#holmes basic D&D

[radiantmorningstar]

Holmes Basic Rebirth: Dark Coda

Having escaped the wandering graveyard (a "Kargash-Mir"), Ruvin, the magic user, and Dain, the thief-scout, emerge from a crypt to find themselves stranded on the "Midnight Enclave" of Ondaris—a vast grassland stretching for hundreds of miles in every direction.

They searched for their chidhood friend, Iovis, in vain. Nor were they able to locate the lair of the ogre, Drazrur Blackbite and save the mayor of West Withly from being ritually sacrificed along with his mistress to Blackbite's deity, Vaprak the Demon Prince.

Using the boons received from his ritual to Vaprak, Blackbite raised an undead skeletal warband and enslaved the entire town. He forced them to march north, across the Beast River, into the Black Forest, where the ogre's lair was hidden all along (not in the Kargash-Mir, as the heroes believed). Now men, women, and children are working under harsh conditions to construct a forest keep for Blackbite. Any who survive the forced labor will be eaten by him and his hobgoblin lieutenants.

Ruvin and Dain learn these things thirdhand from the gnomish boatmen who navigate the Beast River and function as the unofficial information resource of the realm. Returning to their childhood home, only to find it empty, with no sign of just where their friends and family have been taken, is heartbreaking.

After a few days of trying to formulate a plan, Ruvin and Dain have to face reality: there is nothing they can do. Ruvin goes back in sadness to the tower of Xolark in Misty Harbor, while Dain is required to return to the Rivercross Confederation of Guides and Scouts, where he is expected, now that his yearly leave is over.

Little do the two friends know that they will never see each other or their families again. Such is the price of failure on the harsh and brutal continent of Ondaris.

And so goes the . . .

[oldschoolfrp]

The calendar tell me it's July 27, Gary Gygax's birthday, so I rolled up a character -- 3D6 rolled six times in order referencing Holmes' 1977 basic D&D rules (his tidy edit of Gygax and Arneson's original 1974 little books):

Srength 8

Intelligence 13

Wisdom 10

Constitution 8

Dexterity 10

Charisma 8

In old school D&D this is a perfectly viable character with no penalties, before 50 years of stat inflation was built into the rules. He could be almost anything, but will be most capable as a magic-user, receiving a +5% bonus to earned experience for having a 13 in the prime requisite ability.

Magic-users and thieves get only a D4 for hit points in early editions, and as often happens I rolled a 1. Survival past the first few levels will be extremely unlikely, but it always was for those classes. He'll need to hide in the middle of the party and hope for the best.

3D6 x 10 for starting gold pieces results in only 60, but he doesn't need much gear. He'll carry some basic tools and a bundle of empty sacks to help carry treasure after his one and only spell is spent.

With Int 13 he has a 65% chance of having a specific level 1 spell in his book, and will have a minimum of 5 and a maximum of 8. He can roll in any order, and can reroll from the list if they fail to meet the minimum. On the first pass through the list he fails to know Detect Magic, Magic Missile, or Hold Portal, but his book holds Charm Person, Dancing Lights, Protection from Evil, Read Languages, Read Magic, Shield, Sleep, and Tenser's Floating Disc. From that list of 8 he can choose one spell each day to use, only one time per day. In combat Sleep and Charm Person will be useful for reducing the number of opponents.

[littleoceanbabe]

john getting sherlock ear defenders that are personalized, both with sherlock’s initials and john being quick to point out the pun it makes is something that can be so so important to me, actually. john is so unbelievably sweet, understanding, and accommodating it’s absolutely wonderful to see. i love this podcast ❤️❤️❤️❤️

[crash-likes-cookies]

So for anyone interested in the differences of earliest DnD, I found this thread and made it visually easy to access.

(all credit for this goes to Adam Dray, check the link for the entire post)

[1-50thofabuck]

All the World’s Monsters Readthrough

The following has not been proofread. It may contain typos, I may use the same words or phrases too many times, and so on. Tumblr also removes a lot of formatting such as underlines. Maybe I'll fix or update it in the future; maybe I won't. (Things like underlining being removed is beyond my control.) If there are serious corrections as regards facts presented, I will definitely amend such points. Please feel free to comment such corrections; or any comments at all. I want to read through with all of you!

All the World’s Monsters: 

A Readthrough, Part I

Longwinded Introduction

This is a feature I’ve been wanting to work on for quite some time. Originally I wanted to write it with another person, and had various ideas on how that would work, but that didn’t happen. It’s a readthrough of the world’s first monster collection for an RPG. That I’m aware of, anyway - there very well might be some obscure or unsung prior volumes on the same topic(at the very least, perhaps zine monster collections?). I’m talking about Chaosium’s All the World’s Monsters. It’s an interesting book for sure, in a number of ways. 

For one thing, not so much had become standardized. What information was important to know about a monster might vary by personal taste or by the specific version of the game being played. All the World’s Monsters was released after Holmes Basic but before the AD&D Monster Manual, which was the first of the AD&D books to be released(because I guess they figured people could still use the monster stats with other versions of the game while they completed the other core books). 

Holmes Basic, for those unaware(and I won’t go into it too far because you can find plenty of histories on this out there with all the detail you’d like - skip this paragraph if you know about this already), was created as a way of introducing people to the D&D game as presented in the original white box set and Supplement I: Greyhawk. It was also a way of teaching people how to put those pieces together, or at least, one of the ways to do it, since the white box game was sort of all over the place, and difficult for people to grasp - especially if they had no prior boardgame knowledge beyond Monopoly and no wargaming knowledge. It kind of assumed you knew a lot of terms of general procedures for the more advanced board games and such, and that you would otherwise fill in the blanks. Holmes Basic did that for you. Furthermore, and it’s my understanding that this was more of a “Gygax shoehorning stuff he wanted in” aspect, but there are a few references to AD&D concepts and even the game itself, such as the exhortation to purchase AD&D if you wished to know how to have exotic characters like halfling thieves, or progress beyond 3rd level. (With the OD&D books you could do that anyway, and this was just a sales pitch.) It also introduced something closer to AD&D’s alignment system, except that you couldn’t play any neutral character besides a true neutral one: no neutral good, no chaotic neutral(there goes half my players!). 

