Recently I’ve been playing….

I’m 34 so I’m roughly as old as the whole RPG hobby. This means that Old School to me is Fighting Fantasy, including Dungeoner (which came out as late as 1989), WHFR, WHFB 3rd edition, Rouge Trader and the games I cut my RPG teeth on MERP and AD&D. Until recently I had never played DnD, I remember looking at the lovely red box but being advised by older friends that it was a big con. That I’d only have to splash out for the next box set up and I’d be better off buying a more complete game. This led me to getting WHFR and the rest is history.

Cool cover.

However I have discovered like many all over the world the joys of OSRIC which ultimate led me to Labyrinth Lord and the sheer joy of my ten year old self finally getting my hands on this game. Sure I can and have picked up the original DnD basic set but only being tainted by nostalgia for the original illustration and not the content has left me free to consider LL a better book. It’s great with the AEC as well but that’s another post.

My ones orange.

Anyway I’d e-bayed myself up some old adventures and with no patience for my two sons to grow old enough to play, I convinced some gaming mates to give it a go. So one Friday night armed with a night pass from the wife I went for curry and beers followed by a bit of Labyrinth Lording. I had bought along just the basic book, Module B2 : A Keep on the Boarderlands to play and B4: The Lost City just for the ready made adventures packs included to save time rolling the characters.

I firmly imposed the rule of 3d6 each stat no re-rolls, with much glee to me they all moaned about the imposition. We ended up with an Elf called Leg-o-Lamb with high Int and HP of 8, a Dwarf called Two (being the 2nd Dwarf my friend had played) with average to poor stats and a Cleric with almost the worst stat line ever seen. The Clerics player took one look at the weak, stupid character and called him Father Ted, at least the law of averages would mean an OK roll for hit points. Father Ted has 1 hit point, Two’s player in particular thought this was very funny.

Farther Ted plus minders, Leg O Lamb & Two.

Long story short Father Ted hired some help and they set off to the caverns. They waltzed up to the nearest cave opening and had a fight with some Gobbos, Father Ted survived and Two died. Awesome. Two’s player took over one of the hired help and died.He managed to stay alive as the other hired help. Inside the Cavern the Elf remembered his sleep spell just in time to save the party and they escaped their initial foray with 250 GC in Ogre bribes and only one character death. We all had a laugh and I’ll be forcing them to play again soon.

After waiting some 20-25 years to play basic DnD was the wait worth it? Yep, simple rules, great fun with no pretentions. We’ll be playing again soon as I get another pass.