Pathfinder 1e: Still Great

I did a test play of Pathfinder 1e last night, pulling my books out of the closet, and it still works great. I have a full set of Hero Lab Pathfinder 1e modules, and it makes character creation and inventory management so easy. With two shelves of Pathfinder 1e books, I have a lot to choose from and game with.

The variety of characters you can build too is mind-blowing. When you see all your options open up in Hero Lab, you can literally design anything you can dream of. I can make a silver dragon monk. I can make a zombie barbarian (creature template). I can make a wolf bloodrager. A succubus bard. I can mod characters to include thousands of possible changes, powers, additions, and special features. Is any of it balanced like Pathfinder 2E? Heck no, but it is fun.

Yes, Hero Lab is expensive. But very worth it.

The system itself is your typical 3E game, and it works well for the RP stuff and light combat. If you are not power gaming, and just sort of "sim-ing" a character as you adventure, it produces great results. Did I use survival skills last session? Yes! If I level up, I can add a level to it. Did I take more damage than apply skills? If so, the favored class bonus is +1 hit point this time.

Characters can acquire corruption and insanity. The more you buy and unlock in Hero Lab, the better it gets. The basic books work well, but there is a lot of depth here when you start adding third-party material and extra core rulebooks. Most of it is likely unbalanced, but all of it is fun.

The only slow parts are combat, and making sure you obey all the rules for creatures, special attacks and defenses, and conditions. I had a fight with a giant crab, and that crab got a grapple in, and that made me bust out my copy of SORD PF to work out what happens.

SORD PF is still a great reference guide, and you can quickly lookup a condition, special attack, or any other combat-related action and get it resolved by the rules quickly and correctly. With this, I still had no problems with combat, other than the typical "getting back into it" time needed.

If you are looking for a "full experience 3E game" Pathfinder 1e is still it.

The splat-books and third-party material are like walking into a hobby store that has everything. Pathfinder 2E feels still too young to support the diverse options in the game compared to this, and I have a feeling D&D 5E is attracting all the attention these days.

Traditional Skills vs. Unified

Compared to Castles & Crusades, there is not a unified save and skill system happening here. You have your 3E standards, the fort-ref-will saves, and a list of skills you can customize. My cleric is still a potato when it comes to avoiding traps, but she has a lot of other very cool abilities almost no game on the market today can simulate.

And my level 1 character does not feel as stuck in a rut with those 18+ secondary abilities. I know, just take DEX as a primary, and your heroic aspirations shall be fulfilled. But I just don't want to swap primaries around and suck at something else. I have a set idea for her primaries: CON-WIS-CHR.

Why did I feel she was a trap-triggering potato and why did that upset me so much in C&C? In a simpler system, I have higher expectations of someone being a hero. The abilities are not defined, so in my mind, I tend to go all "fantasy art" pulp sort of cleric in chainmail jumping across the chasm as dragons snap at her heels. That is what I see in my mind because there are no obvious statistics telling me I can't.

And in B/X, since you can do straight ability checks, even with chainmail on, you CAN have that.

With a more sim-oriented system such as Pathfinder 1e, I see my weaknesses presented front-and-center. Wearing chainmail, huh? That's 40 pounds, and the weight keeps piling on. A -5 armor check penalty to DEX and STR skills, and encumbrance stacks on top of that (with her backpack she gets an extra -3). DEX bonus is limited to +2. Even with an STR of 14, she is just getting by, and she already wants a mount.

Those numbers I see and understand. This feels like some "hyper-realism" mod in Skyrim. Yeah, I am paying a real price for that chainmail and it's +6 AC. In C&C it is 4 encumbrance value against her light load limit of 16, and there are no penalties to any saves for wearing it, and she never really suffered from encumbrance despite her similar stats.

The armor stats are there for me to see. She gave up chasm jumping for armor. I can't short-circuit that by taking DEX as a primary or hand-waving a DEX ability roll in B/X. What does this tell me? Go roleplay, find a thief, have them jump to the chasm, and both your party roles are protected. Yes, pulp-adventure systems are fun. But if I am going old-school this cleric is going to be my off-tank healer, and I am now looking for a lightly-armored movement and skilled task specialist to fill a role.