There’s a lot to say about this version of the game, and some people play this one exclusively, even coming up with retroclones such as Blueholme! And some of what I have to say on it will be relevant, because All the World’s Monsters was written with the assumption that Holmes Basic reflected the standard we would be seeing from that point on, including little oddities never to appear in any other edition or version of D&D ever again!

Another thing that makes the book so intriguing is, being the first of its kind, there were so many monsters out there that hadn’t been statted yet - at least in a published book that others could look at and draw inspiration from. So until they got statted in AD&D’s Deities and Demigods, who could argue, “officially,” how many hit dice a shoggoth should have, what its AC should be, and so on? The original books gave no stats for any kind of sphinx - what would an androsphinx’s HD be? Same as a lion? More? What’s a lion’s HD anyway? Spotted lions are listed in the OD&D encounter tables, but there are no statistics for them(in the white box set, anyway). Or how about an elephant - how many HD should it have? What should its AC be? While the white box told us that rocs are sometimes large enough to prey on elephants(an incredible concept rendered rather banal now by overuse), it didn’t tell us what statistics an elephant should have. How would you stat it, without peeking at your MM?  Guess, what would you give them? Highlight the following for the answer: 

Tumblr won't allow me to set text to white because why would it? I'm leaving the "highlight the following line" bit out of stubborness at not allowing the formatting I require. (11 HD, AC 6)

So at that time, there were a myriad animals and monsters that had never before seen print in the form of D&D/AD&D statistics. This gives a lot of room for creativity - you couldn’t look at some other book and say “Gee, I gave this monster 9 HD, but the official ones are 4/this unofficial supplement gives them 5. Did I overrate them that badly?” Maybe so, maybe not. 

Statting animals and monsters is more art than science, though there’s some of that, too. The fact is, these are fairly arbitrary measures, and if you attempt to work out the official stats and come up with some kind of formula, you’ll drive yourself insane. Many things in the game, admittedly, were varied for the sake of variation. Weapon damage, for instance, was stated to have been made up for the purpose of variety - there’s no real reason that one weapon causes 2d4 while another causes 1d8 other than providing a wide spread of different dice types and combinations for weapons. (Yes, 2d4 gives you a bell curve with average score of 5 and a minimum score of 2, but the reason for this wasn’t because the weapon itself logically should, but rather to provide a variation.) I suspect that wolves being described as far smaller than they actually are was for a similar reason - wanting lower-level characters to be able to fight creatures that low-level monsters(goblins) often ride, but also to offer dire wolves, wargs, etc as upgrades. (Which still could have been done with properly-sized wolves, so maybe I’m barking up the wrong tree…)

Not only were so many animals and monsters unstatted, but again - formatting, and even rules weren’t fully codified or formulated yet. To some degree, many wouldn’t be until 3e made a concentrated effort to make everything formulaic with very specific processes and rules for everything, as well as to “balance” every monster and class, a task monumentally failed. As a good example of the lack of cohesion, look up monsters that strangle or drown and see how many different ways it’s done. I’m not saying this to knock the “old way” - there’s a reason I play old versions of D&D almost exclusively. Restricting yourself with unnecessary formulas and intricate templates is not typically of benefit, and having the flexibility to model things in different ways is superior to having to consult a list of codified formulas to make sure everything adds up. 

But at this stage, even some of the few things that became standards had yet to come into play. In most instances, there were no examples to follow to determine, say, how almost any given special ability a creature might have should be modeled. So even this had to be determined by what were essentially fans writing for their favorite game. 

As you can see, this was an exciting time, and an incredible opportunity - to set in black & white, in numbers, all the different things that D&D/AD&D classifies as “monsters” - anything that isn’t a PC! Setting down on paper, for the first time, so many different monsters. Devising rules for powers and abilities that nobody had created(at least publically available) rules for. Incorporating rules that would only exist for one basic introductory iteration of the system. (Not that they knew that!) Having the chance to determine formatting and all kinds of things that nobody had yet done.

Worlds and cosmoses full of things that still needed to be expressed in numbers and ability descriptions were waiting to be codified. This was, in fact, one of my misconceptions about the book when I purchased it - I thought it was more like Monsters of Myth and Legend by Mayfair as part of their Role Aids line, where they went through all different world mythologies and folklore in order to stat out all the various legendary monsters. All the World’s Monsters was really just a compilation of monsters submitted to Chaosium, and most of them are provided by but a handful of people - but we’ll explore that as we get into the actual readthrough.

Book Description

The first thing one will notice, besides for the eye-catching red background with stark black art, is that it’s sideways. It’s designed to be flipped or turned “up” from the bottom, so the spine is to the top. Similarly, the back cover is read sideways, spine upwards. I don’t need to do a critique or commentary on the art here; it’s pretty cool. I’m pretty uncritical of art, especially in low-budget/indie publications, and especially if the content is otherwise good. 

To the back cover, we’re told the book is “an encyclopedia of the strange, the bizarre, and the deadly,” with “265 monstrous and dangerous creatures,” all by creators from the North American continent(or at least, most of it). We’re given sample stats for a kodiak bear - remember, there weren’t(to my knowledge) stats for any bears yet. (I didn’t consult the back cover before writing the bit about bears, previously.) Actually, we’re given the description, not the full stats - so we can’t read through and critique a set of stats just yet! But there’s an interesting part even here.

For instance, the description mentions that the kodiak can “fight at full efficiency so long as it has one-fourth of its hit points left.” There were some optional rules in OD&D that included dexterity reductions and various penalties at different percentages of HP loss. Such rules are difficult to implement, particularly at low levels, when a small hit will often take 75% of a PC’s HP, and adds yet another element(or two or three or four) to track. Regardless, people surely used those rules, and I imagine this part of the description was a special ability that applied only to those using these kinds of rules. 

A kodiak mother gains bonuses in combat to protect her young and kodiaks have a chance of a hug attack, nothing too noteworthy or mind-blowing.

We end with a note about this being the third printing(it’s what I’ve got), there being another volume out, and a third on the way, and a line about the editors. Steve Perrin is one of them, and the blurb mentions that he’s the “co-author of RuneQuest,” a game I like very much, personally. Then some info about Chaosium and where you can write for info and so on.

