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@@EldradWolfsbane awesome! I will take a look and subscribe!

@@bakey42 Thank you for watching!

@@anarionelendili8961 You are right. I even have modules A1 - A4 “Against the Slave Lords”. Slavery was always an adversary in D&D and AD&D.

This and T1 are among my favorites!

Thank you so much for watching!

@@AndyReichert0 Thank you!!!!

@@andrewthomas7202 I appreciate the feedback. Thank you for watching!

@@bluelionsage99 Hommlet is just the perfect little microcosm which can be plopped into virtually any setting

Heck yeah, that's the way you do it.

@@NemoOhd20 Same! I also mashed in S3 Expedition to the Barrier Peaks

​@@wizardgoesboomthis is the way

@@Se7enBeatleofDoom I agree. Many of the legendary modules like T1 or B2 were jam packed with material and only some art. Really got the imagination going.

Yes. 32-page modules were *digestible* -- you could read the whole thing and play it for many many hours, and expand on it in your own way. Even Gygax's original World of Greyhawk Campaign Setting was only 32 pages. That said, WOTC is not the lone publisher of bloated adventures. A lot of kickstarters and indie publishers do the same. Goodman Games' line of DCC adventures is one of the few exceptions.

Thank you so much!

@@bobkarstenson1792 thank you kindly for watching!

@@anarionelendili8961 if you wanted to play this stand-alone, I would you are right and it should be scaled down a bit

The village is indeed at a crossroads. (It literally says so in the third sentence of the module.) The NPC levels are appropriate when you understand the context of the "hidden conflict" going on in this area -- the Battle of Emridy Meadows had brought a lot of powerful forces into the area and despite the evil forces being defeated, many went into hiding. Good-aligned forces are not overtly hunting them, so you have powerful NPCs like Elmo working there in disguise, as well as more overt characters like Rufus and Burne.

Not sure I understand what you mean about age. B/X was released a few years before Ghostbusters RPG.

Are you saying that B/X is too old to be OSR?

@@jasonkrynicky3170 As I mentioned before, the OSR movement did not exist in the 80s when the Ghostbusters RPG was released. It seems many people struggle with understanding this point.

@@Se7enBeatleofDoom but the B/X is from the 70’s even more old school than that first ghostbusters game. The only thing memorable about that game was the custom D6s with the ghostbusters symbol.

@@Se7enBeatleofDoom what did you think of them?

@ I think the Isle of Dread is more warranted of being a stand-alone setting than Ravenloft. Isle of Dread even has its unique races that could easily be playable.

@ I should do a video on the Isle of Dread. Great module!

Yes, level drain was rough. There were times when I got double-drained by a vampire (one hit is two lost levels!). If it becomes too much of a pain (on both players and the DM) I would suggest a CON drain, which seems more realistic.

@@wizardgoesboom Yeah. I am thinking a single drain is -1 to STR, DEX and CON, which will hurt, and scare the bejeezus out of the players, but it is something that they will recover from. With the touch attack, hits will be more common, which will make the undead that do damage in addition to the energy drain all the more terrifying. I think I have no problems making the players hate Wraiths. :P

Milestone in that case makes sense. But if you don't want them to have mountains of gold, you could award them for spending the gold instead of simply recovering the gold. This way they aren't hoarding it, but spending on useful items, NPCs, spell research and so on.

@@wizardgoesboom It still does mean that each member of the party is gaining around 2000 gp by the time everyone is on the second level (the thief might be on the third and elf is solidly in the first still). And that means that everything in the normal equipment list is laughably cheap. Gold loses its meaning. The only thing that is expensive enough to buy would be magical items, which leads to the Ye Olde Magickal Shoppe trope.

@ they could in theory spend the cash on building a home base, perhaps a stronghold and establish a relationship with the local temple by making donations in case they will need healing, etc

@@wizardgoesboom Yes, but you know the first purchase is going to be that plate mail for the fighters and clerics. :) And it doesn't change the fact that if they have thousands of gold each, the normal equipment becomes 'worthless' by comparison. There is not really any resource hoarding, everyone has a mule and a warhorse, etc etc. Now I like the idea of building a home base, but that should happen on higher levels, not at 2nd level. That's my point. Drop one zero from the XP, and you are much closer to my preference when it comes to gold accumulation. Which means that a 9th level fighter has about 30 000 gold rather than 300 000 gold to build his first castle. Maybe you start with a wooden motte-and-bailey type, rather than build the Tower of London as your initial castle... And this makes the dominion income matter a bit more, too.

@ valid point. Gold-for-XP can get out of hand!

@@anarionelendili8961 I completely agree. The keep itself is not very realistic but the intent was to create a safe haven for adventurers. If anything, the Village of Hommlet had it right as far as realism. I will do a video on that next time or after.

@wizardgoesboom Yep. One comment that I have heard and like is combining the Keep and Hommlet as the village next to it although I wonder if the presence of so many soldiers right next to it will spoil some adventure hooks of Hommlet. But definitely worthy of being used as an inspiration.