Encumbrance Differences

Pathfinder 2 goes the C&C route and uses an abstract "bulk" system (and it penalizes movement less than B/X). In Old School Essentials and Labyrinth Lord, your base move is 90' in light armor, and everyone is limited to the same 1600 coin (160 pounds) maximum. AD&D was the first game that really started adjusting carrying capacity for strength, so if you want to play a "by the pound" gear game then AD&D or 3E/Pathfinder 1e are your best bets.

This could be a whole article, I know.

This is why it was so hard for me to jump to Pathfinder 2. It felt too soft on the old-school mechanics and went with modern abstract encumbrance systems. Character builds took a front seat and everything else felt simplified.

Yes, in the old days we tracked to the pound and figured out the weight of the containers we were carrying. Not everybody likes that, but Hero Lab makes that sort of tracking and management trivial. The funny thing is, "track weights to the pound" is what real-life campers and hikers do, trim the excess borders off maps, get rid of packaging on supplies, keep looking for lighter versions of gear, take only what they need, and it adds up. One hiker's pack is ten pounds lighter than the others with the same stuff and everyone wonders why.

Hero Lab = Easy Mode

The equipment management in Hero Lab makes buying, equipping, and managing equipment almost too easy. It is faster for me to play Pathfinder and use hero lab than it is to sort through a list of B/X gear and write it all down. You can play the "gear game" here quite nicely, and place stuff in a backpack to drop during combat to lighten your load.

Journal management is another huge plus. If you use the tab they gave you, you can record your entire career here and have a character history on your sheet.

One of the strange problems is with a computerized system it is way easier to track and manage inventory. I get the feeling playing Pathfinder is easier for me, despite the complex combat rules, just because if I had to play with pen-and-paper I would be playing games with simplified encumbrance. I get it, but a part of me loves this old-school experience (even in a 3E game) and I actually crave it.

And Hero Lab enables me. Part of me feels if I bought into Hero Lab for Pathfinder 2 I would be more positive about that game, but I love my detailed encumbrance and old-school unbalanced feeling.

AD&D?

For AD&D feeling adventures? Kinda-sorta. It does give me that classic old-school feeling, but it is not B/X or AD&D. It works though if you can stomach the combat, and it can be very survival-oriented and realistic if you want it to be. To me, this does hit that AD&D sweet spot in feeling. The low-level game is there, and the gear management is good (with Hero Lab). Where AD&D had complexity in the lists of modifiers you had to write down, this game requires a computerized design tool to assist in designing (and validating) your character.

There is another bit of complexity around combat.

Once you master those two areas, the game just works like a well-oiled machine. You have real options in combat. You have powers that give you even more options. Your feat choices matter. You don't have to make optimized picks, and I am staying away from the "gimmies" like Improved Initiative unless it is really part of a character build and concept. You got to have some maturity to not pick the most optimized picks here, and if you do you will end up with characters who are less optimized, but they feel organic and real.

I honestly play this like Skyrim and just pick powers, feats, skills, and other abilities like "this is what I did the last session, so I can improve that area when I level up." None of it is optimized, but the character is coming out feeling like a real person with a history.

Despite all the incredible options out there, B/X, 3E variants, AD&D clones, D&D 5, Pathfinder 2e - the Pathfinder 1e game still delivers a great experience.

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

The Heirs to AD&D, Part 4: Dungeon Crawl Classics

Let's take this on like a sword to the face.

This is Not Like AD&D at All

Seven classes. Wild magic powers. Insane die results. Dangerous magic. Buring off scores for better dice rolls. Race-as-class. Piles of funky dice.

Want AD&D specifics? No multiclassing. No magic resistance. No spell components. No AD&D weapon changes. Missing a bunch of iconic classes. Missing the iconic monsters and many spells.

But does any of that matter?

No.

This is totally an AD&D heir to the throne. One that kicks the throne over, discovers the secret passage and gets ten level 0 party members killed when the trap attached to the throne goes off. And then one of the survivors rides a flaming unicorn to Venus to fight the Moon Titan.