The book itself is 109 pages, with the last 3 pages unnumbered, as they are tables, specifically, a monster level chart, to help with placing the monsters found in the book on the appropriate dungeon level, and a table for creating random monsters. Perhaps we’ll roll up a few in a future installment for fun.

The Book’s Introduction Page

Opening the cover we get a title page and introduction. If you thought the sideways book was just a feature of the cover - it’s not. The whole book is like this. And I have to say, I tried to be open minded about it. I told myself “You’re using it the same as you’d use any book except for how it’s turned, it doesn’t actually make any difference.” I hate when something is done in a new way and everyone rejects it because it’s different. While I can see the flaws in it, I really loved the Monstrous Compendium stuff made with hole-punched pages for sorting in a looseleaf binder. I feel like it failed less because of the flaws in it and more because it seemed too different, and was simply dismissed out of hand. So I try really hard not to do that.

But the format really bugs me. 

Moving on to the introduction, I have to wonder how close this is to whatever introduction was originally written, since it opens by mentioning that this is the third printing. Mr. Perrin goes on to tell us that it was made for “games such as Dungeons & Dragons, Tunnels & Trolls, and the Arduin Grimoire.”

I have a few comments on this. Originally I wanted to say it was neat how this early one could simply reference D&D like that without a problem, but apparently the book did, in fact, cause a stir with TSR. I have not listened to the linked podcast, but the description says that this was the case. Once this readthrough is complete, I’ll go back and listen to the podcast; I’d like to get my own impressions, and maybe make a few guesses at some things, and see if I’m right or how much my ideas mesh with what they say.

Tunnels & Trolls(another game I quite like) is interesting since it didn’t really have monster stats, so using these in that game would be more for descriptive flavor.

As for the Arduin Grimoire, for those unaware, it was originally written as a sort of expansion and add-on to OD&D. This, too, caused problems, and it eventually became its own game(despite never playing it, its monster the “vampusa” remains a favorite of mine to this day). Gary Gygax mocked it in the form of a cursed item in AD&D, a book that drives the reader insane(one might have assumed it was a Lovecraft inspired item, but its inspiration was pure spite). 

It goes on to tell us that they have 50,000 monsters, and how they might not use yours and how they chose the ones that went in here, info about the art, where to mail feedback about the monsters you want to see. What’s of real interest here is the mention that Dave Hargrave and Paul Jaquays gave them permission to use some of their own copywritten monsters, but these had to be removed due to space limitations. They then recommend Mr. Hargrave’s Arduin Grimoire(I’m sure that helped endear them to TSR), among other things, as well as several publications by Jaquays. These were presumably the publications from which the monsters would have been taken, and we’re told they will be in future volumes of AtWM.

Table of Contents

Skimming through, there are some really neat looking ones. 

Archer bush? That was a later Mystara monster adapted into 2nd ed and currently 5e(not sure if it was in 3e or 4e or not and don’t particularly care). Sometimes it’s hard to say if multiple people had the same idea or one ripped the other off. Especially in this early time when lots of people were putting out monsters and few had previously, people were bound to have similar if not identical ideas. Such things have happened in much less likely circumstances. 

Some very odd ones right off the bat. Snake ape? On the other hand, things like “air squids” are why I read these kinds of collections.

Batarang. Was DC ever notified of this infringement?

Plenty of slimy monsters: blue horror(which I’m guessing is a slime-type?), red blob, maybe “brown ich?,” gelatinous blue horror(maybe the original isn’t a slime after all), green slime golem. Eh, maybe not as many as I thought. We’ll get a better idea as we read through them, I don’t want to spend all day browsing the contents. And neither do you, I’m sure!

Vampire bear. Heh. Brain stealer(geteit chemosit). Is that German? I feel like I’ve seen other monsters in here with similar names. Will have to see if that’s true and if they’re written by the same author.

Carnivorous… typo? Carnivorous typo. Typo, carnivorous. Are you serious? If this doesn’t end up being some kind of meta monster I’m going to be quite disappointed.

Here’s another thing about the formatting. It makes sense as a normal book, in that one column continues in the column to its right. But because of the formatting of the book, you expect it to continue down the column on the next page below it. It’s a small thing, honestly, but it’s noticeable. 

A lot of monsters that would see official stats later, as expected. Crocotta, cyclops, various demons - but no devils! There’s a “sun devil,” but since there’s no “devil” category I figure it’s a devil in the way a tasmanian devil is a devil - in a non-literal sense. It looks like there are some traditional powerful monsters from myth and legend among the demons, as Ymir(“Prince of Ice Demons”) is one of them, and some of these others may turn out to be similar things - it’s hard to tell from the names, such as “serpent king” and “twelfth plane,” which yes, is the name of a demon. As three demons are listed as “ice,” I imagine they were going more for a frozen Hell as opposed to a fiery one, which would be why they used Ymir instead of Surtr. The latter would have been a much more obvious choice, being a fiery giant who is to burn the universe to ashes as the grand finale of the final conflict between good and evil(yes I’m simplifying it, this isn’t a mythology lesson).

A good number of golems, including diamond, dust, the aforementioned green slime, ice(unusual but not impossible in a magical world, or in frozen places, where they’d be quite evocative), quicksilver(which would also appear in Mystara as simply “silver golems”), wood(ditto), and oddest of all - tar.

Ground octopus, like “air squid,” is the kind of thing I read these books for. Again, there’s kind of a similar monster in Mystara, the decapus, which tends to live in trees. Personally, my favorites are the octorocks of the Legend of Zelda series. While mentioning both air squids and video games, I’ll throw in that the Japanese Super Mario Bros 2 featured flying squids as well. I should also mention that I haven’t played video games in 30 years, so I will routinely recall things like this and not the 3,000 instances of them that have likely appeared in video games in the interim. 

