Gotta Love Lulu

When I was doing the desktop publishing thing, I would have loved having something like Lulu to turn to. It might not have worked as well for my weekly stuff, but it would have been perfect for special editions. They really do nice work. I knew if I could make Heroes of the Dungeon Crawl presentable enough, I would go to Lulu for printing it and for other projects as well. It's like having something you could buy at a store.

Lulu was huge in getting the OSR movement off the ground, and you can still find cool stuff there. I could have ordered Labyrinth Lord there when it was released, but Goblinoid Games did such a fantastic job of promoting it I had another option. I was able to order it at Barnes & Noble and go in there and buy it. My local game store owner didn't have a clue what I was talking about, but he sells it now. There was something so cool about buying it in a store like the old red box. I may have been the first person to buy LL that way.

I decided to support the OSR movement in December by purchasing Stonehell Dungeon and Dragons at Dawn. I became aware of Stonehell Dungeon by accident through Youtube. The publisher was LL'ing people through it and posted videos. A massive dungeon crawl. I've been thinking about making one myself and have had several ideas bouncing around for a while now. Several notes are already written.

Anyway, the Stonehell Dungeon book is a massive resource in itself, and he has supplements available and a second book planned. Lots and lots of maps and ideas. The adventure does count on the DM to be familiar with the rules and monster stats. The descriptions are not laid out like Palace Of The Silver Princess or Horror On The Hill. But, the rules are so easy that shouldn't be a problem. There is so much there it is well worth the price. We basic gamers didn't get too many big dungeon crawls back in the day, so that makes this even cooler.

Dragons at Dawn is sort of a "what if" concept as in what if Dave Arneson had published rules to the game he played prior to contacting Gary Gygax. The author spent months researching Dave's old material and interviews, comments made by players who were at Dave's table back then. The result is an interesting read and a playable game that I would bet captures the spirit of Dave's game. Short of Dave being here doing it himself, we don't know 100%, but I think it's pretty darn close. I bet Dave would approve, and anything that helps remind people of Dave's role in all of this crazy RPG stuff is alright in my book.

I have my eyes on the expansion, Dragons at Twilight, and will probably get that eventually. Another potential purchase will be Swords & Wizardry. I've only skimmed through the original D&D rules. I find the Moldvay Basic to be more to my tastes, but I'm curious enough that I may take the plunge. Besides, the author of S$W is one of the people responsible for helping make what the OSR movement is doing now possible.

Two purchases I just made other day are LL adventures, The Courtyard of Gerald Red and Fabled Curse of the Brigand Crypt. I've read some game session reports on the latter and decided I'd make the purchase. Both are set in the LL default setting, The Known Lands, and that was another plus in my book. I'd like to see more attempts to flesh out The Known Lands. Maybe one of these days I'll make an attempt myself.

I'll update this to mention I received both books, each at 16 pages with simple adventures based in the default LL setting of The Known Lands. I've skimmed through them both, and I'm impressed with Lawrence Blake's work here. He not only wrote these, but did the illustrations as well. It's simple art, but it works. I like it. If I had a game going, I would have no problem running either of these as is.

There are some challenging encounters here, but the rewards are great. As somebody who back in the day may have awarded too much treasure at times, I'm almost tempted to say there's a little bit more treasure than needed. A lot of it is one usage stuff though. The challenges are here though, and TPK can easily happen in either module if the party isn't careful. There is a save or die situation here that had it's "sting" removed. I'd probably let the dice fall and the rules stand as written in the old books, especially given the reward. All in all, though, I like what I see in both of modules.

I am working on HotDC stuff right now, and I'm contemplating an update to the Basic Charts Edition book or a supplement. I may chose an update for the book. At this point, here's what I'm thinking:

Additional Creature Charts. I do charts for 0 through 3rd Degree in the book, but I have lists for 4th through 8th.

Additional Priest and Mage Incantation lists. The lists in the book go 0 through 3, but I have 4-5 mapped out.

The Three Kings Island Map and some basic descriptions of the areas. I have been working on this a little.

That's about it, but as I work I get inspired more. The update is really the easy way because the other option is fully fleshing out and doing the proper rulebook and covering 0-10th degree for character advancement as was planned in the beginning. If nothing else, I want to talk HotDC in future posts. The one thing that is cool is having Lulu available to get things printed if/when they are ready.