Not a Fair Comparison

Putting this game on an heir to AD&D list is not really fair at all. Not fair to Dungeon Crawl Classics, or fair to any of the other games on the list. The real reason it is on here is that this game was derived from the same inspirations as AD&D, the Appendix N list in the back of the AD&D book. One of the best passages in the designer's notes of DCC is this:

There is a great set of designer's notes in the back of DCC that states this: The most powerful trait of Appendix N, insofar as influencing fantasy adventuring, is what I call “pre-genre storytelling.” In the current era, all gamers, and many laymen, have preconceptions of fantasy archetypes: one knows what an elf is like, and what a dwarf is like, and what powers a dragon or vampire should have. Most of the authors in Appendix N, however, were writing before “fantasy” was an acknowledged literary category. The conception of an “elf” as expressed in Tolkien is now “common knowledge,” but the elves described by Lord Dunsany and Poul Anderson were completely different creatures. The same is true of dozens of other fantasy conceits. When you read Appendix N, fantasy once again becomes fantasy; the concepts escape modern classifications.

I love this. This game recognizes that AD&D set up a lot of what we come to expect from fantasy and fantasy gaming. All elves are the same. All dragons are the same. Everything is this sort of mass-market McDonalds' version of what we have already seen in D&D products and nothing will ever be different. They make a great game with incredible lore, but a few product managers and marketers in Seattle do not get to define what fantasy is to the world.

In the Runequest game, elves are plant people. They can even be talking mushroom people.

In the Shadow Elves supplement for Mystara, the "drow" of that world were not inherently evil, had white skin, and lived in a kingdom of mushrooms and danger.

But once you realize what the designers of AD&D were working with, they were setting the standards of what we see as fantasy tropes today. They did not have anything to work with, so anything was right and anything was possible. Once you realize your game can be like this too, your gnolls can be a peaceful tribe of hyena people who live at peace with nature and the Earth Mother, your mind will be freed from the stereotypes that have colonialized your mind from endless years of playing versions of D&D.

When you play your game, it is your right to create your world and make it however you want.

You should have every freedom the designers of D&D did.

Do you want beholders in your game? Do they even work the same way? Are they good? Do they sit in libraries using their eyestalks to read eternally, and mages go to them for sage advice? Do they talk with British accents? Are they even called beholders? Do they wear long flowing robes? Did they once live among the stars and have stories to tell? Are they friends with civilization and wish to protect us from the evil elder gods of space and the consuming darkness? Do they have favorite foods? Do they like bad puns? Do they love collecting books?

You play DCC and accept those freedoms, these can be the beholders in your world.

You only play D&D, and you are mostly stuck to what they say in the Monster Manual.

Yes, you can change things and are allowed to, but I feel the homogenization of D&D at times works against our creativity and shackles our minds to what they give us in the books. The changes they are making in the new 5.5 edition are a step forward, but I do not feel they even go far enough. I don't think they can. They are bound by history and to keep their IP recognizable and marketable for their shareholders.

DCC Breaks the Crayons

Why I love putting DCC on an AD&D list is because it is the kid who breaks all the crayons in the box, makes the other kid cry, and then shows that kid how once you take the paper off the broken pieces you can use the sides of the crayons to make a beautiful sky and a majestic ocean in a few broad strokes. You can use a smaller piece to color the edge of a cloud. You can use a triangle edge to make trees with a single stroke.

And the kid who was crying realizes that perfect crayons sitting in a box have no value.

And when they are broken they can be used to create beautiful things which come from inside.

And he goes from being a sad collector of perfect things to a happy artist who creates and shares with the world.

And the world is changed.

DCC is the warning that chasing AD&D as some sort of golden idol and standard is a waste of time because all you are doing is trying to recreate a game that was created from pure imagination in the first place. Your time would be better spent creating your own interpretations and lore. You should not be chasing what others have done, and you should be out there dreaming and building things that express your creativity.

I do like my AD&D standards and the world that the game built, and it is a part of me, which is why I seek it out - and seek out other people's experiences with this world too. This is the language that those of us who have been to this place understand and share. By looking for AD&D, I get to experience it again, and through the eyes of others who have been there.

But in the end, the world is you.

What are your monsters? What do you fear? What inspires you? What makes you sad? What makes you happy? Does the game let you express these concepts through your play? Or does it ask you to transpose "hate" onto "this monster" and tell you "hate equals this?" Does it lead you through a maze a thousand people walked before with a well-worn path through, or open a door to a new experience no one has seen before because it comes from you?

