinth Lord captures the feel of those early days I experienced the best, and maintains compatibility with older material and is expandable in a million different ways. This game is like a metal part to a machine that fits well, works well, and never really breaks.