@@wizardgoesboom If I wanted to tie it all together, maybe it could go something like this... 1. There be gold in them thar hills: the origins of the Caves of Chaos as a mining operation. (Need not be gold, but given how inflated the amount of gold is in a typical D&D campaign, it might as well be.) 2. The miners need food. The nearest area that is arable enough and offers enough pasturage for livestock is around where the Keep will be; in particular that bend in the river floods every spring, bringing fresh silt to fertilize the land. So a farming village crops up, to supply the mines with a more local food source. 3. A castle is built on that very defensible hill. It might be a modest at first, but with the money rolling in, it gets upgraded. Which helps to explain why it is now somewhat overbuilt: perhaps it was a local noble's vanity project (ex adventurer/war hero with money to burn?). 4. The mines start running empty. Combined with encroaching, hostile humanoids, the mines are abandoned. However, the villagers are less eager to abandon their fields and homes, since wherever would they go? And it is not THAT bad yet... Still, whether an old village was abandoned and a new built closer to the castle, or if the village always was there and now just gets extra fortifications, who knows. 5. There is still that road that goes somewhere as well. There could be trade caravans still going back and forth, further explaining the presence of the keep and the village. As well as providing storyhooks.

@ I really like the mine idea. Provides an excellent hook for the adventurers to be there

@@wizardgoesboom Well the idea was that the mines have been abandoned due to running empty of gold. If they were still producing, I doubt they would be abandoned. Anyway, this explains why there are those mainly separate caves in there, as the miners followed various veins of gold in. But it would also explain the presence of a castle and a village, holdovers from when the mine was active. Add the road still bringing merchant caravans back and forth, and you have a good excuse to have a castle and a village there, combined with more services than the village itself would require, to cater to the merchant caravans. Also, it acts as an easy source of new PCs as well as adventure hooks.

@@bobkarstenson1792 thank you! Was thinking of doing one on T1 Village of Hommlet and so on

@@jasonjacobson1157 thank you so much! Are there any topics you would like to see a future video on?

​@wizardgoesboom I'd say just do what interests you. Looks like we like the same stuff.

@ definitely old school! Thanks again!

Thank you for watching!

I prefer White box Fantastic Medieval Adventure Game (another OD&D clone) to Delving Deeper, for it's ease of use, but it's worth getting Delving Deeper for some additional material to slot in. BFRPG is great too, if you're after more of a Basic D&D flavour.

FMAG is also around $5 (and free for the pdf), so you can that and DD for $10 in print form

@ Yes, FMAG is another good one! I also have it. Very rules light

@ I just love the B/X engine which Basic Fantasy uses!

Encumbrance is a measurement of both weight and hassle of carrying the stuff (the 10' pole is the example of this). 1 gp = 1 cn in encumbrance. All the items have their own encumbrance. You just add them together with the treasure you are carrying, and that tells you how encumbranced they are.

@@bobkarstenson1792 thank you! And I agree!

@@bobkarstenson1792 thank you for watching!

Thank you for the question! The rules goes back to Original D&D, "Men & Magic" page 13, under the heading "Relatives". The Moldvay Basic guide also has it under "Inheritance" on page B13. While I can find it specifically in the AD&D DMG, it was implied on the character sheet "Last Will and Testament" section

Also there is page 34 of the AD&D 1e Player's Handbook under the heading "Establishing The Character", which mentions bequeathing to "next of kin" (meaning the newly rolled up character) -- hope this helps!

@@wizardgoesboom Wow, maybe I did read it all those years ago and just forgot. Like I said its been over 20 years since I've had access to my books. Been wanting to see and go through them again for a long time and now I will definitely be looking closer at my 1E PHB when I finally get a chance to visit home.

@@PGIFilms To be honest, we never took the inherited money as XP, just as we didn't get any XP for the starting gold, either. That being said, we were not really into the meatgrinder gauntlets either, and usually if there was a new character, it was a non-relative anyway, on an appropriate level. And even if they would have started from level 1, thanks to factor of 2 XP increase, after the first adventure, they'd likely be only a couple of levels behind, and once the original characters go up a level, they'd be just one level behind and then catch up anyway. Also, I just checked, the Red Box is Mentzer which doesn't have that rule, so we probably missed out on that rule anyway. Checking the Original D&D... hmm... I'd argue that this wording is at best ambiguous: "The relative must start at the lowest level of the class he opts for, but he will have the advantage of the inheritance." The advantage here could just mean that they will have better equipment. The fact that it is explicit that they start at the lowest level and doesn't explicitly say anything about XP makes it ambiguous. The Holmes edition says this: "The new character, of course, starts with no experience."

@@EldradWolfsbane thank you! Will post more!

It’s really great

@@lorax323I agee! Thank you for watching!

Thank you!

So many extras and customization options! I love the weapon master rules too. Had a Grand Master of the Longsword fighter and he'd never get hit. Plus don't forget parry rules!

Will do! I plan on making more OSR videos. Thank you for watching!

Agreed! I will be making a lot more old school D&D videos! Thank you for watching!