I do like my AD&D and B/X games, but I always remember what I learned from DCC and use that as a warning to others walking this path.

You can spend so much time looking back that you miss the future.

Castles & Crusades: The Moment I Almost Gave Up

So I created my first Castles & Crusades character, and I had this overwhelming feeling of disappointment. I almost went back to Labyrinth Lord or Old School Essentials. This is going to be a tough article, so hold on tight.

I get this is a heavily-modified 3E version that has that AD&D feeling. I understand the SIEGE Engine. The character creation is straightforward, sort of like a modified B/X with light Pathfinder-style class abilities. In all honesty, I would love to see a few more class abilities as we level. And I know I am creating a level one character, and they are supposed to suck.

The SIEGE Engine and the concept of Primary and Secondary abilities did not feel great to me.

I made a human, did my straight 3d6 rolls, had a few +1 modifiers here and there, and picked my class ability as a primary (cleric, wisdom), and two others since humans get an extra. Three of my target numbers were 12, and three were 18. In a way, three of my ability scores felt like they sucked so bad I would rarely make checks or ability saves with them.

And there was not really anything I could do. Even leveling up would let me add my level there to the roll, but they would still suck. So if my cleric ever wanted to dodge a trap, her pitiful 13 DEX would only ever give her a +1 modifier to that sucky 18 target number.

In B/X, if I wanted to make ability score rolls, I would not be so punished. DEX check to avoid a trap? Roll d20 under DEX! Even at a -4 penalty, she would not be as punished as this current 18+ roll.

Honestly, I did not see the point. Yes, there are plenty of saves in B/X that are in this horrid 18+ range, but to put ability scores on there as well seemed overly punishing. And to make that a permanent character feature seemed like there was little hope of ever making it any better.

Honestly, I was like, "Why do I learn a new system? Why not just use B/X? My ability score checks are better there and I am not mucking around with a bolted-on check system."

I was ready to give up.

I am reevaluating the game and taking a look for alternatives. I may mod the game just to salvage things, perhaps introduce a feat system to let me take levels of specialized feats, such as quickness (+2 on DEX rolls) or something like that to fix my feelings about the issue. Secondary stats are tough to live with, even with a human, and they feel like things that don't really get better.

Other than that, it is a wonderful game.

The Heirs to AD&D, Part 2: AD&D 2e

It is kind of obvious what the first heir to AD&D's thrown would be, AD&D 2e, right? I would keep this to the first three books and that is it, none of the Forgotten Realms guides, the players' option books, or any of the other clutter. The only book I would consider adding to this is MC8 - The Outer Planes Appendix.

Why? This is where all the renamed demons and devils ended up. If you want the demon lords you need The Guide to Hell. And artifacts are in another book (The Book of Artifacts), but we never really used them that much (and I can pull them from the 1e DMG if I really need them). The downside? They went and renamed every demon's race with silly, made-up names.

The monsters in this version are way tougher than their AD&D 1e counterparts. An ancient red dragon has 23 hit dice (104 hp), AC -11, a breath weapon that does 24d10+12 (144 hp), and 65% magic resistance. Compare this with the Monster Manual 1 version and 88 hit points, -1 AC, a breath weapon that does 88 hp damage (equal to hp), and no magic resistance. The monsters have been toughened up to a great degree, and that is something I prefer about AD&D 2e over 1e. I suppose years of playing AD&D 1e left a lot of players feeling like the iconic monsters needed a revamp, and they got it.

We also have bards and specialty mages as new base classes, so if you are looking for "plus content" this is a good edition for you. Proficiencies are a part of the base game too, so you have more character development options. Oh, and we lost the assassin for some reason. I know, minus content.

Ghost Jesus vs. Skeleton with +1 Sword of Citrus, pg 39 2e DMG

The combat rules are greatly cleaned up, and a lot is better explained. If you can't make sense of AD&D 1e, start here, learn this, and go backward from here. I like the rethink of weapon speed, casting speed, and initiative, and it is a huge boost to rogues and fighters with fast weapons. Want to interrupt casters? Use a rogue. Daggers. Stabby.

I miss all the cool random charts and the random dungeon tables. The monster manual is horribly laid out. The art from the POD and PDF versions is the revised art, and a lot of it is average and not even up to the quality and consistency you see in B/X releases these days. The covers are not the originals. I miss the original layouts too, this feels way too artsy and flowery. We also have wasted space and random art that is not consistent in theme, quality, or style.

