The Original Dungeons & Dragons published in the Three Little Brown Books is a delightful and frustrating game. It’s good simple fun, with some real virtues that had already been diluted or lost by the time of Holmes, Moldvay, and the Advanced edition of the game. OD&D was my introduction to the OSR, through Brendan’s Pahvelorn campaign, and I’ve retained an abiding love for it. But it’s clunky, inconsistently written, requires the players to reference entirely different games for combat and wilderness travel rules. It has desperately needed an update since the day it was published, and the only problem is that every heretofore existing update has made OD&D worse in some way.
My friend Marcia, of Traverse Fantasy, has spent over a year studying OD&D. She’s been working to unpack its mysteries for nearly as long as I’ve known her. Applying her mathematical skills to teasing out all the hidden implications of its mechanics. She has weighed each oddity to identify whether it’s suggestive of interesting worldbuilding, or if it’s simply a mistake. She has collected the external material from Chainmail and Outdoor Survival and performed the same rigorous examination there. She’s worked to clarify the game from top to bottom.
And because she’s dedicated to engaging with this hobby as a hobby, she doesn’t even want any of your money for it. This invaluable work of love and sweat is yours to play for free.
🥺 thank you so much nick!! i hope you and others enjoy and get good use out of it! 🙂
I have no doubt people will get use out of this. It’s an impressive achievement!