I never thought I’d see triffids in a monster book. I love it! Some Lewis Carrol monsters, some from myth and legend, such as the “three sons of Argatron.” I had to look that up, by the way, as it sounded historical but I wasn’t sure. Google corrected me to some random other word first, and then when I insisted that it search for what I actually typed, it pulled the legends right up. I didn’t read them though; we’ll do that when we get to the entry! Man-Scorpion, another monster not yet statted. As far as I know, they’re usually called “scorpion men,” so the formatting of “man” first is an unusual coincidence and I wonder if there was some famous or classical text popular at the time that used that form. At any rate, it says “see Humbaba,” who, if I’m not terribly wrong, was not a scorpion man. 

There are several Lovecraftian things, including stats for Nyarlathotep. I believe I have probably 3 or 4 sets of stats for him, for various editions of D&D, and I look forward to contrasting them all and seeing how they compare, especially this earliest one to, say, the newest one I have. Of course, being published by Chaosium, they had the rights to these monsters.

Not so much the olog-hai, which was a direct property of the Tolkien Estate. If “hobbit,” a word Professor Tolkien did not even invent, had to be removed from early versions of D&D, one must imagine that the only reason the same didn’t occur here is that this book flew under their radar. (In fact, I believe hobbits were removed by choice, in order to prevent future legal issues, but this is another point I could be quite wrong on.)

Let’s move on and not spend all day speculating and rambling about a table of contents, shall we?

Creators

I don’t want to add up the number of creators used, as many are combinations of creators and so forth. Dan Pierson created the largest number of monsters, with 28 entries printed in the book. It seems like the average is about a dozen or a bit less, just glancing at the numbers and guessing. If someone cares enough to do the math, have fun. 

One little point is the last line: “There are 265 entries and 113 cross-references.” So out of these monsters, almost half of them are related to(in some way or another, whether as biologically related, as enemies, or whatever) others. If that’s what it means, that would make some sense given that some creators contributed a dozen or more monsters, and there’s often going to be such connections(such as someone creating a number of “ice demons”). This kind of thing is good, as it can be incorporated to give the denizens of your world, and your world by extension, more of a feeling of depth and history, that these monsters have relations, alliances and rivalries, and aren’t just a set of numbers. 

“Interpreting the Monster Entries”

An explanation of what the stats mean and so forth. There are a few points of interest here. They mention that random numbers are “expressed as die rolls,” in case you played D&D and somehow didn’t know what 3d6 meant. This is great though, as it saves the trouble of figuring out what to use to determine 3-6(it’s 1d4+2). There are reasons that Gygax chose to express numbers as, say, the aforementioned 3-6 instead of 1d4+2, which was to emphasize that the numbers were important and not how they were generated, opening people up to new dice rolling conventions and so forth. Unfortunately, what it mostly did was confuse people with some of the more difficult to interpret number ranges. 

We’re told that intelligence is abbreviated as IQ(as it is in the later GURPS) and expressed as a die roll - so instead of being told “very” or given a specific number, we’re given dice to roll to determine the intelligence of any given monster. (I do this in my own games and monster stats, so it’s nice to see someone else doing this a number of years before I was capable of playing.)

Most of the rest of the explanations are mundane and not worth reviewing, it’s basic information. 

One thing it doesn’t bother to explain or mention is the fact that it has a dexterity range for each monster in the same way it has an IQ range. Here, dexterity is abbreviated DEXT., which makes me wonder if the DEX abbreviation had been used yet on character sheets or was still a little bit away? Remember, this book was released after Holmes Basic and before a single AD&D book, including the first AD&D book released, the Monster Manual.

More importantly than the abbreviation is why that was there. It was there because in Holmes Basic, the melee combatants attack in order of dexterity, regardless of who won initiative or initiated combat. The Holmes book mentions the question of “who strikes the first blow?” as one unresolved in OD&D, which seems very odd. OD&D never really explained initiative at all, and expected you to default to Chainmail order of initiative. It may have not expected you to use the combat “phases,” but just the die mechanic that determined which side acted first - that being a d6 and the higher goes first. Later versions would have the lower roll act first, with the option to positively/detrimentally modify the roll by weapon speed. There is mention that dexterity might affect various things including initiative, but there’s no exact rule explaining how. Most people just assumed that the one with the initiative attacked first, and this was how the game has been played, for the most part, ever since(and I imagine, for most, during and before, as well). Personally, I think it’s great, and would enjoy trying the rule out. I favor using phases and aspects of combat that add some amount of strategy, where “I run up and attack” can often be detrimental to waiting for a more opportune moment and so forth. I’d prefer the combat phases, and have played with them for many, many years, but I’d be quite open to the Holmes Basic version of combat. (Someone want to run it for me?) 

As yet another digression, it’s funny how often I’ve played games with people that ran their system of choice for decades, sometimes since the game was released, and never knew how initiative actually worked in said system. People get so used to it working a certain way in lots of games, and they either never consult the rule in their own game, or forget it and replace it in their mind with another. I’ve played in multiple Marvel Super Heroes games where everyone rolled a d10 for initiative, and when I pointed out it was one die per side, the judges in each case looked at me quizzically and then continued doing it how they had been doing it forever. The fact that they had been performing the most basic part of their favorite game wrong for 30+ years was too much to consider so it was simply dismissed.

And with that, I’ll wrap this first entry. I hope it wasn’t too boring - I know I ramble and digress, but it’s kind of part of the point I suppose. I hope you’ll stick with me for the monsters, even if you found this part kind of weak, and that you’ll let me know what you think, as well, because I want to go over this with you, not just read a review to a brick wall. It’s not a review, it’s a readthrough, me and you, if you please.

So.

Let’s read All the World’s Monsters together!

[smile-files]

bearer of the curse (too many good ideas)

[astudyinimagination]

Oh no, he was genuinely that careless. He never regarded Sherlock Holmes stories as serious work, so he never took the care with Holmes that he took with some of his other work. Serial fiction was just getting started; Doyle was literally a pioneer in that field. We know that he wrote these stories fast, and, past... what, the first dozen short stories?... he only wrote them because he wanted the money, which is probably why some stories seem like they could have begun independently of Holmes, and then Doyle knew he'd get more money if he'd turn them into Holmes stories (as, indeed, he did with Hound of the Baskervilles).

