Adventures in the Green Published!

My OD&D clone set of rules, Adventures in the Green, is now published and available on DriveThruRPG.com!

Think "OD&D, but readable" and you will understand what Adventures in the Green offers.  The rules were reorganized to consolidate rules bits from across the original booklets where clauses and complete rules were hidden away in magic item descriptions or magazine interviews published separately.  I also rewrote the rules to make them clear and concise.

Book I: Characters is 68 pages and provides the rules for creating characters to play, equipping them, and some basics of adventuring.  This is the link to the Book I product page.

Book II: Conflicts is 68 pages and provides the rules for combat, including naval and aerial, plus the writeups for all the monsters.  This is the link to the Book II product page.

Book III: Campaigns is 66 pages and provides the rules for Referees to run campaigns plus the random treasure tables and descriptions of magic items.  This is the link to the Book III product page.

Each booklet is sold separately at $10 each, which I feel is a fair price for 66-68 page booklets with five years of development behind them.  I've been running a test campaign parallel to the rules development, which has helped spot rules gaps (like how much light a torch provides) and eliminate typos.  

[As a tech writer, I know by saying those words that someone will now find an obvious typo, but that is the nature of writing.  Send me an email or comment here and I'll fix it and update the published PDFs.]

That's it for right now.  I should have the next session of the Sudden Sea campaign up later this week.  We've reached a stopping point, right after the players trigger a revolt and are switching back to Book 4 of the Shattered Star AP.  Keep reading!

No Session Notes This Week Due to Edits

 No session notes this week.  I needed the time to wrap up the Draft D edits of Adventures in the Green, Book II, and prep for the playtest of the wilderness exploration rules.  I have a separate rules booklet for the Exploration rules but need to finish the map and stock it with encounters for the playtest.

The playtest will run weekly from June 13 to July 13 with June 13 being a session 0 for creating name-level characters and equipping them.  Equipping will require some planning on the playtesters' part, so I want to devote a session to that before the actual exploration starts.

Draft C Complete!

I've posted a link to Draft C of Book III: Campaigns of Adventures in the Green on the Draft C Downloads page.  This is still a playtest version of the rules, so I am very interested in feedback.  Please send me anything you find or would like to suggest - it helps greatly!  😄

Thank you for your time and consideration!

Adventures in the Green, Draft C

This page provides links to Draft C of Adventures in the Green, my clone of the OD&D rules.

1. Book I: Characters
2. Book II: Conflicts
3. Book III: Campaigns

Draft C is being play-tested during 2021 and incorporates things discovered during last year's playtesting plus a solid editing of the text, improving consistency.  This draft also includes some noticeable changes to spells and the spellcasting classes.

Clerics

Reading through the Cleric spell list, it was obvious the power levels of the spells were uneven and the selection thin until 7th level spells.  I've adjusted spell levels to smooth out things and increase the number of spells available at most levels.  Where needed, I added spells that appear in AD&D that fit.

The level names for Clerics were position titles inside the Christian faiths, which causes two problems.  First, as played, few Clerics are of the Christian faith, so having a Vicar of Thor makes no sense.  Second, if interacting with clergy who are of the Christian faith and had the title but not the character level was unnecessarily confusing (the bishop is a vicar kind of thing).   To fix this, I picked level names that were descriptive without being tied to a specific faith.

Magic-Users

Magic-Users, after 4th level, were the cheapest to level except for Thieves and Thieves overtake them at 13th level.  Deconstructing the costs to level for each class let me identify the pattern all but the Magic-User followed and correct the Magic-User experience table to follow that pattern.

Level names for Magic-Users were types of magic, which could lead to a high level wizard being a necromancer without any necromancy spells in their spell book.  I was not able to completely de-couple level with magic types, but I did indicate a growing power level.  Also, "Name Level" is now Archmage instead of Wizard.

Evil

The various spells dealing with "Evil" [Protection from Evil, Detect Evil, and Dispel Evil] had issues as this edition of rules has no Evil alignment, only Law, Neutral, and Chaos.  After wrestling with the spells and what they actually do, I renamed them [Protection from Supernatural, detect Supernatural, and Dispel Malevolence, respectively] and better defined what they did.  Dispel Malevolence is still a little vague, but I feel it was designed to deal with a grab bag of effects targeted at the player characters, like vampiric mind control, so left it that way for flexibility.

The Rest

There are some other changes made to various parts of the rules [like combining Dryad and Naiad under Nymph as different types of nymphs], so read through carefully and don't make assumptions.

As usual, please let me know if/when you find a gap or something that doesn't work and I'll do my best to fix it or explain how it is supposed to work.  Thank you ahead of time!

Later!

Adventures in the Green, Draft B

This page provides links to Draft B of Adventures in the Green, my clone of the OD&D rules.

