Ask me anything about Holmes Basic D&D (1977)

Best Selling RPGs - Available Now @ DriveThruRPG.com
Séadna said:
Zenopus Zenopus , was there ever any legal trouble with "Hobbit, Nazgul, Balrog, etc" being accidentally left in the 3rd printing of Holmes despite being expunged elsewhere or any interesting stories around that?
Click to expand...

Not that I've heard of; I guess the Tolkien Enterprises didn't follow up on it too closely. It's a bit surprising that they didn't scrutinize the Holmes rulebook more closely as it became a bigger seller. But they did change the extensive use of hobbit throughout, barring one instance, so perhaps that was their main concern. The other mentions are brief.
 
For anyone interested, there is an interview with me in the "D&D Classics" column latest issue of Dragon+, the successor to Dragon magazine. It's part of a feature on the Tower of Zenopus. I talk some about my start with Holmes Basic D&D, how I came to write the Zenopus Archives blog, running the original Tower of Zenopus, and converting it to 5E.

Read more about this on the Zenopus Archives blog:
The Tower of Zenopus in Dragon+ Issue 32

Direct link to the D&D Classics column in Dragon+ #32
 
Last edited:
On the Zenopus Archives blog, I'm posting installments of a draft of a new adventure called The Forgotten Smugglers' Cave.

BACKGROUND: Years ago, this natural cave system was the preferred route for smuggling goods into Portown, because it leads from the sea all the way into the town proper. This changed on the night of magical destruction of the Tower of Zenopus, an event which shook the land enough to collapse both the cliff face over the entrance to the smugglers' cave and a section of the main passage through the tunnel. This rendered it unsuitable for smuggling, although it is still possible to traverse the system with some difficulty. After the town knocked down the remains of the tower of Zenopus, the smugglers eventually began using the caves there instead.

LOCATION: This sea cave is located at the base of the sea cliff to the west of Portown, to the south of the Zenopus dungeon.
Click to expand...

The first post is here:

Background and Areas 1 and 2

Forgotten%2BSmuggers%2527%2BCave%2BAreas%2B1%2Band%2B2.png


And the second:

Area 3: Grotto with Rocky Beach

This one includes awesome original art contributed by Lore Suto (https://twitter.com/loresuto), showing "The Crawler in the Grotto":

Carrion%2BCrawler%2Bby%2BLore%2BSuto.jpg
 
Last edited:
FYI, I've released an updated version of the pdf of The Ruined Tower of Zenopus adventure (5e Conversion) on DMs Guild.

There are two main additions:
1. A full-page illustration by Chris Holmes, son of J. Eric Holmes...!
2. A printer-friendly dungeon map.

All previous purchasers should be able to go back & download the updated pdf.

If you missed it, the product was previously updated with Roll20-optimized map files (one DM version, one Player version).

Click here to read more & See a preview of the new pages

Click here to go directly to the product page on DMs Guild
 
Last edited:
I recall seeing this many years ago. At the time I was just skimming images and it went into my memory as having been done by Holmes.

Portown+by+Paleologos.jpg


Not surprisingly it is from your blog. Sadly it is a later creation. Lovely map though.

Does anything remain of Eric Holmes personal home group campaign?

Who was a player in his home group?

Has anyone bothered to go interview his players?

I do agree your first few posts, this is the direction D&D went in that suited my tastes based on actual fantasy literature of the time. Just enough info to be clearer than OD&D, yet AD&D just felt too limiting for my taste.
 
Last edited:
That map is by paleologos, who writes the OSR Grimoire blog. It is based on a real-world medieval city in Crete. For the Ruined Tower of Zenopus, I drew my own version with some inspiration from Lovecraft's Kingsport, which is a fictionalized Marblehead, MA.

We actually know quite a bit about Holmes' home games due to (1) his writing about them, both as game stories in Alarums & Excursions and his article Confessions of a Dungeon Master in Psychology Today and (2) his son Chris being one of his main players and returning to gaming in the last few years; he has attended North Texas RPG Con every year for the last five years or so. Chris has a website here. We had a panel there in 2016, which you can listen to here.
 