There are two wolves inside of you. One believes ACD had a perfect plan whilst writing the Holmes canon: every inconsistency or ‘mistake’ had a planned and well-thought out reason behind it, and we are supposed to solve the mystery he has set out for us. The other believes ACD could not fucking care less and was flinging Holmes stories out of his arse in order to be left alone.

[prokopetz]

Proposals to refer to One D&D as "6th Edition" in order to spite Hasbro marketing don't go far enough. We should retroactively assign full edition numbers to every major core rules revision for which the game's publishers declined to do so, as follows:

White box OD&D is now 1st Edition

Holmes Basic is now 2nd Edition

AD&D 1st Edition is now 3rd Edition

BX/Moldvay Basic is now 4th Edition

BECMI/Mentzer Basic is now 5th Edition

AD&D 2nd Edition is now 6th Edition

The Rules Cyclopedia is now 7th Edition

The AD&D 2nd Edition Player's Handbook redux with the infamous "This Is Not 3rd Edition" foreword is now 8th Edition

Player's Option is now 9th Edition

D&D 3rd Edition is now 10th Edition

D&D 3rd Edition Revised (3.5E) is now 11th Edition

D&D 4th Edition is now 12th Edition

D&D Essentials is now 13th Edition

D&D Next (later informally rebranded as "5th Edition" due to consumer pressure) is now 14th Edition

Finally, this means the forthcoming One D&D is 15th Edition.

Make sense?

[disciplinecottage]

Granada Holmes Granny Square Blanket

In 2020 my husband and I got really into the 1984 Sherlock Holmes with Jeremy Brett. In The Musgrage Ritual, the fourth episode of the second season, Holmes spends a lot of time swanning around being cranky wrapped in a crochet blanket. I had: lots of online classes and zoom calls, lots of pent up anxiety and energy, a wrist injury that flared up during any crafting except crochet, and a Holmes-loving husband who was just as obsessed with this iconic blanket as I was. So I made this!

If you'd like to make one too, read on. I wrote the pattern two different ways; both are under the cut. There's a quick and dirty version where I assume you know the basics of crochet and throw some details at you and it's pattern chaos. And it's followed by a nice, neat, detailed pattern with more specific instructions. Caveat for both: I'm a long-time "figure-it-outer" when it comes to fiber craft and I've made up tons of projects but I am new to writing a pattern for someone else to interpret. So good luck in there. And let me know if you have questions!

Both patterns under the cut.

Granada Holmes Granny Square Blanket, Chaos Pattern

Make a granny square with fingering weight yarn and a size D crochet hook (or whatever size you know you like to use for fingering weight). You need a dark grey, a light grey, a warm medium brown, and a beige. I used Knit Picks Palette in Marble Heather (7 balls), Silver (4 balls), Brindle Heather (3 balls), and Camel Heather (5 balls). Start with dark grey and just do a granny square, round and round forever and ever in the following stripe pattern for a total of 80 rounds. Try to keep your tension nice so it doesn't curl in on itself. I like this granny square tutorial from Purl Soho if you need more guidance. On the last round, skip the ch1 spaces between each set of 3 dcs and in the corners turn with ch1 instead of ch2. Blanket! Mine came to about 64" square.

Stripe Pattern:

Rounds 1 - 14: Dark Grey

15 - 16: Medium Brown

17 - 18: Dark Grey

19 - 21: Beige

22 - 24: Dark Grey

25: Light Grey

26 - 27: Medium Brown

28 - 31: Dark Grey

32 - 33: Light Grey

34 - 36: Medium Brown

37: Light Grey

38 - 44: Dark Grey

45 - 46: Light Grey

47 - 52: Medium Brown

53 - 59: Beige

60: Light Grey

61 - 62: Dark Grey

63 - 67: Beige

68 - 69: Dark Grey

70: Light Grey

71 - 71: Beige

73 - 76: Dark Grey

77 - 78: Light Grey

79: Dark Grey

80: Light Grey

Granada Holmes Granny Square Blanket, Detailed Pattern

Yarn: KnitPicks Palette in Marble Heather (7 balls), Silver (4 balls), Brindle Heather (3 balls), and Camel Heather (5 balls)

Or substitute with: Fingering Weight in Dark Grey (350g), Light Grey (200g) Medium Brown (150g), and Beige (250g).

Hook: Size D (or as needed to attain gauge)

Gauge & Dimensions: Not terribly important. A granny square of four rounds should measure about 3.25" to yield a blanket about 64" square.

Pattern:

If you need yet more detail, this granny square tutorial gets very specific! (Please note this pattern has not been tested, it's just a record of how I made it which is accurate to the best of my ability.)

Set up: With Dark Grey, ch 6, sl stitch into first st to join into a circle.

Rnd 1: Ch3, 2dc into the ring, ch2, 3dc into ring, ch2, 3dc into ring, ch2, 3dc into ring, ch2, sl st into top of ch3 to close the round.

Rnd 2: Ch3, 2dc into corner space, *ch1, 3dc in next corner space, ch2, 3dc into same corner space*, repeat * * 2 more times, ch1, 3dc into initial corner space, ch2, join to top of ch3 with sl st to close round.

Rnd 3: Ch3, 2dc into corner space, *ch1, 3dc in next ch1 space, ch1, 3dc, ch2, 3dc in next corner space*, repeat * * two more times, ch 1, 3dc in next ch1 space, ch1, 3dc in initial corner space, ch2, join to top of ch3 with sl st to close round.

Rnd 4: Ch 3, 2dc into corner space, *(ch1, 3dc in next ch1 space) twice, ch1, 3dc, ch2, 3dc in next corner space*, repeat * * two more times, (ch1, 3dc in next ch1 space) twice, ch1, 3dc in initial corner space, ch2, join to top of ch 3 with sl st to close round.

Rnd 5 and beyond: Maintain pattern of beginning with ch3, 2dc in corner space, *ch1, 3dc in ch1 space* across the side of the square, 3dc, ch2, 3dc in corner space, and finishing final side of the square with ch1, 3dc in initial corner space, sl st to join. See Rnd 80 (final row) below.

Follow stripe pattern above, cutting yarn from old color after sl st to end round and joining new color on the ch3 of a new round.

