OSRIC - First Edition Fantasy Roleplaying Game

First Edition Fantasy Roleplaying Game

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The Icemaiden
By: Rachel

During AD&D sessions I doodle some of the action and I've started to develop these into a strip charting the party's progress. Updates will be when I get the time to put pen to paper. It should be noted that these are 'cartoons' and I'll be using some artistic license but the spirit of what happens at the table will always be there. Hanging Coffins of the Vampire Queen

The Vampire Queen has assembled a team of her worst prisoners for a little game! Together you strangers face a simple choice...death or freedom? She has challenged your daring band of adventurers to run the gauntlet of her wicked dungeon lair using all of your original weapons, magic items and possessions! You must survive terrible traps, beastly monsters, even each other as you outwit and fight your way through all the horrific surprises she has arranged. Fortune and glory await those brave souls who can escape from the Hanging Coffins of the Vampire Queen!

Old School Role Playing
By: Joseph A. Mohr
Role playing the way it was meant to be

Old School Role Playing produces OSRIC material and other old school products for Drive Thru RPG. It also offers a blog with weekly articles on old school topics. Follow Me And Die!
By: Larry Hamilton

I am a long-time gamer. I started with the Holmes Blue Box set of "Basic D&D" that only went to third level, back in March or April, 1977. I then moved on to AD&D, anxiously waiting as each book was released, reading every word as quickly as possible.

Druids and Undead
By: Larry Hamilton

Druids in First Edition AD&D do not have the ability to turn undead. Other than physical combat or druid spells, druids are just like anyone else when it comes to undead. Undead In AD&D Part 2
By: Larry Hamilton

Yesterday, I wrote a bit about Undead in AD&D, with a focus on the Monster Manual and Dungeon Master's Guide. I got a lot of likes and comments on it, some wanting to see what I had to say about the Fiend Folio.

Secret Machines of the Star Spawn

Locals have been hearing whispers of strange happenings around the Ancient Volcano. Rumors over the last several years of an unspeakable evil that has risen up inside. An evil that "fell from the stars." There is something wicked and devilish going on inside. Highwaymen report of strange creatures, mechanical monsters, horrible beasts and "little green men" that are roaming the land. You and your stalwart adventurers have decided to take on the challenge of plundering the mountain for the treasure within! The Mystical Trash Heap
By: Trent Foster
A blog about D&D and other 80s-era pop culture

My infrequently-updated blog ostensibly covering the entire gamut of 80s-era pop culture but in practice focused mostly on D&D, specifically Gary Gygax-flavored 1st edition AD&D and the World of Greyhawk. Occasional house-rules and new crunch (spells, monsters, items, etc.) are posted alongside reviews and retrospectives, reminiscences, philosophical musings, polemic rants, and other standard blog fare.

Magical Protections In AD&D
By: Larry Hamilton

This is the third part in a three part series of articles spawned by my research into undead in AD&D. MontiDots Ltd
By: Simon Todd

We are about writing, illustrating and publishing table top role-playing games. MontiDots is a collaborative venture between three friends incorporating passions, skills, ideas, creativity and fun. Through OSRIC we have published a series of adventures for various levels of play from low level exploratory dungeons to grim survival adventures in upper layers of hell.

Free Town of Groat's End - Twisting Stair Dungeon
By: EOTB
It's a game of chicken when the DM is the crazy one

Since the party is going back to town, I needed to put one together. Here's a map for it, and I'll finish detailing out the town over the next few days in blog posts... Cultists of Yox
By: EOTB
It's a game of chicken when the DM is the crazy one

As grodog mentioned at his blog, I'm hip-deep in keying out the dungeon level of Twisting Stair #1 for use in my home campaign (and for a prospective Roll20 online campaign). It's coming along nicely, although not quite finished in a shareable state. One thing I like about the Twisting Stair zine is how it drops a tidbit without fleshing out the details. I find it just enough to jump start my creative process while leaving me completely free to follow my imagination. One example of this was the "Cultists of Yox" found on the Wandering Pairings random encounter table. As a little teaser of what turned out to be a major faction in my adaption of the 1st level Twisting Stair dungeon map, here my take on the Cult of Yox...

