I've started work on a "Swords and Sorcery" supplement to the Basic Fantasy RPG. These are the basic rules modifications that the Caves of Chaos project will eventually need. All I've finished so far is a early draft of the Character Classes section.
Limited to 6th level and first and second level spells only. Classes currently available: Barbarian, Cleric, Fighter, Magic-User, Thief.

The current copy of the pdf file can be found here (Note: updates will have the same file name).

Comments are welcome as this is a very early draft.

I'm sure Donna would thank you for the kind words -- if she only had the energy.  I don't have a lot of time for this site, which is probably obvious, but just thinking about it does provide me with with a much needed pleasant distraction. I could do more if my energy level was so low. It's not as low as Donna's, but it is probably only 60% of my usual. All the stress, I guess.


That's another slight mark against LL. I've been carefully comparing them at night before I go to bed, and find things I don't like about each. There are weird omissions in BFRPG (no intelligent sword rules, djinni and efreeti lack all they special creation powers in the descriptions, etc) but the BFRPG seem a bit more flexible, which is helpful for what I want to do here. I still haven't made a decision, however.

There aren't many good ways -- especially if the powers are strong in the source material and you are trying hard to recreate that material. However, it can be easy to teach players that they have to be careful using their powers without thinking things though. For example, plan an occasional situation where jumping right in with powers fully blazing looks like a great idea at first glance but actually makes the situation much worse and a non-powered (or very creative use of powers) is the best way to handle the situation. If you come up with situations once in a while where depending on powers isn't a very effective solution, you will (hopefully) find they become less dependent on them.

While my wife's cancer treatments haven't left me much time to work on this the RetroRoleplaying site, this board, or by project, I have continued to think about the Caves of Chaos project.

After reading the Holmes Basic D&D as a complete game thread on Dragonsfoot, I am seriously thinking of limiting memorizable spells to first and second level spells for both magic users and clerics. Higher levels spells could only be directly cast from scrolls (or other magic items). Otherwise they could only be cast from spell books in long rituals in a wizard's lab (mu spells) or temple (cleric spells) or placed in magic items. Not only does Geoffrey made a good Swords and Sorcery literary case for limiting memorizable spells to 1st and second level in the Dragonsfoot thread, but doing so would be closer to the Vancian source material as well. One story mentioned only twotypes of spells the magic user could memorize: lesser and greater spells.

I'm also thinking of using the Basic Fantasy Role-Playing Game as the basis for the rules instead of Labyrinth Lord as and the word processor source is available for BFRPG while only the finished PDF is available for Labyrinth Lord. BFRPG also has races as races instead of as classes, which is probably better for a low-level only rules set as it provides more player options.

I haven't actually mentioned that the Forum on Dragonsfoot or any other RPG board yet. I'd like to get a few more starter threads and such in place before I do. Unfortunately, this is all being done around my real life -- which currently includes daily radiation treatments for my wife (week one of seven) -- so it is moving much slower than I would like.  Feel free to invite folks to help.

The setting can be as neat and controlled behind the scenes as you want it to be. You never need use a randomly created dungeon if you do not want to, what your player see as chaos can all be fully planned out behind the scenes if you want.  Or you could mix things up with some truly randomly generated caves and dungeons and others designed by you as part of some chaos leader's long term mad plan. The point of Caves of Chaos isn't to force randomness on DMs but to provide a setting where randomness makes sense so that those with little spare time can still run an interesting and fun campaign.


Exactly the purpose of the project -- to provide the basic rules and an easy to use setting that is interesting enough to keep the players happy without being a lot of work for the DM.


Given your experience with RPGs, you probably have enough info to take this idea and run with it now.

I'm glad to see you here, David.  You are just in time for my first post on the Caves of Chaos project you were interested in when I mentioned it on the blog.

The idea for the Caves of Chaos project came from reading a few unrelated threads on Dragonsfoot, my discovery of the Holmes Companion, and a few threads on the "E6" variant of D&D3.5.