Rnd 80: Ch3, 2dc in corner space, *(3dc in next ch1 sp) across the side of the square until last ch1 sp, 3dc, ch1, 3dc in corner space*, repeat * * two more times, (3dc in next ch1 sp) across side of square until last ch1 sp, 3dc in initial corner space, ch1, join to top of ch3 with sl st to close round.

Weave in ends.

[radiantmorningstar]

A few technical notes and observations specific to my current Holmes Basic D&D campaign . . .

I’m playing it sandbox style, completely unrailroaded and unscripted. It’s an emergent story, organic to the dice rolls and random oracles; however, I am keeping the mission of Ruvin and Dain in mind as well as my developing sense of who they are as individuals.

I’m taking my time. As a soloist, I have the luxury of setting my own pace, and I enjoy visualizing things in detail. My actual gaming sessions are usually on the weekends, but I spend the rest of the week with the events in the back of my mind, going over them and vividly “seeing” what happened in my imagination. This is one of the many creative aspects of solo gaming that I really enjoy.

I also enjoy writing up my summaries and finding art or illustrations that reflect the scenes. Sometimes, I’ll ask AI to draw for me, but since AI often makes my skin crawl, I don’t resort to it all the time. I’d rather find a painting or a stock photo. I may post the logos from the games I’m playing because I think that’s a quick and interesting way to let people know what I’m doing.

I love using supplements, weird resources, oracles, endless tables and funky dice. I also like cobbling systems together or using adventures (or parts of them) from one system and rules from another. Right now, my central rule set is Blueholme, a 20-level conjectural extension of the Holmes Basic D&D rules.

I believe that Original D&D (aka “OD&D”) and Basic D&D, up through BECMI and the Rules Cyclopedia, are inherently more compelling than the later editions because they’re simpler, less influenced by corporate meddling, and offer more space for player creativity. Blueholme, which is to say, the restatement of the original Dungeons and Dragons rules by J. Eric Holmes in 1977, subsequently reorganized and logically extended by Michael Thomas in 2017, is now my favorite fantasy RPG. There are many others I like, but this one is very special.

Sometimes, I make “DM Notes” [in brackets], which are asides from the POV of me being my own Dungeon Master, but I don’t record many of my rolls or game mechanics in my summaries. I don’t want to slow my summaries down with numbers that would be largely meaningless to a reader. Two consistent exceptions to this are combat rolls and attribute checks. Otherwise, I will note anything critical but will usually avoid things like wandering monster rolls, weather generation, navigation rolls, etc. I’m doing most of those things as a soloist, just not writing about them unless they manifest in the story.

Sessions will often be “quiet.” Think of this like “quiet moments” in screenwriting (i.e. scenes in which things are not catching on fire and people are not screaming). Quiet moments perform many important functions in a story. And this is a story, even if most of it is conveyed through narrative summary. Since it’s emergent and not scripted, I will summarize the times when nothing much happens as well as the action. Because I’m letting the story pretty much do what it wants, I never know exactly what’s going to happen.

If you’ve been following the episodes of my Holmes Basic Rebirth campaign thus far (look at my Tumblr “Archive” to read them from the beginning), I thank you for accompanying Ruvin and Dain on this journey. Who knows what their fate will be? Only time and gaming sessions will tell.

Earendil

[oldschoolfrp]

"Were-shark" by Eric Holmes and his son Chris, in Alarums & Excursions 13, July 15, 1976. Eric and Chris wrote up a number of stories from their D&D adventures for A&E, often illustrated by Chris. The following year saw the publication of the first Basic D&D set edited by Holmes, with his sample dungeon below Zenopus' tower and Portown also containing a sea cave with a beach, 2 boats, and a monster in the water.

[thydungeongal]

What are your thoughts on how B/X edition doesn't let non-humans pick a class?

It's extremely cool and smart and fun.

Like to be fair, I feel that the B/X demihuman classes can be read in a few different ways, but I think it's worth acknowledging where they come from: the demihuman classes of B/X are based on further streamlining rules that were already in place in the original edition and Holmes Basic.

Holmes Basic is somewhat ambiguous in its wording, first stating that dwarves and halflings are always Fighters, but then saying that they can opt to be Thieves instead. Only to then later say that Thieves are always humans and then explicitly state that dwarves and halflings can only be Fighters. It's a bit of a mess, but it makes it clear that dwarves and halflings are basically limited to Fighters (which was also true in 0D&D until the Thief was introduced).

Similarly, elves are stated as advancing as both Fighters and Magic-Users, which is a streamlining of the original edition's method of elves being able to act as either Fighters or Magic-Users for a given day. Again, this was how all elves worked in the original game until the Thief was introduced.

All of which is to say, the demihuman classes of B/X are simply a more streamlined representation of concepts that were already in place. A Dwarf actually is a Dwarf Fighter, a Halfling is a Halfling Fighter, an Elf is an Elf Fighter/Magic-User.

Anyway, I appreciate the simplicity of it, but I also think there's a reading of it that works around the arbitrary class limitations (which is actually supported by the text of other editions): that the demihuman classes simply represent the types of dwarf, elf, and halfling that are most commonly encountered outside of their own lands. AD&D 1e makes it clear that halflings can be Druids but only as NPC types. The class limitations are not necessarily indicative of any inability by, say, dwarves to pursue the path of a Cleric, but simply making a statement about what are appropriate adventurer types.

Anyway all that is completely irrelevant to the fact that writing Dwarf, Elf, and Halfling in the box for "Class" communicates a unique silly vibe that is actually very cool and funny. Like, as I've said before, I like it based on vibes, but it's good to understand it within the greater context of the game as it existed at the time.

[theresattrpgforthat]

hi! have you seen the TTRPGS for Palestine bundle yet? and do you have any recommendations from it

https://tiltify.com/@jesthehuman/ttrpgs-for-palestine

THEME: TTRPGS for Palestine

The TTRPGs for Palestine Bundle is going from April 12 to May 7, so there's not much time left to get it, but here's some recommendations of some really awesome games that you can find in it.

Gubat Banwa, by makapatag.

GUBAT BANWA is a Martial Arts Tactics and War Drama Tabletop RPG where you play as martial artists poised to change the world: Kadungganan: the cavalry, the wandering swordsmen, the tide turners, the knights-errant, the ones to call in darkest night in a world inspired and centering Southeast Asian folklore.

