Fighting Withdrawal: A DCC House Rule

DCC combat greatly simplifies the mess that is Attacks of Opportunity and the various maneuvers and feats to get around them in 3e+: you move out of melee, everybody next to you gets one free attack. Unfortunately, from my point of view, that works against something I regard as one of the big pluses of […]

Old School is a Perfectly Cromulent Term

“Old School” means doing things the way people used to do them. It’s a relative term, since what’s Old School depends on what time you’re using as a reference. Depending on when or who you’re talking about, electric typewriters could be newfangled inventions or unbearably old school, practically antique. School also carries a slight connotation […]

4e For Grognards?

The Core Mechanics offers up 10 House Rules to Make Grognards Like 4th Edition Dungeons & Dragons. Unfortunately, most of the house rules are of the Racing Stripes on a Yugo variety. (Or, if you’re a 4e fan, putting Fuzzy Dice and lowrider hydraulics on a Formula 1.) Except for Rule 7 (Don’t scale the […]

The Random Esoteric Creature Generator

The Random Esoteric Creature Generator for Classic Fantasy Roleplaying Games and their Modern Simulacra, by James Edward Raggi IV, published by Goodman Games. 32 pages, $12.99 The RECG is a set of tables for constructing bizarre D&D-style creatures, complete with Armor Class, Hit Dice, number of attacks, damage, special abilities, movement, morale, etc. It’s not […]

Supporting the Old School

My copy of Labyrinth Lord arrived today from Amazon, and it looks nice. Labyrinth Lord, you’ll recall, is one of the retro-clone projects that attempts to recreate D&D free of copyright impediments by using only new text plus what’s been released as part of the OGL, and itself is an OGL Product. I have to […]