Labyrinth Lord Released

Goblinoid Games has finally released Labyrinth Lord. You can download the e-book for free or order a printed copy:

http://www.goblinoidgames.com/labyrinthlord.htm

I must say this book looks very impressive. Nicely done. The mchanics are very much what were in the old red and blue books, but Daniel is not claiming he did anything original here.

From the foreword:

Labyrinth Lord is not new or innovative. This game exists solely as an attempt to help breathe back life into old-school fantasy gaming, to do some small part in expanding its fan base. Labyrinth Lord follows in the footsteps of other "retro-clone" game systems. One might think of it as an emulator, meant to employ game rules (algorithms) from early 1980s games by using new presentation in combination with terms that are open game content, provided under the Open Game License Version 1.0a, by Wizards of the Coast, Inc.

Labyrinth Lord is a restatement of a set of rules that are otherwise out of print and no longer commercially supported. This work follows the idea that game rules themselves are not subject to copyright, only the specific presentation of those rules are. The goal of Labyrinth Lord and other retro-clone systems is to make rules currently available, using a common reference, for third-party publishers to create gaming material that is not only compatible with the particular retro-clone system, but also with the system which it seeks to emulate.

Download the pdf and read for yourself. I'm ordering a copy of this bad boy.

I also appreciated the dedication to Tom Moldvay:

As I was writing Labyrinth Lord, I learned from the Internet gaming community at Dragon's Foot (www.dragonsfoot.org) that Tom Moldvay had died. He was the editor of the first set of game rules that inspires Labyrinth Lord, and his many writings made him one of the pioneers of fantasy role-playing. Those who knew him report that he was a nice, hard-working man. I only met him through his writings, but it is clear that we owe him a great debt. This work is therefore dedicated to his memory.

As I said, I have only skimmed through the book, but it reads very similar to those old books, changing terms and names only where you'd expect them to for legal reasons. I still have some questions about things that I'm unsure on, but the only way those questions will be answered ultimately is when Wizards decides to answer them. I hope that doesn't happen, or if it does, it doesn't happen in a way that will end this project.

In the meantime, Labyrinth Lord is a positive step for old school gaming. There will likely be people creating adventures for these rules in the weeks and months ahead, and it will be interesting to see what's next.