[TSR/OSR] CHOOSE YOUR FIGHTA

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David Johansen said:
Holmes is mostly a reorganized OD&D that only goes to third level. It doesn't use races as classes so you have four race options and four class options. One thing it doesn't have is damage by weapon type though that's easily implemented if you want it. It has a full dungeon crawl adventure in the core book. The attribute bonuses are a bit less consistant and Holmes uses the 'Chance To Know Spell" methode which I like better in versions where there aren't so many spells. Holmes also allows wizards to scribe scrolls for 100gp which can be a real game changer for magic-users.
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although Holmes also has some interesting built in assumptions, for example you don’t take your spell books adventuring in Holmes.
 
There is an interesting thread on some of the OD&D forums where they discuss running the original version of The Hobbit using Holmes, how it is just about perfect power level wise for the world from that stand alone novel.

The idea being monsters are always scary and you are always in danger as you max out at third level. You just retire the characters at third. It wouldn’t be a super long game but if you got 12-15, maybe even 20, sessions it could be a satisfying change in pace.
 
David Johansen said:
It says Dwarves and Halflings can't be Magic-Users or Clerics but that never stopped us.
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:hehe:

I don't think you're wrong for that at all, but I do often see people pointing to 0e and Holmes as superior to B/X for not having race-as-class, but (in theory) both have restrictions that pretty much do the same thing.

FWIW, Race-as-class bothered me far more circa 1981 than it does in 2024,
 
The way Holmes is written, you need to essentially make an exclusion chart of what races can be what. By the end, you more or less have Moldvay's race-as-class breakdown. The biggest difference being Holmes tells you that any race can be a thief and to see the AD&D PHB for details on how to do it.
 
I started with Holmes and so it will always have a special place in my heart.

I liked the look of the Moldvay set a lot more, though, and was envious of my friends who got that version. I especially loved the Otus cover and internal art.

I never liked the Elmore cover for the Mentzer set (although I understand that for a lot of people it's iconic). I think I borrowed the player's book to play through the "choose-your-own-adventure" once. But other than that, I never used the Mentzer version of the rules. By the time it was available we were playing AD&D (and other games).

Years later I picked up a copy of the Rules Cyclopedia. I really liked it (despite the interior art). But now I would use Moldvay instead.
 
The Butcher said:
It was my introduction to the hobby. I loved it!
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I never owned that version. My understanding is that the card-based tutorial was based on the SRA reading system and that the person who pushed for and championed that approach was none other than Lorraine Williams herself.
 
Moldvay, because Holmes may have been my first RPG but Moldvay explained how the damn thing worked to me in ways Holmes didn't.
 
DeadBob said:
FWIW, Race-as-class bothered me far more circa 1981 than it does in 2024
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It doesn't bother me at all because I change all the classes into humans anyway. Dwarfs become Tomb Raiders, Elves become Sword Mages and Halflings become Scouts and so on. If I'm running a game with demi-humans, then you can just tell me what the race is. But then again, I didn't play these games in the 80's. D&D 3e was my first D&D and I only discovered the older editions after that game fell flat for me.
 
T. Foster said:
I never owned that version. My understanding is that the card-based tutorial was based on the SRA reading system and that the person who pushed for and championed that approach was none other than Lorraine Williams herself.
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Yeah I've heard good thing and the artwork looks good but I've never found a copy for a reasonable price, at least with the current cost of shipping from the US to Canada.
 
Mentzer. Without him there probably would never have been an RPGA or BECMI D&D.

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Voros said:
Yeah I've heard good thing and the artwork looks good but I've never found a copy for a reasonable price, at least with the current cost of shipping from the US to Canada.
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It was written/edited by Tim Brown and Troy Denning, who also wrote the original Dark Sun set around the same time (I suspect getting to write that may have been a reward for taking on the presumably-less-fun-but-necessary task of writing this). I’m not really familiar with Denning’s other work (it looks like he’s mostly a novelist and has relatively few game-design credits) but I know Brown from his work at GDW (he worked on Traveller and 2300 and maybe a bit on Twilight 2000) and judge him as a solid-but-not-exceptional journeyman. So I imagine his work here was solid but not thrilling (and, let’s be honest, as the fifth iteration of the same content after OD&D, Holmes, BX, and BECMI, there wasn’t a lot of room to put much of a personal stamp on it anyway).
 
I've recently had a chance (As in the last 20 years) got to try out the older editions, including Moldvay and Mentzer as I started out with AD&D2e, I'd have to say Mentzer felt better to me. That was the same year I also got to try B/X, then Moldvay finishing off with Mentzer.
 
iu


My brother (who is a year-and-a-half older than me) started with the D&D boxed set (and Arduin Grimoire). I started with the Holmes Basic set. By the time either of these yahoos arrived on the scene we had moved on to the AD&D hardbacks, and we never looked back.
 
Mentzer extended the range of levels by... stretching out the thief skills - a terrible solution. He did patch the glitch in the Cleric spell progression, which Moldvay/Cook inherited from OD&D (it was probably a typo as it isn't present n the OD&D draft). I find little to like in Mentzer, and found the later sets underwhelming.

My favourite bit about B/X though is actually the great front cover art for the two sets.
 
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