Despite all that, honestly, this is my preferred version of AD&D (if I was forced to official versions), just because everything is so easy to understand. When we finally got into AD&D we went big with this edition (just the three books), and we had a great time. It does have a few problems, but the ease of use and clarity of the rules makes up for any issues easily. Also, the monsters feel like monsters, and this is one of the few editions that give older dragons decent magic resistance. A powerful dragon is an epic-level threat.

For Gold & Glory: The OSR 2e Alternative

And if you want a retro-clone version, just grab the excellent For Gold & Glory hardcover. Mix that with a few monsters from the DMG that are product identity, and you got yourself a great throwback game. Do you need this retro-clone? It depends, I like supporting the small indie creators and communities, so giving them a mention helps let people know they are out there. And this book, even though it uses public-domain art, looks a whole lot better than the official AD&D 2e revised editions.

For Gold & Glory, page 34

The art alone in this book makes me want to play a serious campaign with an almost cinematic feel. Where the AD&D 2e books can feel at times like comic books and children's novels, this retro-clone feels serious, mature, and has a weight of grandeur all its own. Some of the art in the 2e books is laughably strange and oddball, and I can imagine indie creators getting roasted for art like that. Some of these selections are amazing, and all of them are consistent and beautiful.

The book looks like a film that would win an Oscar for cinematography.

Even though the layout is less complicated than the AD&D 2e books, For Gold & Glory has this beautiful, clean, simple style packed with information. The AD&D 2e books have these massive borders and giant headers, and they waste a lot of space on fluff. Tables are surrounded by double borders with thick, red, distracting lines. With the FGG book, the information is a lot denser with a lot less wasted space, but I find it easier to read and reference than the books TSR put out.

There are times the AD&D 2e books hurt my eyes to look at, and it is really a sin of gaudy graphic design excess. The FGG book is simple, but the layout is clean and frankly way more appealing and mature looking than the game it is based on. There are times this book looks like a history book or bible, and that is just incredible and puts me in the mood to play.

Visually, For Gold & Glory is my go-to AD&D 2e style game, and it beats the official reprints handily just in visual quality, presentation, and style. I buy one For Gold & Glory hardcover and have it all, plus it looks incredible. With AD&D 2e, I have three large softcover books that look and feel like phonebooks, and while the rules are solid, they are just tough to look at, with random art and terrible layout, tons of wasted space, and they just don't inspire me.

That was always a problem with mid-to-late 90s TSR, the art direction was all over the place and there was no real great driving inspiration and style guideline for any of the books. This would be fixed in a big way with the great-looking D&D 3rd edition a few years later when Wizards came in. The only exception to this was the original edition AD&D 2e books with the incredible art from the greats of the time. Those original 2e books are treasures and I wish they would bring them back.

For Gold & Glory wins this one easily, and this is my first pick for an AD&D Heir to the Throne. It is a "plus" game with clean rules, all the AD&D concepts in place, tough monsters, extra content, and is an OSR game. The book isn't censored, and you don't need a huge collection of softcover books, with random add-ons, for a complete game.

The only problem here is not many have heard of this game, and the hardcover is a bit on the pricey side. But it is worth the money and compared to the softcovers, an investment that will last a long time and provide many years of fun.

Aquilae: Western Realm Gazetteer Atlas, Part 2

I am starting to loosely fill out my world, and this is a pretty cool map. Back when we got the Deities and Demigods book for AD&D, we thought those were the "official" campaign gods and goddesses and you could play with those. You know, Zeus, Hera, Thor, Odin, and all the classics. To us, the gods of mythology were AD&D.

There were a few gods over there in Greyhawk, but these were way cooler since we've seen them in Clash of the Titans and all of our history books. So they made their home in Mystara, the original D&D world, and these were what clerics worshipped.

Play With Our Stuff!

And then the Forgotten Realms came along. No! Play with these! And then 3E came along. Sorry, we got your gods right here in the Player's Handbook! To be fair, they offered these gods in one of the faiths books for 3E, but they were not front-and-center. And then 4E came along. No, all the modules and major conflicts in the world are between our copyrighted IP and gods! Sorry! And then 5E came along and while it is a little better, I feel it is getting harder and harder for D&D to ever be a generic game, and it takes a lot of work to rip out the Magic: The Gathering and all the D&D IP from the game.