OSRIC Player's Guide

The OSRIC Player's Guide, by Seattle Hill Games, has most of the core rules to play the advanced first edition of the world's most popular role-playing game. It is an easy introduction on how to play the game as Gary played it. Once you have mastered the rules herein, you should be able to easily assimilate the full rules from the golden age of fantasy adventure gaming. Please note; this is not the full ruleset. You will also need a manual of monsters and a game master's guide, which are available online. Alternatively, you can pick up the full OSRIC rulebook from Black Blade Publishing. What is Classic Adventure Gaming?
Article By: Administrator

Classic Adventure Gaming is not a Roleplaying Game. It is not "OSR", even if it uses rulebooks the OSR also claims. It is the style of gaming presumed and presented in the 1E PHB and DMG which was common before a playacting style of "roleplaying" grew into a new normal. It rejects the term "roleplaying game" or "RPG" because today those names firmly convey implicit expectations running contrary to practices of successful adventure gaming. We start with what adventure gaming is not to clear the mental decks of unhelpful presuppositions, before explaining what it is. Classic Adventure Gaming prioritizes the following: The players and DM are fundamentally interacting with each other, as people around a table (virtual or otherwise), not as the controllers of PCs and NPCs. No player is ever required or expected to supersede their own personality at the table with a fictional one. Players are expected to get better at the game and demonstrate a growing mastery of its rules in play. If someone is playing their 10th first-level character in a similar fashion to how they played their 1st first-level character then something is amiss. There is no expectation players will act at the table as if a game were not occurring; players are expected - not discouraged - to use what the modern hobby mistakenly disparages as "metagaming". A player who knows that fire prevents trolls from regenerating but declines to use it because "my character doesn't know that" is roleplaying instead of adventure gaming. Conversely, GMs must not metagame - because a GM has perfect knowledge, they must limit themselves within the knowledge, goals, abilities, resources, and quirks of the NPC or monster they are running at the time in order for a functional game to occur. This is almost the exact opposite of how most roleplaying games view the player-GM dynamic, and an example of how character-first roleplaying flipped the playstyle in a 180 away from how early games ran. Adventure gaming is campaign based; the idea of one-shot games is foreign to adventure gaming. A game world exists and persists apart from any group of characters. When combined with the expectation that players grow in mastery of a set of rules, a single set of rules is used for very long periods of time�(if not indefinitely) so that players gain enough time in a single ruleset to understand it thoroughly as opposed to a superficial understanding. Because a GM is comfortable with highly experienced players, rules tinkering for tinkering's sake, or perhaps to artificially reintroduce an atmosphere of player uncertainty due to ignorance, is discouraged. GMs choose rulesets they already agree with the basic principles and presuppositions of the author, so that everyone can get on with the act of playing. High level play is embraced, it is the goal of every campaign. Nobody is trying to tell a story. A GM writes places and situations; if a future is written, it is the future of what will happen in that location or what those NPCs will accomplish if the players choose not to engage with it or them at all. No attempt is made to pre-determine the course of what will happen if the players decide to engage with that content. Because the GM has determined the goals, resources, abilities, local geography, and "personality" of any NPCs at a location, they have all the tools necessary to react believably and distinctly to whatever actions or plans the players may devise at the time of contact. Player agency is paramount. The burden of what course of action is taken is on the players, not the GM. Adventure gaming is not well-paired with a table made up entirely of passive players, regardless of how excited a GM may be to try it. Many tears occur when a GM attempt to run an adventure game with players who really want the GM to tell them what they will be doing tonight, with players making only minor decisions through the course of the evening but otherwise seeing if they can succeed at the goal a GM has set before them. It is tailor made for groups having a minimum of one player who likes to make decisions. Not everyone has to be a decision maker if the rest of the group is comfortable with allowing a minority of however many to perform the role a GM performs in a more normal campaign of deciding what the groups course of action will be for a gaming session. A GM accepts that world building and location/scenario writing is a parallel but separate hobby to the game itself. GMs enjoy worldbuilding for its own sake. There is no feeling that time spent devising locations and NPCs is "wasted" if players do not interact with it. Instead, because the GM has written out the effect of players not engaging with that content at all, the game world changes accordingly and seems to the players to move even where they've not personally intervened. As players develop their mastery of the ruleset, the pace of play becomes much faster than most roleplaying game groups experience at the table. The ideal all participants are aiming for is a tempo approaching a ping-pong game, where the GM is delivering information to the players who act or react to it quickly without negotiations over the information. Unlike in many RPGs, 1st level characters do not have an at-will 9th level time stop spell they can use any time they would prefer more info to make a decision. Everyone accepts that some decisions made will result in less than ideal outcomes because the game continually moves forward without time to reflect if circumstances aren't entirely in the PCs' control. But this results in more exploration, more encounters, and faster advancement in the aggregate. Adventure gaming is not a low-treasure, "magic is rare and wonderous" affair. "Mudcore" gaming as personified by low-resource, "realism" games such as HARN are thematic mismatches. Player agency requires ample player resources, and the GM is not intimidated by players rapidly growing in wealth, power, and independence as the early game is escaped. Early games were light on built-in character class powers because it was expected the PC would have several magical items giving an ever-changing de facto suite of "character powers" that would morph with time as items were used up (or destroyed) and replaced with new and different items. These principles are all found in the 1st edition advanced PHB and DMG (and I strongly recommend advanced forms of the game for use with it), although they fell out of fashion as a greater number of hobbyists more comfortable with playacting than rigorous gaming, joined the hobby. Adventure gaming carves this early style back out of and away from the more common style practiced today, that openly discourages many elements that make it great. It is not for every table or every group, but for those it suites it is irreplaceable. If you and your group see an activity in the pages of the the book that play never seems to quite capture (and you wish it did), try running a campaign based upon these principles and see if the game becomes more enjoyable and engaging.

