Wednesday, April 28, 2010

AD&D 2.01 Documents

Here's a link to the google docs folder that will hold all the current drafts for my AD&D 2.01 Revisions. I'd love to have these in two-column pdf format, but at the moment that means spending a whole lot more time on layout than writing and editing.

My Visions of xD&D

As the "Usually Tuesday Night Landsquid Group" delved back into AD&D I had my usual series of system crunching modifications swirl in my mind. I wasted too much time reading "old school" blogs, cataloging old Dragon magazines, and bitching about the inconsistencies of OSRIC with my pretty AD&D books. I kept thinking about the good and bad of my brief dalliances with 3.0, 3.5, and 4th edition and the player's weekly complaints about the quirks, inconsistencies and organization of 1st edition. Oh, yeah, and why battle mats are better than beer. Here are my many plans:


A. Edited Version of 1.0 (Gygax) Dungeon Master's Guide

B. AD&D 1.75: Considering Unearthed Arcana as v1.5, this is my clean-up and streamlining of the 1st edition rules. Keep the guts, but make it a little more palatable to the unfamiliar and take advantages of word processing.

C. AD&D 2.01: What AD&D 2nd (and 3rd) edition should have been in my eyes. Keep races, classes, hit points, and d20 rolls to hit, but mess with all the details.

D. AD&D 5th Edition: 4th edition did a few things write, and on occasion I like a wargame or match of chess. If I can fix AD&D, I can fix this too.

E. Barbarians of Gygaxia: Dungeon crawling, treasure looting, and resource management - done rules-light and a little narrative. Taking the system of Barbarians of Lemuria and ideas from Houses of the Blooded.

For a peak on my progress, here's my Table of Contents for AD&D 2.01.

Welcome to The Antithesis of Weal!

Welcome to The Antithesis of Weal, my new blog focuses on Advanced Dungeons & Dragons, it's precursors and derivations (particularly 2nd edition). I've been sporadicly writing on Iron Rations with a fellow DM/Player, but I've created this to focus my thoughts. What you should expect:

* Some rules commentary on AD&D 1st Edition
* Explanations of 1st Edition based on the changes and text from previous editions
* What we can learn from 2nd, 3rd, 4th, and Basic D&D that could be applied to "improve" 1st edition
* My revisions to the AD&D Rules
* House rules to develop the exploration, resource management, and "end game" portion of the rules.