I've added a download link to Chgowiz's M74 character sheet to the new Microlite74 page:

http://www.retroroleplaying.com/content/microlite74

The changes have begun. The start of a Drupal website has replaced the original Retroroleplaying site -- with all the original material available here until it gets moved to the new version of the site.

Work on the new forum has begun as well.

LOL. That too.

Side Note to All: I've found that a willingness to undo any really bad effects of rules being playtested which turn out not work out makes players much less likely to complain about playtesting rules in a regular campaign.

This is one of the things that made 0e different in general.  A first level 0e magic-user may have had only one spell a day, but some of the spells available were very powerful: sleep and charm person, especially.  First level were toned down in power in later editions, which I always thought was a questionable idea.

Thank you very much! It's great.  I'll add this to the M74 page so all M74 players can find it.

Personally, I think players LOVE large areas to record treasure and magic items as they hope to find enough of both to fill the areas. LOL.

I definitely see your point now. I agree with Chgowiz, if one is going to use the standard M74 magic system and the d6 + str bonus hit point system, characters will need max hit points at first level. That's actually a fairly common 0e house rule.

I would usually have an idea for what I wanted for the classes I liked, and just keep playing that until one of the characters survived the first few levels.  As I recall, Pharesm, my 0E illusionist of ungodly power -- he was something like 12th level when retired -- was actually the 8th or 9th "Pharesm mold" character. The others never made it past first r second level.  Even with the mold, most of (the surviving) Pharesm's personality came from things that during his early adventures, not from any pre-planning on my part.

Side note: I still can't believe I got an 0E illusionist to name level.


If you use Vancian magic, I don't see any reason why your hit point revision shouldn't work well for all M74 classes.


That's always the best way to handle major rules fiddling: try it and see it works as expected.

How many HP did your MU have?

Seriously, at times I think they are a bit high for truly old school play. However, you are the first person who has expressed a similar view, so perhaps we are both "old fogies."  I kept the M20 hit points because one of the major objections "new school" gamers seem to have with "old school" style is the low hit points leading to lots of dead characters.  Those of us who started playing in the 1970s often just did not invest too much effort into a character (background and such) until he had survived a few levels, but this is asking a bit much of folks used to creating a fully fleshed out character.


That should work okay for fighters. But only playtesting will show how it works out for clerics and magic-users as HP do double duty for them in Microlite-based systems.

M74 2.0 will be using S&W (probably WB) monster stats and hit dice, which should make your hit point system even more viable.

Some major changes are coming to the Retroroleplaying web site and forum soon -- hopefully before the end of the year.

FIRST, Retroroleplaying.com will be converted to a Drupal site.  In the past I've always found Drupal too hard to work with, but the Microlite20 web site (and the fact that Drupal is at version 6.8 now and the last version I tried was something like 4.5) convinced me to take another look at it. I've been playing with it a few days on a test site and like what I see. Converting retroroleplaying.com to a Drupal site will allow me to easily let other people work on sections of it directly -- adding their material to it as they want.

SECOND, I will be replacing this free SMF board with a version of SMF that runs on the retroroleplaying server. This will be a copy I can control and modify directly -- and fully integrate into the retroroleplaying web site (including a single login to both Drupal and the message board).  There will be no way to move the messages from this board, but this board will not disappear, it will just be closed to new posts.

THIRD, the focus of retroroleplaying.com will change a bit. The focus will be to support selected older RPGs (and their modern retroclones) and my own RPGs (Microlite74 and the yet to be written Of Gold and Glory). I'm no longer going to try hard to cover games I have little or no interest in. However, if someone wants to add and maintain a section on an older game I'm not interested in, they will be able to do so thanks to the CMS-like nature of the "second edition" of RetroRoleplaying.

Games I play to cover from the start:

1) Original D&D and its retroclones: Swords & Wizardry and Swords & Wizardry White Box

2) Classic D&D and its retroclones: Basic Fantasy and Labyrinth Lord

3) First Edition AD&D and its retroclone: OSRIC

4) Microlite74

Looks like another fun session. I like how you are showing that actions have consequences and I like how you are working some advice into NPC interactions.

It looks like y'all had a good time. I made some comments on teaching tactics on your blog.

I've been avoiding that discussion.

I suspect we are.  I'm looking into some type of wiki-like site for M74. As there seems to be a lot more interest in it than I thought there would be, I think something users can add to devoted to M74 and variants would be a good thing.