Last edited:
Just noticed that DMs Guild is having a Cyber Monday sale, and is included, so it is currently only $1.59. Sale is on for about 16.5 hours more.
www.dmsguild.com

The Ruined Tower of Zenopus - Dungeon Masters Guild | Dungeon Masters Guild

The Ruined Tower of Zenopus - Now with an illustration by CHRIS HOLMES and a PRINTER-FRIENDLY DUNGEON MAP! THE RUINED TOWER OF ZENOPUS is a fifth edit
www.dmsguild.com www.dmsguild.com
 
On the blog, I am posting notes on running the Ruined Tower of Zenopus using old school D&D. The first post covers pages 1-5, the bulk of which is stats for my customized Wandering Monster table. Notes are written up for Holmes Ref (Holmes Basic + OD&D) but should be suitable for any old D&D.

zenopusarchives.blogspot.com

The Ruined Tower of Zenopus: Running it Retro

zenopusarchives.blogspot.com zenopusarchives.blogspot.com
 
Zenopus said:
Today, I've put up the second post on running the Ruined Tower of Zenopus using old school D&D rules.

This one focuses on a Roster of Monsters for the rooms of the dungeon, with converted stats usable with Holmes/OD&D/your favorite retroclone

zenopusarchives.blogspot.com/2020/12/the-ruined-tower-of-zenopus-running-it.html
Click to expand...
Have you got anything on the Creaure of Rhyl? Being from the actual place means that scenario name has always amused me.and it's actually not a bad dungeon.
 
Stevethulhu said:
Have you got anything on the Creaure of Rhyl? Being from the actual place means that scenario name has always amused me.and it's actually not a bad dungeon.
Click to expand...

I just happened to have updated my page for the Creature of Rhyl a few months ago with a list of the Holmes Basic-isms in the adventure; it's pretty clear it was written for Holmes. I keep meaning to post this up on the blog.

Zenopus Archives - The Creature of Rhyl

Subtitled: "A Basic D&D adventure by Kevin Knuth" Dragonsfoot Review by paleologos Trivia Several features of this dungeon appear to be influenced by the Holmes Sample Dungeon. As noted by paleologos, the first level features a rotating room with a statue that appears influenced by the statue room
sites.google.com sites.google.com

Do you think there is anything about the Welsh Rhyl that would have inspired Kevin Knuth to use its name for the adventure? Per Dragon #50, he was from Fon du Lac, Wisconsin. The name Rhyl appears only once in the text of the adventure as the name of the country it is set in.

Paleologos on DF noticed that some of the names in the adventures are backwards normal names: Asereht (Theresa); King Namreh (Herman); Prince Laechim (Mihceal, or "Michael"))
 
Last edited:
I don't have any questions.

Just figured I'd mention that I may try to run it again.

I have only run it once as far as I can remember. That would mean that between 1977 and 2021 it's been 44 years!

I plan to sneak it into a game without my players knowing what it is.
 
Holmes%2Bwith%2BCat.jpg


It's Holmes Day 2021!

J. Eric Holmes was born on this day, 91 years ago. Over on the Zenopus Archives blog, I've got a "new" photo of Holmes, plus my "Holmesian Highlights" of the past year: Holmes Day 2021
 
Attention Holmes Basic True Believers!

The next installment of The Forgotten Smugglers' Cave dungeon has been posted.

To the east of the Reef Cavern is another a water-filled cavern, with the sound of falling water to the east...

Area #9. Waterfall Cavern

9.%2BWaterfall%2BCavern.png
 
Zenopus Zenopus a number of your older posts images are showing up as Xs these days. Might want to see what's going on there.
 
Bunch said:
Zenopus Zenopus a number of your older posts images are showing up as Xs these days. Might want to see what's going on there.
Click to expand...

I lost a bunch of images on my blog. I've been slowly restoring them, but this site doesn't appear to let you edit old posts, so I can't update the image links here.
 
Zenopus said:
I lost a bunch of images on my blog. I've been slowly restoring them, but this site doesn't appear to let you edit old posts, so I can't update the image links here.
Click to expand...
You can ask the admins to update the links when you have them.
 
Warning: Wereshark Incoming!

The latest area for the Forgotten Smugglers' Cave adventure, Area #10: Driftwood Hermitage, features a Wereshark, one of the few monsters for D&D created by J. Eric Holmes:

Area #10: Driftwood Hermitage

E8ch1JRWUAE2yYP
 
Last edited:
Odle curiosity and maybe it has been asked, but I don't remember reading that... is this the edition which had a suggestion for an "attribute checks" mechanics, where you roll under the attribute on 3d6 (not 1d20, as was suggested in AD&D2e)?

To clarify, I've never seen the edition with the 3d6 attribute check, just heard about it on forums, and promptly forgot which one it was, but it was pre-2e...my intro to those editions, after a failed attempt at AD&D2e, were the OSR games - after which I purchased OD&D and called it a dayI
 
AsenRG said:
Odle curiosity and maybe it has been asked, but I don't remember reading that... is this the edition which had a suggestion for an "attribute checks" mechanics, where you roll under the attribute on 3d6 (not 1d20, as was suggested in AD&D2e)?

