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Jeff Easley always spoke to me a little more than Elmore, but they are both awesome.
Keith Parkinson was probably my favourite of that generation.
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Jeff Easley always spoke to me a little more than Elmore, but they are both awesome.
Yeah, he's fantastic too. That RIFTS cover, yummy.Keith Parkinson was probably my favourite of that generation.
Frank Mentzer red box got me into d&dragons, so it's an easy vote from me.
although Holmes also has some interesting built in assumptions, for example you don’t take your spell books adventuring in Holmes.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.
Does it allow any combo of race + class in that one?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.
It says Dwarves and Halflings can't be Magic-Users or Clerics but that never stopped us.Does it allow any combo of race + class in that one?
It says Dwarves and Halflings can't be Magic-Users or Clerics but that never stopped us.
It was my introduction to the hobby. I loved it!I actually think Black Box D&D's approach to learning the game was better, albeit not nearly as charming or remembered as fondly.
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.It was my introduction to the hobby. I loved it!
That hat must be looking very tasty at this stage.Moldvay, because Holmes may have been my first RPG but Moldvay explained how the damn thing worked to me in ways Holmes didn't.
Lots of fibre. You still haven't cleared the 'most' bar though, low hanging though it may be.That hat must be looking very tasty at this stage.
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.FWIW, Race-as-class bothered me far more circa 1981 than it does in 2024
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.
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).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.