Wednesday, July 14, 2010

found on the internets, author unknown

Back in December '08 the Mish, Settembrini, and I were messing around with similar charts, working off a chart that appeared on the now sadly defunct home of Polish old school gamebloggery, Demons & Dragons.  I think the above chart is easier to read, but Mishler's opus is still freakin' awesome.
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Posted by Jeff Rients at 7:55 AM
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18 comments:

  1. Lizard7:59 AM

    Permit me to second the Awesome.

    I have a chart like that in my brain, and it's really nice to see someone take it out of my brain and put it on paper, especially since my brain mangles and forgets things.

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  2. Dennis Laffey8:14 AM

    Is it just me, or something seems wrong with putting the Classic D&D line (Holmes, Molvay, Mentzer/RC) on a side track and AD&D on the straight line.

    Maybe it's my bias, since I started with Mentzer.

    WV: tratir--someone who, like me, sees the D&D line as more important than the AD&D line.

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  3. Jeff Rients8:38 AM

    I see your point entirely, Lord G. Nothing to stop you from making your own chart or editing this one.

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  4. Wayne Rossi8:39 AM

    Beautiful. Of course it needs Dragons at Dawn (drawing directly off of Blackmoor) and Dark Dungeons (RC workalike) but one cannot quibble.

    Word verification: vesteog, something you decidedly don't want to run into in a swamp.

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  5. Anthony Simeone10:03 AM

    Also, where would Castles & Crusades fit in here? Would it be somewhere between 1st Edition AD&D and 3.0-3.5?

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  6. Jeff Rients10:13 AM

    Yeah, AD&D and 3.x had a baby and called it C&C.

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  7. Boric Glanduum10:52 AM

    Also a little quibble.... there should be an offshoot of 3.x for Pathfinder. I'm just sayin'.

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  8. anarchist11:10 AM

    Arguably there should be an arrow from 3rd edition to Swords & Wizardry, since it uses ascending AC.

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  9. Robert Morris1:16 PM

    And Labyrinth Lord should connect to AD&D 1E from the addition of the Advanced Edition Companion and OD&D from the addition of Original Edition Characters. Also, the soon to be released clones of AD&D 2e, Lamentations of the Flame Princess and the B/X Companion should be added. We could also expand this to include some of the other offshoots like the old Bard Games Arcanum system or the new Terminal Space as well.

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  10. Wayne Rossi1:47 PM

    My one other point, although possibly a contentious one, is that I would not draw a heavy line between OD&D and Swords & Wizardry. It's always bugged me that S&W, which is supposed to be the OD&D retro-clone, didn't fit its source material nearly as well as Labyrinth Lord does B/X D&D. Even Whitebox keeps all the weird things about Swords & Wizardry, from the homogenized ability score charts (with bonuses that are totally different to what you get in OD&D), to the single line saving throws, the non-matrix based combat, the idiosyncratic damage scale that nobody used in the golden age, and on and on.

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  11. Paul2:49 PM

    You could make an argument that Midgard, a 1970 play-by-mail fantasy game, could be inserted as a contemporary of, say, Blackmoor.

    http://blogofholding.com/?p=265

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  12. anarchist3:52 PM

    This comment has been removed by the author.

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  13. anarchist3:53 PM

    @Paul:

    "Just as mountain peaks gain majesty with distance, so do nerds"

    Most amusing!

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  14. anarchist3:54 PM

    Shouldn't we be arguing over whether to use ascending or descending dates?

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  15. paul4:12 PM

    Good point, Anarchist. I use THAC0 (Total Hours After the Coming of 0D&D)

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  16. Matt Finch4:50 PM

    @Wayne - actually, Swords & Wizardry does effectively have saving throw categories when you parse through the class bonuses. Those categories are spells/wands/staffs, poison, paralyzation, and "other." They aren't on a grid matrix, they're inherent in the bonuses, in the same way that druids gained a bonus against fire in EW.

    That was a change made (in the COre Rules) from the earlier printings, so you might be looking at an older one. Can't recall if BHP made a corresponding change in the WhiteBox set.

    Also, combat on a matrix ... that's in the Core Rules. It's a smoothed progression (ie, doesn't make the big jumps at certain levels), which was such a common house rule that in AD&D it was the only alternative official rule I can think of in 1e. I might not be catching what you mean by matrix combat, but the core rules include full scale charts gridding level against AC.

    I agree, though, that S&W doesn't capture as much of its source material as Labyrinth Lord does. OD&D is a much bigger body of highly idiosyncratic material. I tried to create a valid introduction, or walk-through, into the source material.

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  17. Matt Finch5:50 PM

    Awesome chart (to get myself back on topic). Oops.

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  18. Settembrini4:16 AM

    Stop the presses!
    Jeff, check this out: http://www.travellerrpg.com/CotI/Discuss/showthread.php?t=22492

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