Witness, grand warriors, honorable gallants that trudge and toil under kings and haloes. Witness, KADUNGGANAN, that refulgent name. That blasted name: WITNESS NOW. The end of days is upon us: and the new world MUST BE BORN. Bear your blades, incant your magicks. Cut open your tomorrow from the womb of violence. Inscribe your name upon the very akasha of this world. 

Gubat Banwa is designed for fans of 4th edition D&D, with in-depth character abilities that make you feel both unique and powerful, in a colourful and flavourful world full of vibrant cultures and clashing conflicts. The game uses an action economy with different action options carrying different weights, which also reminds me quite a bit of Lancer. If you want a game that pushes you to strategize with your friends and weigh your advancement options carefully, you want Gubat Banwa.

Gun & Slinger, by Nevyn Holmes.

GUN&SLINGER is an RPG geared for short, episodic sessions about a weapon and a wanderer. A Maestro and two players (Gun and Slinger) set out into a dead planet mutated by a god's forgotten child and hunt strange bounties, investigate the world and unlock hidden powers. During play, they seek to learn the nature of what’s hunting the Slinger, figure out why the Gun is sentient and discover how the world died.

This game is specifically for three players, using the rules of Go Fish as a resolution system. Gun & Slinger is all about using your resources to the best of their ability, and your resources might exist on your character sheet, but they also exist as cards in your hand.

What really intrigues me is the lore that’s baked into your character sheets. One of you is a wanderer in a twisted world, tempted by strange powers that guarantee to change you into a monster. One of you is a sentient magical gun, borne by that wanderer and designed to deliver death and pain.

Gun & Slinger has expansions included, allowing you to instead play as a wanderer possessed by a demon, a mech and a pilot fused as one, or someone who bears a cursed sword. I think the fact that it requires a small table and the fact that the characters’ lives are tied together makes this a high-stakes, terribly intimate game.

Apocalypse Frame, by Binary Star Games.

In a ruined and terraformed world where most of humanity is under the yoke of a brutal regime, the former workers of a once-remote factory - now known as The Collective - have risen up to create a future of freedom from oppression. You are an Ace - a highly skilled pilot referred from a Division in The Collective and assigned a humanoid combat vehicle known as a Frame. You and your Strike Team of fellow Aces must take on The Collective’s greatest threats, ensure its survival, and carve a path for its continued success.

Apocalypse Frame takes mechs and fits them into the LUMEN system, which centres competency as well as fast but effective rounds of combat. The game includes a variety of different threats, allowing you to tailor your campaign to your group’s tastes, and the tailoring doesn’t stop there. You choose both a division that your character belongs to, and then one of three mechs within that division, allowing players to share similar fighting styles but differ in weapons. You can also modify your basic frame, adding general modular systems alongside systems and armaments that can come with your mech, making character creation and progression exciting for folks who love tweaking and tailoring to their heart’s content.

If you’re a fan of Armored Core or Battletech, you’ll want to check out Apocalypse Frame.

Here, There Be Monsters!, by wendi yu.

No matter what they tell you, there’s still weirdness and wonder everywhere. You just have to know where to look. At the edges and cracks of ‘normal’ life we exist, we persist, and we resist: the monsters, the magicians, the anomalies, the freaks, and the outcasts. We gather in the shadows, trying our best to live our lives in a world that, when it doesn’t exactly fear or hate us, doesn't even believe in our existence.

here, there, be monsters! is a rules-lite response to monster-hunting media from the monsters' point of view. It's both a love letter and a middle finger to stuff like Hellboy (and the BPRD), the SCP Foundation, the Men in Black, the World of Darkness games and the Urban Fantasy genre in general. It is an explicitly queer, antifascist and anti-capitalist game about the monstrous and the weird, in any flavor you want, not as something to be feared, but to be cherished and protected.

Here, There, Be Monsters is a love-letter to anyone who has been made to feel monstrous, as well as an homage to media such as Hellboy, the SCP Foundation, and Men in Black. It’s urban fantasy meets organized power structures, and as the monsters, you’re here to burn those structures down.

This game uses descriptive tags to slap onto your characters to represent what they can do. You can choose from a number of different monster character backgrounds to give you guidance towards, and there’s plenty of monsters both in the base game and in the game jam wendi ran back in 2022. If you want a game of power, anti-capitalism, and punching up, this is the game for you.

Pale Dot, by Devin Nelson.

Pale Dot is a collaborative storytelling game for 2-5 players about a crew of non-human cosmonauts leaving their planet to explore a strange solar system, finding threads to unravel the unknown along the way. It is fantastical, surreal, and perhaps very unlike humanity’s own ventures in space exploration. Though one thing is universal: leaving home is terrifying, dangerous, humbling, and a catalyst for changing one’s perspective. 

Pale Dot is a GM-less game where players work together to create an alien setting and subsequently envelop it in cosmic mystery, embodying cosmonauts called Dustlings, as well as one of 5 different settings. During their journey they will be able to travel to 24 different locations within their solar system, each with several prompts for improvisational scenes. Each player will also have to manage the integrity of their cosmonaut and their shared ship while avoiding space's many perils.

The cover for Pale Dot gripped me the first time I saw it; a tiny creature in an astronaut suit, looking up in fear at something in the sky, as vegetation blooms inside their helmet. You play as the Dustlings, non-human but sentient species exploring the Cosmos, a strange, horrifying and wonderful universe that changes those who venture into it.

Mechanically, Pale Dot uses a GM-less structure similar to Dream Askew, but there feels to be a much bigger emphasis on the setting your cosmonauts explore, rather than the cosmonauts themselves. Your characters are assembled traits, drives and equipment, almost all of which can be expended to cause or solve problems. Each player is also responsible for at least one setting element, such as The Cosmic Wilderness, The Wondrous Endeavour, or The Omnipresent Danger. As you visit locations, different elements will be prompted to influence the scene, while your cosmonauts try to navigate the scene and try to finish the mission. If you want a game that is collaborative and evocative, I definitely recommend Pale Dot.

Fractal Romance, by Ostrichmonkey Games.