To clarify, I've never seen the edition with the 3d6 attribute check, just heard about it on forums, and promptly forgot which one it was, but it was pre-2e...my intro to those editions, after a failed attempt at AD&D2e, were the OSR games - after which I purchased OD&D and called it a dayI
Click to expand...

AsenRG,

The short answer is that there wasn't an edition of "D&D" per se with 3d6 attribute checks as a standard mechanic - it was something used in The Fantasy Trip. However, there were some ad hoc 3d6-roll under attribute checks in OD&D and AD&D in 1970s, and a reference to a house rule version appeared in a Dragon magazine module in 1980. See my post "The early history of 3d6 stat checks" for more details.
 
Zenopus said:
AsenRG,

The short answer is that there wasn't an edition of "D&D" per se with 3d6 attribute checks as a standard mechanic - it was something used in The Fantasy Trip. However, there were some ad hoc 3d6-roll under attribute checks in OD&D and AD&D in 1970s, and a reference to a house rule version appeared in a Dragon magazine module in 1980. See my post "The early history of 3d6 stat checks" for more details.
Click to expand...
Oh good, I was thinking that my memory was going but then again back at the time I skipped the whole Holmes basic and later basic DnD boxes. I went from the small DnD books to the AD&D 1st edition books as they were releasing. I was starting to think that the Holmes basic had the 3d6 attribute check based on posts. lol. The Fantasy Trip makes more sense I did play that back at the time and backed all the Kickstarters when it returned. Thanks for clearing that up Zenopus.
 
I forget if we used 3d6 or d20 stat checks, but I remember using them when we played Holmes Basic D&D in fall of 1977. They must have been floating in the community and we picked it up from my friend's brother (who had been playing D&D at school for at least some time before my friend was given the Holmes set for his birthday) because the brother and the Holmes book were the ONLY RPG resources we had at the very beginning.
 
I can't count how many times I've written up house rules for old-school editions of D&D where rolls vs. stats replace all the thief skills and pretty much everything else. I'm pretty sure the end results are alway better than the patchwork of original systems, but somehow I always end up setting them aside and playing TFT instead!
 
Zenopus said:
AsenRG,

The short answer is that there wasn't an edition of "D&D" per se with 3d6 attribute checks as a standard mechanic - it was something used in The Fantasy Trip. However, there were some ad hoc 3d6-roll under attribute checks in OD&D and AD&D in 1970s, and a reference to a house rule version appeared in a Dragon magazine module in 1980. See my post "The early history of 3d6 stat checks" for more details.
Click to expand...
OK, it seems whoever mentioned that (on another forum, years ago) was either mistaken, or referring to a houserule. Thank you for clearing that up:thumbsup:!
 
AsenRG said:
OK, it seems whoever mentioned that (on another forum, years ago) was either mistaken, or referring to a houserule. Thank you for clearing that up:thumbsup:!
Click to expand...
It's interesting because it's not the first time I've seen it mentioned over the decades. Makes me ponder if it wasn't mentioned as an optional rules idea in some Dragon, Judges Guild Journal, White Dwarf, Different Worlds or other gaming magazines that I read at the time.
 
Acmegamer said:
It's interesting because it's not the first time I've seen it mentioned over the decades. Makes me ponder if it wasn't mentioned as an optional rules idea in some Dragon, Judges Guild Journal, White Dwarf, Different Worlds or other gaming magazines that I read at the time.
Click to expand...
If you look at Zenopus Zenopus ' blog post, there's a lot of references to it, just not as an explicit core mechanic - more as ad hoc mechanics, and some mentions in examples of play, such things:thumbsup:.
 
AsenRG said:
If you look at Zenopus Zenopus ' blog post, there's a lot of references to it, just not as an explicit core mechanic - more as ad hoc mechanics, and some mentions in examples of play, such things:thumbsup:.
Click to expand...
So like the old roll 3d6 and reroll ones for character generation or roll 4d6 remove the lowest, it's something that's just been around in some groups since the beginning. On the character generation, we did the above mentioned options back in 1978-80, so it always amuses me when I see threads acting like it's a new thing or that it isn't old school.
 
On the Zenopus Archives, I highlight the newest episode of the long-running Fear of a Black Dragon OSR/FRPG podcast, which is dedicated to the Tower of Zenopus, the sample dungeon from the Holmes Basic D&D rulebook. In the second half, they discuss what elements to include in a sample adventure in a RPG rulebook, so may be of more general interest.

Fear of a Black Dragon podcast: Tower of Zenopus
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Banner: The best cosmic horror & Cthulhu Mythos @ DriveThruRPG.com
Back
Top