• On Dragonsfoot, the first thread had a discussion on what it make take to have a really popular version of D&D today -- really popular as in a game that would sell well in toy stores and the like something like D&D during its heyday saleswise in the early 1980s. The second thread talked about random dungeon generators on the web. The third was a thread on one of my favorite modules, B2: the Keep on the Borderland. 
• The Holmes Companion is a fan-created 4 page guide to expanding the Holmes Basic Set through 6th level.
• The E6 variant of D&D3.5 has a level limit of 6th for all characters (after that, all they get is a new Feat every so many experience points). This way the game is not about superheroes who can wipe out a small town without missing lunch and more about heroic humans who even at the highest level of play would be no match for a legendary monster like an adult dragon -- at least not with out a lot of planning, some extra magic items, and good luck.

All of these unrelated concepts gave me an idea for a D&D-like "basic set" that could be played without a lot of DM preparation (one of the main things some on Dragonsfoot thought would be needed for a "D&D" that would have a chance of being popular in today's very busy world) but yet would still have lots of room for a DM who had spare time to create interesting adventures. It would use the Labyrinth Lord rules as a base as they are entirely open game content and they have a very Basic/Expert set feel to them. Characters would be limited to sixth level. The game, however, would be complete in itself. There would a special system that allowed higher level magic to be done in a ritual manner (taking hours) which would allow friendly NPC clerics to do spells like Raise Dead, Restoration as services in their temple buildings and friendly NPC Wizards to do Legend Lore, Stone-to-Flesh, and the like for a hefty fee from the ritual chamber of their towers.  Higher power magic (over 3 level spells) would be available as the DM allowed, it just would not be something PCs could use on adventures.

The setting would be an area recovering from the Chaos Wars of hundreds of years ago. Wars that humanity/demihumanity won only by virtue of not being wiped out. They were pushed back to a relatively small area of the world before the Chaos Lords suddenly lost interest in the war for reasons unknown to humanity (real reason: major infighting amongst the Chaos Lords as to who would rule when the war was won which resulted in the deaths of many of the Chaos Lords within a few weeks).

Most of the world became chaotic after the war. So chaotic that random bits from other material planes of controlled by chaos would shift in and out in the "Chaos Lands."  Civilization returned and eventually needed to expand into areas now chaotic. The Dwarves discovered that it could be done at great risk.  One planted a stronghold 75-100 miles into a chaos land and held it at all costs. Sending warriors out of the stronghold to defeat the monsters that appeared when lands shifted in chaotically while using up the chaos energy by forging items of magical power in the stronghold and shipping them out to the civilized lands. If you keep this up long enough chaos loses control of the land and it because "lawful and sane" so that normal people can settle it. Over the centuries, this method has been improved on somewhat, but is still basically the same.

The Caves of Chaos setting would be such a fortress town set over 100 miles into the Chaos Lands, connected to the civilized world by a magically enchanted, but still very dangerous, road that has to be protected from damage and repaired if the forces of chaos cut it. This particular area is noted for its constantly appearing and shifting caves full of creatures of chaos. This allows DMs to generate an evening's dungeon with a random dungeon generator and have the randomness of it all make sense in the campaign world. This area has not be tamed as rapidly as others and in addition to the random caves and other chaotic randomness, there seems to be occasional signs of well-organized chaotic opposition -- some fear that a powerful servant of one of the Chaos Lords (or even a Chaos Lord itself) has taken an interest in the area for unknown reasons.

This setting allows for quick play and quick DM setup while allowing almost any type of adventure the GM wants. It allows for lots of powerful magic to be available to the PC for a price when they are in town between adventures, but forces them to rely on their own abilities when out fighting chaos. It allows for town adventures as well as dungeon and wilderness adventures. The chaotic changes to the lands allow for an infinite variety without the DM having to constantly come up with new background (towns, NPCs, etc.).

More later.

Assume that you are suggesting starter materials for someone familiar with RPGs, but just getting into Classical D&D. Lets assume that for rules, the person will either get the Rules Cyclopedia or the Basic and Expert Sets. Which settings books and starter modules would you suggest and why? (Please limit your suggestions to 3 or 4 items as the object is for the complete "starter set" to cost around $25-30 maximum in PDF form.)

I think I'd select these:

* B1-9 megamodule -- I know the individual adventures aren't complete in this form, but there is a lot of good, fun material here for the price.

* Gazetteer 1: The Grand Duchy of Karameikos -- Simply a great place to set a low-level campaign and unlike many of the gazetteers it is easy to create adventures for.

* X1: The Isle of Dread -- This has always been one of my favorite adventures. It introduces sea travel and has a large island ready to explore. And most players like the King Kong take-offs.