1. Book I: Characters
2. Book II: Conflicts
3. Book III: Campaigns

Draft A was never made public - it was more a mirror of Greyharp's Single Volume Edition.  In Draft A I was working to get all the original content sorted out and used the SVE as a sort of checklist.  The goal was to go through the original booklets and stripmine the content, sorting it into a ready outline.  This helped locate obscure rules that should not have been obscure and things that were never explained until later errata.

In Draft B I reorganized the material for better flow and to even out the page counts of the three booklets.  I also rewrote sections for clarity and consistency in presentation.  Draft B is the first version I'm willing to show others and is the version being play-tested in 2020.  There are still gaps in the rules and as I run across them I'm filling them in.

Known gaps as of August 2, 2020:

• There are no rules for healing other than magic healing.
• There are no rules for time to swap out weapons in combat.
• There are no rules for time to ready a new shield in combat (assuming use of Shields Shall Be Splintered).

I imagine there will be a few more, but hopefully not many.  Please post here to let me know if you discover any other gaps or errors so I can fix them.

The next revision I will likely place on DriveThruRPG as Pay What You Want.  It will have art where all the placeholder material is and be as polished as I can get it.

Later!

Adventures in the Green, Book III: Campaigns

Draft B1.1 of Book III of my RPG, Adventures in the Green, is now available for others to see.  The PDF is available on MediaFire HERE.

Book III has all the Referee advice and the treasure tables.  I didn't do as much expansion on the material as I expected.  Mostly it was reorganize into something more coherent and to the point.  I removed a lot of passive voice.  I think the lack of expansion is because referees need to read widely other blogs and rules systems and assemble that knowledge in their own mind in a way they prefer.  A lot of what I do is compiled from reading how other people do things and picking out the parts that work for me and my game groups.

That is it for the writing phase.  Next up is the play-test phase to spot what I missed by needing it in play.  This phase will take a while as my play-test group only meets once a month, but we play all day [allowing for a dinner break mid-game].

If you give these rules a spin, please let me know what you think.  Feedback from many people is vital to improving what's in the booklets.  I'll be setting up a page that links to all three booklets and list that page in my Downloads section to the right of the blog text.

In the meantime, I will resume posting the session notes from my Monday Night games.  We just finished Book 1 of the Shattered star adventure path in Session 32, so I have like...12 sessions to catch up on ?!

I should never have let it fall that far behind.

Later!



Adventures in the Green
Book I: Characters
Book II: Conflicts

Adventures in the Green, Book II: Conflicts

Draft B1.1 of Book II of my RPG rules is ready for others to see.  The PDF can be down loaded from MediaFire HERE.

Draft B1.1 contains the current version of the combat rules and the catalog of monsters.  I've had one game session using it so far and there are some immediate changes that will appear in Draft C.  These changes are:

• Move the treasure type table for the monsters from Book III to Book II.  Not having this in the same book as the monsters was a mistake.  The rest of the treasure section (the random tables and the descriptions of the magic items) will remain in Book III as part of the Referee Advice that comprises Book III.
• The combat to hit tables and the combat sequence need to be copied into an appendix, preferably on facing pages, for quick reference during combat.  Having to page back and forth was inconvenient.
• I need to specify how long a couple things take.
• How long to ready a new shield after the previous one was shattered to avoid damage?  I want this to happen but I think I want it to cost an attack.  I think I want the opponent(s) to have at least one chance at attacking the lowered AC from the loss of the shield.
• How long to switch weapons in combat?  Right now a person could attack with a ranged weapon in Step 2, switch weapons to a melee weapon sometime during Steps 3-7, and then attack in melee in Step 9.

I'm pleased with how the final version of Draft B came out for Book II.  I'm now moving on to Book III, which is mostly Referee advice.  This will require some re-write and expansion, but I plan to have it releasable by the end of July after my next game (scheduled for July 25).

After that is Draft C for all three booklets, where I will finalize rule changes, check consistency across the booklets, and insert the necessary OGL content.  I also want to start inserting artwork.  My initial goal is to use public domain wood-block art for a period feel and aesthetic.

Once THAT'S done, I'll offer them on DriveThruRPG.  I'll have an art-less version for PWYW and a version with art for a reasonable price (which I haven't set yet).  I'll probably hire someone to do page layout in real layout software (I use Word) and I'd like to pay them in real money, not "exposure".  There is money set aside for that, but I'd like to replace that and make some pizza money as well.

That's it for now.  More once Draft B of Book III is ready.  I'm also planning on resuming adventure notes posting in August as I'll be done with the writing on these rules by then.

Later!


