Journey back to old school D&D: Part 1

TSR’s Night’s Dark Terror module for b/x D&D

Since 2016 my GM efforts have been exclusively in BRP/d100-land, playing the original version of Masks of Nyarlathotep for 6th edition Call of Cthulhu. The campaign was set on hold during the COVID-19 pandemic since we wanted to play live. At the same time, one of my players started an online old-school D&D game on Roll20 to keep us in play. The module chosen was Night’s Dark Terror and the rules were Rules Cyclopedia/BECMI. Playing online is not as fun and immersive as playing live, but it got us hooked and after the pandemic, we have alternated between my Call of Cthulhu game and my buddy’s D&D campaign.

Being an old-school D&D player has been great fun and over time the notion of getting an OSR-style campaign going has grown on me, to the point that I have now begun planning for such a game after we finish the current Call of Cthulhu campaign. The system I have chosen is Castles & Crusades and the setting will be in Greyhawk in the time frame of the 1983 gold box.

More on this will follow in my next blog post…

Game plan 2017

2016 was an abysmal year for me game-wise.

New leading position at the university, with loads of administration and putting out fires all the time diminished my free time as well as my energy to use the little free time I have for creative RPG projects, i.e. writing and publishing game stuff.

Instead, I’ve allocated that precious time to preparation and planning for my own game group, and I’ve had to reduce prep time as well, running things more “on the fly”.

I will keep my work position this year as well, but since I’m no beginner this time I suspect that things will be a tad easier this time around and hopefully I will manage to write at least some short things for publication.

On the game side of things I have some visions of what I’d like to accomplish.

We play Call of Cthulhu now (Masks of Nyarlahotep) and as that is a very long campaign I want to break it up into “seasons”in order to be able to run other games, also in seasons. That way we can get to play multiple games/settings but only one at a time.

Those other games I’d like to kick into gear this year is:

• Curse of Strahd (5e Ravenloft)
• The Thousand Thrones (Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay 2e)

Judging my player’s preferences I’d say we’ll go with Ravenloft first. Planning that classic I thought it would be cool to start in a standard fantasy world and have the PCs drawn into the Mists classic style. Which led to thoughts on what setting to use. I’ve now decided to combine an old campaign that I started on long ago with Curse of Strahd.

That campaign was set in Greyhawk, so Greyhawk it is for my 5e games. I was never a big fan of Forgotten Realms and to be honest, the new 5e FR has done nothing to convince me otherwise. So, the “base world” will be my version of Greyhawk, but I also want this to be a multiverse kinda over the top game over time, so I plan to incorporate elements from Planescape as well.

It will be a weird, crazy and pretty cool ride I think. Greyhawk Dawn is afoot again!

Now, back to the drawing table…

Planning games: Greyhawk Dawn

“Logo” for my new 5e Greyhawk game

Soon it is time to take a break from “Season 1” of our Lost Lands game and move to Curse of Strahd.

As I was thinking of how to introduce the players to Ravenloft this time I decided to have them drawn into the mists, old school style. And then I need a world to draw them from.

As I have mentioned before, Forgotten Realms isn’t really my cup of tea. One thing I dislike is the extent of canon for FR. Another is the generic high fantasy feel of the FR books as well as the assumption of a vast quantity of magic items on the market as well as all those high level NPCs that are running around.

Also, I wanted to move this game to a new setting that I can use for future 5e games and I wanted to play in one of the TSR classics: Mystara, Forgotten Realms or Greyhawk.

So I have been digging out my old TSR world-boxes and read some as well as studying the maps. For me, Forgotten Realms fell away at once (I have the 2e box set as well as the 3e book). Then, Mystara was discarded as well (I have the 2e box set) despite my old love for the Known World setting, which I disliked more and more as I read the official Mystara books.

Which left me with Greyhawk. I have the 1983 box and a bunch of 2e stuff as well as the 3e Living Greyhawk book. And the Paizo maps on top of that.

Funny thing is, that back in the day, we never used the Greyhawk setting in any of the groups I played with. It was all home brew back then.

Das ist ein groovy combo, yes?

I think that it will be fun to try out 5e D&D in this classic setting. This is also where all the old classic modules are located. Maybe we’ll try out one of the converted classics after our foray into the Mists…

After playing through Curse of Strahd, I might also go for a pure Ravenloft game based on the Domains of Dread tome in combination with the 3e Ravenloft books from Arthaus.

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Anyway, when deciding to use Greyhawk as my material plane world, I decided to check if there’s any online resources usable for 5e Greyhawk, and it turns out that there are some: 

World of Greyhawk for 5e (very good base site for 5e GH)

Canonfire 5e Greyhawk forums

From the Sorcerer’s Scroll blog

Greyhawk Grognard blog

Anna B Meyer Greyhawk Maps

Paizo Greyhawk map(s)

Classic Modules Today (about converting classic modules to 5e)