A never ending abstract landscape of rhythm and soft glamour. Wander the halls, rooms, and chambers. Encounter strange Denizens and get to know them better; befriend them, fall in love, just chill. Try and fill out your own blurred edges. Fractal Romance is a tabletop role playing hangout. You will pick up a character to play and explore the Fractal Palace, generating its infinite sprawl and the Denizens that inhabit it, as you play.

Fractal Romance is all about searching; for something you need, something you want, or even for who you are. It feels rather surreal, perhaps like a dream dimension that you are moving through. The game uses a deck of cards to generate rooms, as well as the denizens of this gigantic, dream-like palace. This game uses rather simplistic playbooks, each asking you to choose three descriptive words, and then uses cards to fuel your character’s actions: you have things you can always do, things that cost a card to do, and things that you must do in order to draw another card.

If what you want out of a game is a chill time with friends, moving from one vibe to another, and generating emotional stories for your characters, you might want to check out Fractal Romance.

Himbos of Myth and Mettle, by huge boar.

You are big. Big arms, big tits, big thighs, big brai- you're big where it matters. In addition to a heaving, throbbing body, glistening lightly with a thin sheen of pleasantly fragrant perspirant, you have one singular unifying trait  - come hell or high water, you are going to help.

Himbos of Myth & Mettle is a high fantasy, high camp role playing game of epic proportions (of body), for 2-5 players, one of whom will act as Game Guide.  The rules center around a simple roll under mechanic and prioritize narrative flair and cinematic descriptions. Himbos is inspired by many classic fantasy properties (and could be considered OSR adjacent) , but leans towards a more garish, salacious and queer (gay or odd, pick your fighter) style of play. It is designed with comedy and flamboyance in mind, but is not without it deeper and darker touches. It's definitely not grimdark, but there will probably be blood. Think classic fantasy pulp in style, but contemporary sensibilities, modern rules-lite mechanics, and a player philosophy centred in helping, kindness and being fucking hot.

I’ve heard rave reviews for Himbos, and I think the idea of leading an entire group of well-meaning but possibly over-ambitious adventurers is a great set-up for a game full of laughs. Himbos is very much designed for a light-hearted evening of fun, flirting, and fucking up (but in the best way).

Other Games from the Bundle I've Recommended:

Space Taxi, and Creation Myths, by GothHoblin.

Caltrop Core, by Titanomachy.

Souvenirs, by Rémi Töötätä.

Thunder in Our Hearts, by Marn. S.

Eldritch Courts of Some Repute, by AlanofAllTrades.

[married-to-google-translater]

Hi, can you do the yandere morarity the patriot (did I spell that right, I'm sorry) reaction to reader being from america and being so fascinated by the boys and their british culture, however gets terribly bullied by the other britians for being 'uncultured' and not knowing the basic manners and stuff.

I do this for Yandere William James Moriarty... Since you didin't say wich character

Yandere William James Moriarty

William thinks you'd be really cute.

You had just moved to town and asked him for directions.

That's how you two met and "became friends".

You would be a light in this dark world William.

He would be happy to teach you British culture.

However, not everyone is equally kind to you.

Getting William's attention would make many an aristocratic lady jealous.

Oh and they could be really mean to you.

You certainly wouldn't have as much money as William, but you would enjoy his company.

There would be nothing more for you. However, others would not really believe such a thing.

William would begin to notice differences in your behavior.

He noticed how you would often feel like a monkey and you wouldn't want to see him as much anymore.

You don't have to be a genius to figure out what's going on.

Oh William would be really angry.

Although this would be his fault for not protecting you from this dirty world before.

However, it would end now.

William would promise to protect you better and cleanse this world.

Fortunately, now he would know where to start :D

Yandere Sherlock Holmes

Sherlock could be a really difficult person if he wanted to.

Yandere Sherlock would certainly be no exception.

You and Sherlock first met at the police station.

You were a successful detective in America and you had been sent to London to help Sherlock.

Yeah, Sherlock really hates the idea.

He didn't really "need help" in this case.

However, no one really listened to him.

Culture shock would be difficult for you and Sherlock certainly didn't make the situation any easier.

This guy wouldn't have that much empathy.

He teased you about a lot of things.

However, this would stop when Sherlock started to realize that you could be helpful.

You're really good at your job and Sherlock wouldn't be blind.

His Yandere tendencies would begin to awaken.

Even if Sherlock teased you he wouldn't let anyone else do the same to you.

He would notice such things easily and those people would face great misfortune.

Sherlock would be good at solving crimes and really good at staging them.

He would be willing to do it for you too.

Yeah, you really wouldn't go back to America...

[bananaeatstape]

i actually have no idea if someone already mentioned this but i haven't seen anyone bring it up so heh-

there's this Arthur Conan Doyle online encyclopedia that has a bunch of information on *drumroll* Arthur Conan Doyle, including a solid number of videos of him, his family and pets

i found one w his parrot :D

it also has the full text, illustrations, and, in the case of the novels, book covers from almost, if not all, the sherlock holmes stories

it also has the "unofficial" stories; short stories that referenced holmes, a play based on the mazarin stone, and a story that was basically the first draft with the characters that would become mr. holmes and dr. watson

here their names are hugh lawrence and john h. thurston and their roles are kinda swapped (lawrence is a doctor and thurston is a chemist)

there's also a list of the several hundred actors who've played sherlockian characters w the names of their adaptations and a brief introduction to the actors + a special biography or career overview for those in some of the most memorable adaptations

it also has other characters and short stories from Doyle's non-sherlockian tales which is really neat

this was the one website feeding my obsession w the books before my friend was kind enough to buy me the collected works lol

[cavegirlpoems]

I think _Dead Girls In Sarkash Forest_ is fantastic. I'm using it in my ongoing Holmes Basic '77 (OD&D) solo campaign. It's hard to be a game designer-writer and I think you do it well. Let's hear it for doing cool hard things.

yay, thank you! I'm pretty proud of it.

that said I think perhaps Mork Borg's vibes and system are somewhat orthoganal to what I was going for. I've described it as 'tricking osr players into playing a storygame' in the past. whether the juxtaposition works is a matter of taste, i think.