Undead In AD&D
By: Larry Hamilton

I was reading up on the various undead in the Monster Manual, and noted which ones in their descriptions specifically mentioned throwing holy water on them would hurt them. New rules for clerical strongholds
By: EOTB
It's a game of chicken when the DM is the crazy one

When a cleric reaches 8th level, the place of worship described must be built within the civilized realms of

OSRIC SRD

All of the OSRIC rules in one place EOTB
It's a game of chicken when the DM is the crazy one

Approach: gamist over simulationist Appeal: player skill over character skill Aesthetic: Heavy Metal: the Movie over fantasy geographic My games and writing center around sandboxing between urban, wilderness and megadungeon play; and also a heavy dose of other-planar. Quirks include an irrational love of treasure maps, and using the DMG unarmed combat tables. Dice openly rolled to the fullest extent possible. Illusions are real to the character if the player responds except to disbelieve. Gandalf was just a 5th level wizard, prove me wrong.

Palace of the Dragon's Princess

Once upon a time, the beautiful lakeside realm of Thorin Vale was suffering from the death of its benevolent King. All hope now lay with his only daughter, Princess Francesca who was set to marry her fathers bravest knight and that union would restore the empire. However, on the wedding day, the evil Dragon Maelfesto attacked the castle by surprise and took control! The serpent drove everyone out and took the woman captive in the caverns below, wickedly enchanting the place and was never seen again. Riches, honor and glory will be gained for those who can save the fair maiden, defeat the beast and return alive from the Palace of the Dragon's Princess! Villains of the Undercity

Danger lurks in every corner of the small coastal city of Los Farport. The locals insist people are being abducted in the night and taken into the bowels of the rumored "Undercity Dungeon" below. A lone survivor managed to escape and give some information before dying in your arms: "Secret door...Tavern of the Wiley Wench...Ugh!" You and your brave team of adventurers have decided to investigate these rumors, plunder the dungeon and destroy the dreaded "Villains of the Undercity!"...right after you loot his still warm body, of course.

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