Search Results for: old school renaissance

Adventure in a Place of Unholy Shadows: A Review of Crypts and Things

Comments 7 comments

Back in the 70s, when I first started playing Dungeons and Dragons (D&D), I spent a long time wanting a ruleset that would let me recreate the sort of sword and sorcery that I was reading back then. I wanted to play a game that caught the atmosphere of Robert E Howard’s Conan, Karl Edward Wagner’s Kane, or Fritz Leiber’s Fafhrd and Grey Mouser stories. I wanted to adventure in a place of unholy shadows, where magic was scary and…

Read More Read More

The Exploding World of Castles and Crusades

Comments 9 comments

I was disappointed I wasn’t able to go to GenCon this week. Although I’ve been enjoying Howard Andrew Jones’s sporadic updates on Facebook, and looking forward to a detailed report when he gets back. In the meantime, I’ve been consoling myself with memories of my last game convention, Gary Con V in March. I wrote up a detailed report on Gary Con IV last year, but just didn’t have time to do it justice with a full length write-up this…

Read More Read More

Tor.com Reviews First Edition Advanced Dungeons & Dragons

Comments 6 comments

Over at Tor.com, Mordicai Knode has captured a lot of my own thoughts on First Edition Advanced Dungeons and Dragons. Here he is on Gary Gygax’s original Monster Manual: Even if you don’t play the game, you can still flip through it and think chimeras and hook horrors and mindflayers are awesome. Which follows through; even if you aren’t going to use any given monster, you can still find them interesting, and who knows, maybe flipping through you’ll find something…

Read More Read More

New Treasures: Gygax Magazine, Issue #1

Comments 16 comments

I don’t think it’s an exaggeration to say that the hottest thing in role playing at the moment  is the rise of OSR. The Old School Renaissance has captured the interest of thousands of players — many returning to gaming for the first time in decades — and fostered the birth of a fresh generation of dynamic new companies. We’ve featured some of the best products here on the BG blog, including Carcosa, Astonishing Swordsmen & Sorcerers of Hyperborea, Dungeon…

Read More Read More

Unearthed Adventures: Announcing the Winners of the Best One-Paragraph D&D Adventures

Comments 4 comments

Last month we announced a contest seeking the best one-paragraph descriptions of your favorite D&D characters. Because we’re awesome (and because we’re tight with Wizards of the Coast, who are even more awesome), we secured a very special reward for four lucky winners: a copy of the brand new Unearthed Arcana 1st Edition Premium Reprint — which we first examined here. Those four names were drawn at random from the ten best entries, as selected by our judges. Before we get to the…

Read More Read More

R.I.P. Lynn Willis, Game Designer Extraordinaire

Comments 5 comments

I was researching some recent OSR (Old School Renaissance) D&D releases at The Society of Torch, Pole and Rope blog when I came across a shocking post: an obituary for legendary Chaosium game designer and editor Lynn Willis, dated January 18. It’s tough to describe the sense of loss I feel. I never met Lynn, so I didn’t know him personally. But he was a prolific designer and editor, and his name graces many of my favorite games. Like the other great…

Read More Read More

Renovating Tegel Manor

Comments 6 comments

While I was assembling my Judges Guild article on Tuesday, I stumbled on an odd reference to a revised version of one of their earliest (and most famous) products: Tegel Manor. I’d never seen a copy however, and was pretty sure it didn’t exist, so I set it aside to investigate later. What makes Tegel Manor so famous? I don’t think I could articulate its wonders as well as the talented James Maliszewski, author of the Grognardia blog; here he…

Read More Read More

New Treasures: Wilderlands of High Fantasy

Comments 14 comments

In the very early days of adventure gaming, there were two companies you could count on: TSR, creator of Dungeons and Dragons, and Judges Guild. Judges Guild was admittedly second tier. While TSR was constantly innovating, with full color cover art and high production values, Judges Guild saw no reason to deviate from the look they established in 1976: rudimentary layout and typesetting, and two-color covers that looked torn from a coloring book. But they were prolific. My weekly pilgrimages to the…

Read More Read More

New Treasures: Astonishing Swordsmen & Sorcerers of Hyperborea

Comments 6 comments

Back in 2010, I attended Garycon II, a rapidly-growing game convention in Lake Geneva, Wisconsin, held in honor of Gary Gygax, the co-creator of Dungeons and Dragons. In my BG convention report I said: One of the delights of the con for me was the discovery of Charnel Crypt of the Sightless Serpent, an adventure for the forthcoming Astonishing Swordsmen & Sorcerers of Hyperborea system by Gary’s Castle Zagyg co-author Jeffrey Talanian. A black and white staple-bound folio sold at…

Read More Read More

The Paris Fashion Week of Fantasy Games, Part II

Comments 12 comments

Last Monday I talked a little bit about the Fall Games Auction at Games Plus in Mount Prospect, Illinois. I compared it to Paris Fashion Week because, much like a fashion show, it’s an opportunity to see everything new all in one place. And not really in a leisurely, browsing-in-a-bookstore fashion, either. While you’re gawking at a fabulous fantasy game you never even knew existed, people all around you are bidding in a frenzy, intent on making sure you never…

Read More Read More