There are times I feel D&D went World of Warcraft with its lore and it is not a generic fantasy game anymore. It is a quite specific one with a quite specific world and requirements for everything to be there, much like how Pathfinder 2 feels. If you love that lore, great, but if you want to build your own world, I would rather start with a more generic game without the Wizard's IP.

We found B/X games like Old School Essentials and Labyrinth Lord were easier to play with our original ideas and have them feel right than the latest versions of D&D, which felt like they made a lot of decisions for you and filled in a lot of your campaign world with their copyrighted material. They want to sell you things and I get it, but the reason we got involved with this hobby in the first place was to do our own thing, build our own worlds, explore what-ifs, and be creative.

This is why a lot of the OSR appeals to me, I remember a D&D before the official lore became the game. I know people pull it out and do their own things all the time, but to me, I like games that give you a neutral product-identity free toolbox and let you build from there, and not try to add things you can't use if you ever wanted to write a novel about your adventures in the world because of trademarks and copyright law.

Aquilae

Mind you, this product is just a map. No gods, just names and borders of nations, but they don't tell you what those are, cities and roads and terrain - but no descriptions. A GM map with tons of hidden places with cool names, but none of them are described.

What good is that?

Well, this is where your imagination comes in...

So here is what I did with my Aquilae map. Like a kid who did not know better, I found areas of the map that would be "cool" to have a culture, and I put it there! Does it make any sense? Heck no! But this is what we did as kids. If we had a spot for something cool we had gods or stats for, we put it on the map. It does not make one bit of sense nor it should. This is how kids think.

Does it make any sense England, France, Spain, and the Elves are up against the Egyptians? No! But that is cool! Now, these are NOT the original countries, just cultures and areas of the world LIKE those cultures to give us something to start with. Like England, that place is probably more like Arthurian knights, castles, a king, dukes, and that type of culture. Italy is less Rome and more a Renaissance Italy-influenced culture.

As kids, if we had World of Warcraft in our lives, would we cant cool Orc and Undead areas? Heck yeah! Goblins too they are cool and we should be able to play as them too! Do we have pirate islands? Heck yeah, we have pirate islands! Let's put them next to the Greeks! Who cares! It is cool! Maybe the Spartan-like guys will fight pirates in a 300-like ship battle with lots of slo-mo shots! Ah, cool!

I want to play a troll! Over there in the jungle with the lizardmen, you can play them too. Ah, cool! I want to play a shaman! We could put Aztec dinosaurs down there too! Oh wow! Cool!

I still have a couple cultures I want to add, maybe a demon/tiefling area (leaning towards Drandull, rich trading houses on the islands), maybe a dragon-folk culture, a kingdom of magic (Vylanne likely), and I need a few countries to the south to serve as competitors and foils to the Greeks, Undead, and pirates. I have a few islands to the north to work on as well, but I do not need them to get started. Maybe a cool African-inspired high-magic culture in Cyasinth like Wakanda but with magic. Something will come to mind, and you don't really want to fill in the entire map, to begin with.

Does World of Warcraft or Pathfinder's Golarion make any sense? No, this is how they sort of world-build their theme park worlds too. Lots of "ah cool!" areas, and putting sides that like to fight next to each other. And they "borrow" from cultures just as much as this.

I could do this entire world with Old School Essentials, Labyrinth Lord, Castles & Crusades, or any other set of rules and do just fine. I could do it with D&D 5, with a little bit of work and telling players some things are not options. I would love a D&D 5 "basic rules" book with all the IP pulled out that could be used for more generic settings like this.

Challenges

I tell you one thing, this Egyptian culture area is going to be a huge influence on the rest of the world being at the crossroads of civilization. Their traders and ambassadors will be in every kingdom. Maybe the deserts will be incredibly dangerous areas with armies of the dead wandering around. That is cool, and I am up to the challenge of having this culture and mythology being one of the most important in the world. Maybe put a race of naga on the coast.

