Tuesday, April 19, 2022

Adventures Dark & Deep: Hardcovers!

 

I just got my Adventures Dark & Deep hardcovers today ...and wow. What a huge and interesting game. This is an AD&D-style retro-clone, but it is not really a retro-clone. This is a retro-clone designed around the notes Gygax made in interviews and articles about what he would like to see in a "true" 2nd edition of AD&D. But this is not made by Gygax, this is sort of like someone's interpretations of what these articles intended.

So we have a bit of sleuthing and proposing, sort of like a band coming up with, "What an older band would sound like if they made another album?" This is not all that far off from Japanese RPGs being inspired by classic JRPGs and coming up with something new and interesting, but with a nod to the past and what made the originals so great. So there is a lot of guessing and thinking going on here, along with some creative reinterpretations of product identity.

The base books look like college textbooks. The new books have that cool, modern look with those full-bleed covers.

You can play AD&D, AD&D 2e, OSRIC, or try something different like this. This is still very AD&D-like, but with a lot of new material and small changes. It is both a good thing and a bad thing since there are probably enough small changes in here to trip you up, but the changes were made for a reason so it is good to learn them. Part of why I play Pathfinder 1e is because I know that system so well, own a full set of Hero Lab modules, and I can fly through combats and spellcasting and get the full hit the game provides. And I can do it fast.

This looks like it would take time to learn, but it would be fun. Not as many crazy customizations as Pathfinder 1e or 2e, but a classic and modernized experience that takes the game in new directions.

Oh, and they have their next book coming, a Cthulhu expansion, on Kickstarter:

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/brwgames/swords-of-cthulhu

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