That's the nice thing about tabletop RPGs as opposed to MMORPGs, PvP is frowned on in most groups (after all, the same people are playing as a team session after session and they are all the players) and the games need not revolve around combat after combat. Older RPGs also tend to make combat quick and abstract so that one can have enough combat to please those players who enjoy it while still leaving plenty of time in a 4 or 5 hour session for non-combat stuff.

I'm Randall -- the Host of this place. I started playing D&D in 1975 when all there was rules-wise was a brown box with three little beige books, the Greyhawk supplement, and a few third-generation photocopies of new classes from some magazine I had yet to see called The Strategic Review. I ran roleplaying games almost every week from 1976 to 1992 or so -- mostly some form of Dungeons & Dragons carefully tailored with lots of house rules to fit my own campaign world in the early years. In later years when the real world of 40+ hour a week jobs intruded on my roleplaying time, I learned the joys of classic D&D (the Mentzer Basic, Expert, Companion, and Masters sets and later the wonderful Rules Cyclopedia) and its Known World setting.

With Classic D&D and the Known World setting (or my new Hidden Valley setting), I could run a campaign with relatively few house rules -- well, few compared to the large books of house rules I used for my own world in Original D&D and First Edition Advanced D&D. This let me spend my much more limited time creating interesting adventures for my players instead of spending time creating house rules and my own campaign world. The streamlined, fast play of Classic D&D also meant we could get a lot of adventuring in a single 4 or 5 hour game session -- probably as much as we used to get in those early 12 hour session.

After 1992, it started getting harder and harder to get the group together. We were all older and busier. Instead of weekly sessions, we were lucky to get two sessions in a month. By late 1994, it was over. No one had any time and we just quit playing.

When I heard that Wizards of the Coast had bought TSR and was bringing out a third edition of D&D, I was excited. I pre-ordered the three new core rulebooks from Amazon and read them as they came in. Sadly, I was very disappointed. D&D 3.0 was a rules heavy monster that made character building and tactical miniatures combat so detailed and important that I figured these aspects would overwhelm the game. Instead of feeling like a good fantasy novel, third edition reminded me most of a computer role-playing game -- only one where the players and gamemaster had to all the number-crunching that the computer would normally do behind the scenes.

That wasn't anything I was interested in playing. I put the books on the shelf and went on with my no roleplaying life. I picked up the 3.0 Forgotten Realms setting book because I had always like the setting and enjoyed many of the novels. A friend gave me a copy of the Epic Level Handbook hoping that would get me interested again. It didn't. (The only published version of D&D that seemed top get high level play right, IMHO, was Mentzer's Classic D&D.)

Before I knew it, WotC had published version 3.5 of D&D. From flipping through copies at the bookstore coffee shop, I saw that everything I did not like about third edition D&D had become even more important in 3.5. I never bought a copy of any 3.5 product as 3.5 was barely anything like the D&D I knew and loved.

Late last summer, someone on one of the religion/philosophy message boards I hang out on mentioned that WotC was bringing out D&D 4.0 in 2008. He was upset as he had a couple of thousand dollars in D&D 3.5 books and supposedly 4.0 was going to be so major a change that it would make them all useless. I read some of the material on fourth edition on the WotC site and on EN World. As far as I can tell, 4th edition will be a completely different game being sold under the D&D name because people know the D&D name. From what I've seen, it isn't anything I'd be interested in.

However, while investigating the upcoming version of D&D, I made a wonderful discovery. There were people out there like me who enjoyed the older versions of D&D. I discovered Labyrinth Lord, a modern day "remake" of Basic/Expert Set Classical D&D by Goblinoid Games -- made possible by the Open Gaming License WotC started using with D&D 3.0. I downloaded the free pdf of Labyrinth Lord, printed it and read it. Actually, devoured it might be a more accurate description. I was very impressed -- for all practical purposes, Labyrinth Lord was Basic/Expert D&D.

From reading the Goblinoid Games forum, I discovered web sites like Dragonsfoot and the Knights-n-Knaves Alehouse where a number of gamers from my era hung out and discussed old role-playing games. Best of all, I discovered that while the old versions of D&D were out of print, WotC had made them available in PDF format for extremely reasonable prices. As the games were still available, they did not have to die off. I started RetroRoleplaying.com to be a portal to older pre-D20 RPGs. A place where people can see what they were like and find out how people have played them and are still playing them. This is a huge job that may take years to complete, but it's a way I can contribute something to a hobby that has given me a great deal of pleasure over the years.