The elves too are in a strong position, no "dying elves" here, they have a lot of lands and should be a dominant force. Maybe different types of elves share this homeland in different tribes and areas, and it is possible they all don't get along well. It would be cool to have dark elves under here somewhere and have them involved in the conflicts.

Having a magic kingdom in the center ocean seems right, lots of magic ley lines there, and that would give them a lot of power over trade. And they would be a counter-balance to the orcs.

The orcs and undead are a major one-two punch, and I don't see having a typical "Horde" here, the orcs hate the undead and will be at war with them. Playing as an orc seems like an incredible experience, and having their possible goblin allies across the sea puts that whole central ocean into play. The Spanish-style culture will be on the front lines of the orc wars, but those mountains give them an advantage. I could see mass battles and that border shifting constantly, and the whole area is this ruins-filled hellish battleground.

That kingdom between the undead and pirates needs to be a good guy faction that does not always get along with the Greek culture. Maybe a 1001 Nights sort of sultanate with genies, Rakshasa, and other Indian and Arabian influences would be very cool. If I make the Cyasinth area an African magic-Wakanda, and the Greeks in the middle, and Pirates raiding them all, that would put a lot of culture and conflict in this area, and it would be something completely unlike anything I have seen in fantasy.

Making a giant faction in the mountains near the Renaissance-style Euro factions would be fun, since if I put devil-blooded nobles on the islands of Drandull that would create this tension, do we accept the price for the evil and rich islanders helping us fight the giants?

I have two islands to fill north of the Celt-like Fae culture, which I would like to be like a fae-Ireland, but very independent. It would be fun to put naval-based enemies of the English culture there and have lots of ship-to-ship fighting, Maybe Levopp could be the Scottish-style freedom fighters who despise the king. Bynithe is sort of in the middle, and that could be a Portugal-like culture with a queen and lots of overseas journeys launching from there and "off map" trade.

Established Settings vs. DIY

This setting appeals to me because I can take whatever books I have: AD&D, Palladium FRPG, Castles & Crusades, OSE, Labyrinth Lord, Dungeon Crawl Classics, or any other - and place all the cultures and races down in each spot and give them a home in a sandbox. I could have easily done this with Palladium and made an entirely different set of choices, Wolfen, Ogres, Trolls, Humans, Goblins, and the like all in their homes.

Give me a cool map to put things on, and I will find homes for all my toys.

With a Greyhawk or Forgotten Realms setting, I am doing a lot of homework to get started. I have to skim through the entire book and read almost everything to know where I want to start my game. I need to get an idea of factions and conflicts before I start writing adventures to make sure they fit. I need to check the company's catalog and make sure there aren't any adventure sites in modules to watch for nearby. After all that work, I can still be wrong, and miss things that are important.

And it is a ton of work.

Here? I DIY everything. Let's start up north, add some Viking human tribes, dwarves, gnoll raiders, an ice dragon, and we are great!

Modules? Drop them in anywhere. Tomb of Horrors? Yeah, that is somewhere in the French-like area. Labyrinth Lord's Barrowmaze? Needs a swamp. Anywhere non-desert in the middle of the map, and it would be fun in the Germanic area. The Forbidden Caverns of Archaia mega-dungeon? Spain area likely, badlands, hotter climate, and wastelands. Vault of the Drow? Elven kingdom, mountains. Keep on the Borderlands? England area. The older Goodman Games DCC 3E Modules? Anywhere really, just make them work.

I could do a giant kingdom in the France-Germanic area in the mountains and put the G-series there. Giants as the foils for this area of the world, and things are sort of like Attack on Titan with giant fortress walls and giants assaulting them? Aw, cool! Great ideas keep coming into this world because whenever I come up with a cool one, I have a spot to put it in.

Something like this is in this part of the world, and we will get to it later. Right now, let us pick one place and begin our adventures. Maybe if I don't like something or we come up with a better idea later, we could change things. The world is a rough draft and sketch, and we fill it in, change it, and make it ours as we go.

The Heirs to AD&D, Part 1

A lot of people are going back to the original edition of AD&D, and I can see why. The OSR led the way here, and a lot of people rediscovered the fun and beauty of the original game.

It really is a different experience, and not many of the "sequels" to AD&D really offered something better than the original. With AD&D 2e we got a reorganization, censorship to avoid heat from parents' groups,  a few new classes, a few streamlined rules, and rebalanced monsters and spells. AD&D 2e also began the "damage scaling" you see in more modern games, as the monster hit points and defenses ramped up, and player power did as well in the supplement books.