Adventures in the Green
Book I: Characters

Book III: Campaigns

Adventures in the Green, Book II: Creatures and Treasures - Wrong Fork

So I got all the way to the end of Draft B of Book II and realized there was a better way to divide the sections between Book II and Book III so that all three books will have roughly the same page-count.  The new divisions will be as follows:

Book II

1. Combat (possibly including the air and sea combat rules)
2. Monsters (Descriptions and stats)

Book III

1. Dungeon Design
2. Wilderness Design
3. Referee Advice
4. Treasure Tables (which is primarily magic item descriptions)

It will take me a couple weeks to move the Treasure section out of Book II and into Book III and move the Combat section the opposite direction, plus I need to heavily edit the Combat section.  This will delay release of Draft B of Book II by a couple weeks, which is unfortunate but necessary.

In the meantime, here is a link to the version of Book II I will not be continuing with.  Sorry for the overall delay.

Adventures in the Green, Book I: Characters - DRAFT B available for comment

So I have been writing up my version of OD&D (the 3 LBB plus Supplement 1), taking what is there, reorganizing and reworking the text to be better organized.  I've added a few bits I like from other systems, notably the Spell Repertoire system from Adventurer, Conqueror, King System, but noted what the original text said for purists.

I chose "Adventures in the Green" as the name for my rules.  Book I: Characters contains everything you need to make a character and I now have a complete Draft B of those rules I'm willing to share as a PDF.  I've been working on it the last month to get it into shape instead of typing up session notes to post here, so I thought y'all should see what I've been up to.  The link above will take you to Mediafire and let you download the PDF.  I'd love to hear back what you think of it so far.

There are a few oddities in it that come from the original texts that were surprising to me, like no where do the rules for thieves state that humans can be thieves, like the rules do for Fighters, Magic-Users, and Clerics.  I ran with that.  I also renamed hobbits/halflings as Tolk, as a nod to where they were sourced from without their name feeling intrusive.

The artwork is all placeholder right now.  I'll probably go with public domain woodcut artwork when I go to final layout, but I want to do some playtesting of the rules as they are right now to see if I need to re-write or tweak anything.  The pages are A5-sized as I like the booklet format for rules now days as they take less room at the table.

BookII: Creatures is in an early Draft B stage and I'd like to have it done by the end of June, but that timetable depends on how busy work is and how things are going with my mother [long story that I'm not going into now other than she is now living with me part time and my sister the other half].

In the meantime, I'll get back to posting session notes for the Shattered Star AP.
[Narrator: He didn't.]


Later!


Adventures in the Green
Book II: Conflicts
Book III Campaigns

Currently (re)writing

Sorry for the delay in posts.  I'm currently focusing on Draft B of my version of the OD&D rules, Adventures in the Green.  

Draft A was taking what was in the original three rule books and reorganizing the text so that rules for various topics were together and not scattered around.  I've also brought in content from Strategic Review Vol. 1, No. 2, to clarify the combat rules and how magic spells are supposed to work (both surprisingly missing as explicit rules in the original publications).  This took some doing as OD&D was written as codified notes for someone who knew the entire system and not for easily learning the game.  As I worked on it I started to understand how things were actually organized and grouped.  I followed Greyharp's Single Volume Edition for initial organization and as a checklist to verify I incorporated everything.  I've also added some things from Supplement 1: Greyhawk.

Draft B is reorganizing some sections better now that I have sections labelled and can see everything that exists.  I'm also re-writing most of the text to be a bit more concise and clear.  Mr. Gygax could be flowery in his writing style and I'm aiming for something more direct and lean.  I'm about half way through Book 1: Characters, which includes everything you need to create a character and equip them.  I'll be posting it on DriveThruRPG when I'm done as Pay What You Want so folks can download it and try it out during the play-testing phase [and maybe send some pizza money my way].  This will provide easy distribution and give me an idea if there is interest in further development or not as I'll get reports on number of downloads.

Draft C will take feedback from the play-test campaign to tweak rules and clarify phrasing.  This is the where I'll also start finalizing layout and maybe commission some art for the cover.  Right now I plan on using public domain art for the interior to keep costs down.

That's it for now.  I just wanted to let y'all know what was going on and why session notes have been more sporadic than usual lately.  Stay healthy and safe!

Cross-pollination with Adventures in the Green

I'm running a little side project that is partially an Imagi-nation, partially fun with LEGO, and partially amazement at the size of the plants growing in my yard this year.  It's titled Adventures in the Green and is a fantasy story of a chartered adventuring company specializing in work in the over-sized forest known as The Green.  Parts 1 and 2 are up with plenty of photos showing the action.

Adventures in the Green

Strange things are afoot...

I'm developing things as I go, but I have names for the initial round of characters, which puts me yards ahead from my starting point.  I'll probably do a Dramatis Personae page in the next week.  I will eventually do a map once I need to, but for now I'm free-forming it.  I want a bit of the weird in this, so I'm not certain where it will go.  Pop on over and please say "Hello!" when you get a chance.

Later!