I've also been running online message areas since the mid-80s. First on BBSes in the 1980s, then in the 1990s a number of years as an assistant sysop on GEnie's Third Science Fiction Roundtable, and more recently as host of a number of incarnations of a web message board, so it seemed natural to create a message board for RetroRoleplaying.

The purposes of the RetroRoleplaying.com site is two-fold:

First, to create a web site that treats older RPGs as games that are still being played and even, in many cases, still in print in PDF versions. Too many older game sites treat older games as out-of-print collectibles. By treating them as living games, one is more likely to interest new players and expand the community of players.

Second, to help people interested in playing older RPGs find affordable used (or PDF) copies of the games they are interested in. Everyone hears after the high prices that rare early printings or rare supplements bring and assumes that all used copies are very high priced. In reality, copies that are perfectly usable for playing even if too well-used to interest the collector for the majority of older games can be had for very reasonable prices -- sometimes less than one paid when they were new.

There are a number of things you can do to help:

1) Write "positive" articles on why you prefer the older gamesystem you do. By positive, I mean one that focuses on the positive reasons for selecting the gamesystem in question. Not one that focuses on the negatives of later editions. Comparing and contrasting is necessary, but try to stay focused on you find right about the system you use, not what you find wrong with D&D 3+. Such articles will let people see why they might want to use a specific older game.

2) Reviews of older games and modules are always welcome. Links to already existing reviews are useful too.

3) Links to good sites on older games. I am particularly interested in links to campaign sites where people provide information on their campaigns ran with older rules -- especially if the site has an interesting campaign journal

Feel free to introduce yourself in this thread. Just hit the reply button and tell us about yourself and the rpg systems you like, play, and/or are interested in.

While one of the complaints about most D20-style games is that they feel like a modern complex computer RPGs where the GM and player have to do all the boring scut work that the computer would do in a computer RPG, it used to be different. Early computer RPGs attempted to duplicate the feel of the tabletop RPGs of the era (AD&D, Traveller, etc.) and were fun to play -- when you were not playing the real thing with your gaming group. Even retroroleplayers who dislike computer RPGs often have fond memories of a few of the SSI Gold Box AD&D computer RPGs, for example. They were primitive by today's standards, but they were easy to learn, easy to play, and often fun.

Games like interactive fiction (aka text adventures) like Zork and free roguelike games like Angband and Nethack were popular then as well. New text adventures and new Roguelike games (and updates to some of the old ones) are still being made today. Most are free.

Special Rules for this board:

1) While copies of many older computer RPGs can be found as "abandonware" on the web with very little searching, discussion of how to find such "free" games are not allowed (for obvious legal reasons). The only exception is for those older computer RPGs that have been officially released as freeware by their copyright owner (there are a few).

2) This forum is not the place to discuss D20-based computer games or multi-player online games.

Many Message boards devoted to older RPGs seem to have banned discussions of their modern (distant) cousins because there are already many boards devoted to WOTC editions and because discussions of later/modern edition of D&D and similar games on a board primarily devoted to older RPGs tend to turn into "edition war" flamefests.

We are not going to do this for two reasons. First, one of the prime focuses of this message board is getting players and gamemasters interested in older RPGs, and that is going to involve discussing the differences between Fourth edition D&D and older games. Second, while many players of older games refuse to look at anything heavily WOTC-influenced, there are occasional interesting ideas in D&D 4 that could be streamlined and "backported" to older RPGs to good effect -- at least for some types of campaigns.

Therefore discussion of 4th Edition D&D is allowed on this board subject to the following special rules in addition to the message board's standard rules:

1) No "edition wars" flaming. If you can't calmly discuss differences between editions, why you like or don't like the latest edition of D&D, etc. without making personal attacks, flaming, or otherwise being rude and annoying, just don't post on this board. (The idea of playing an RPG is to have fun, after all, and fun can be had with any RPG if the players and GM like the system they are using.)

2) Excessive proselytizing of Fourth Edition D&D edition will often be treated as trolling. This forum is not the place to convert the masses to the latest edition. The world will not end if some players refuse to adopt it.