AD&D stopped at this point.

D&D 3 and 3.5 are really entirely new games, just like D&D 4 was an entirely new game that shared similar names and concepts, but the underlying structure was entirely ripped out and changed. One could say D&D 5 is also an entirely new game, with its origin back in B/X with a few features pulled in here and there from other newer games.

AD&D is really like that Led Zeppelin album in the 70s no one can ever really recreate or top. It is Stairway to Heaven and a lifetime of adventures in three books.

But it doesn't stop anyone from trying...

Why Anything Else?

There are a few games that attempt to recreate the magic, but honestly, none of them do. If you are going to play AD&D, play AD&D. One can make an argument for OSRIC because it is more of a reference guide and open implementation, but these are both equal in content but not in the spirit or wording. There are times the Gygaxian prose brings the experience home more than the cover song of OSRIC does, but OSRIC is still invaluable and a great reference should these ever go out of print again.

The why anything else question can be answered by asking, what do other games give you? If you are looking for AD&D+ then you begin to look at other games. That "plus" is why I look for games like AD&D, but they bring something else to the table we can't get in the original books.

And this plus can be a lot of things, new classes, monsters, spells, improvements to the system, simplifications, settings, themes, look and feels, different focuses, reinterpretations, or any number of changes that keep the AD&D feeling but tailor the game for new content or experiences.

What Makes AD&D ...AD&D?

This is a hard question because one thing AD&D is (and is not) is B/X. A few things stand out to me, and these are mainly the things that survived the transition from AD&D 1e to AD&D 2e:

• Classes
• Class Selection
• Hit Die Sizes
• Nonhuman Level Limits
• Multiclassing
• Ability Score Charts
• All Columns and Modifiers
• Exceptional d100 Strength
• Fighter Only CON hp Bonuses
• Magic Changes
• Magic Resistance
• Casting Time
• Spell Components
• Weapon Changes
• Weapon Size
• Weapon Type & Armor Modifiers
• Weapon Speed
• Damage vs. Size of Target
• No Censorship
• Demons & Devils in the Monster Manual

There are probably a few others, but my guide is if something survived and made it into AD&D 2e, it was a core feature of the system. Most things did, but a few things (like the to-hit modifiers for individual AC numbers per weapon) did not. I know I am missing a few things here, but these are the ones that come to mind.

And yes, by this list it makes AD&D 2e not AD&D, but that is the price you pay for self-censorship.

Yes, one of the best references you can use when playing AD&D 1e is a copy of AD&D 2e. If you are confused about a rule 2e will probably explain it a little better and clear things up, and also let you know what you can ignore for speed and simplicity.

And there are a few rules in AD&D 2e that I feel are very good to incorporate, such as the d10 initiative, adding your weapon speed or spell casting time, and low roll wins. This lets a dagger-armed thief roll d10+2, a longsword-armed fighter roll d10+5. This was a huge boost to thieves and weapon speed, and let them get hits in before wizards or fighters. In AD&D 1e weapon (and casting) speed was really only used for determining who goes first in ties.

And in neither system does DEX affect the character's initiative roll. In B/X you are typically rolling d6+DEX mod for the initiative roll, and weapon speed does not matter.

A Mix of Things, More Rules than B/X

You also notice a few B/X retro-clones cherry-picking from this list, and ignoring a lot of the things that make AD&D cool. To me, some of these things are tied together, like certain types of creatures and magic resistance.

And yes, spell components are on the list. And yes, spell casters, you need to track your components and expend them. With great power comes a little bookkeeping, finding these in shops or the wild, and they keep magic from feeling 'cheap' and 'too easy' - at least in AD&D. I know in other games we liked a more simplified approach to spellcasting, but we found components made magic feel strange and special, and there were times a mage could not cast a spell because of a lack of supplies.

Now that we know what we are looking for, we can consider the heirs to the throne.

And this is always different for everyone. What some people feel are must-haves, others see as huge issues. Some may see it as a non-factor. And there is always the default position, just stay with AD&D and have that lifetime of adventures there. But the goal is to find that "AD&D+" that works well, depending on what you like...