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Text of the page (random words):
ic and expert books are awfully vague about things like fighting in darkness what blindness means mechanically how darkness the spell works when used to cause blindness and what those penalties look like in looking through later editions mentzer era books the d d cyclopedia and then the ose rules it became clear that a creature with the blindness condition can t attack at all if you re in the darkness area does that mean you are considered blind also if you are shooting into the darkness what sort of cover penalty is that little questions like this as well as movement rules during combat are a little difficult to parse out in the older b x books the clarifications get better in the later versions of the ruleset and then the complexity magically starts to ramp up in the d d cyclopedia which i noticed manages to take an inherently straight forward ruleset and make it more complex but hey that is supposed to be the definitive edition of the becmi rules so that is to be expected where i found the best clarity and developed a strong appreciation for what it is doing is in the old school essential rules the deliberate clarity that the ose rules focus on is excellent and i suspect that the ease with which i could find answers to these questions or at least guidance is probably because the author s goal was to address exactly these issues of needed clarity and the ose rules succeed to great effect in this manner moreover it s been long enough since i last messed around with b x d d that reading through and running it again then reading through ose for comparison has really hammered home to me that the ose rules are a shockingly exact translation of the classic rules in almost every possible way there are little oddities i notice an absence of electrum pieces for example and devil swine are recategorized as proper lycanthropes with associated traits in ose while their original counterparts were more like lycanthrope adjacent as examples i am looking only at tbe b x component of ose too i am much more familiar with ad d and so realize that the advanced elements introduced in ose are a bit more fluid in their reinterpretations of those rules elements more a blend of b x with ad d elements wedded to them which honestly is a bit closer to how i ran the game in the early eighties anway i let the group know that going forward i will be keeping the ose rules handy for quick reference as they are just so much easier to find clarity in and that pcs can be built from original rules or ose rules and both are accepted in the game edit as an afterthought i realize that had this rule been presented in a more shall we say mechanics and ruleplay vs reality based rules and roleplay then i would probably just accept it so for example game systems like d d and pathfinder often have rules that have no functional basis in reality but are grounded in the mechanical contrivances of the game system it is possible this mythras rule is intended to dissuade players from just trying over and over on a task a rule attached to a stick with a soft suishy rationale for the gm to lean on when the player argues with them over it but that s technically not how its presented it is trying to make the case that trying a task twice in a row increases the odds of failure but that just doesn t mesh well with real life which is what systems like mythras are trying harder to emulate so yeah hmmm posted by doctor futurity at 12 44 pm 2 comments email this blogthis share to x share to facebook share to pinterest labels b x d d basic dungeons drgons d d rules cyclopedia expert dungeons dragons old school essentials ose tuesday june 2 2026 the b x d d tipping point i spent a fair amount of time accruing both old school essentials books and shadowdark books over the last couple years and vascillating between which system i generally preferred ose because it is more of an emulator shadowdark because it is more of a focused modern experienced in retro sheep s clothing ose because it s got a blend of b x d d and ad d mechanical elements or shadowdark which is brutally honest in its desire to focus on dungeon crawling and loot acquisition ose for its quaint retro graphical aesthetic that suggests artists influenced by erol otus or shadowdark with its stark black white silver design ethos that reminds me of those full page black and white splash images in the ad d manuals of course in the midst of this i managed to almost completely rekindle my ad d 1e collection thanks to a lucky find at a game store out in roswell that alone was enough to get me mulling over pulling off a classic ad d style campgin but also somehow not quite as motivating as i might have imagined there was a piece of the puzzle missing for me and last month wizard of the coast finally completed that puzzle with a print on demand edition of the basic d d book with the erol otus cover they expert set was already available but hard to use that without the basic set you know and finding halfway decent copies of either book for less than an arm and a leg on ebay is hard to do these days so now i have the proper b x d d set and this is what i was missing while i did favor ad d 1e back in the day for the more flexible character options i actually consulted with the b x rulesets a lot like all the time because when the dmg or phb was proving to be inscrutible to my young gamer mind this is specifically the time when i was around 10 years old to about 14 the b x rules allowed for simple clarity my favorite recollection on this was combat starting with initiative and surprise clearly and simply explained in b x a sharp contrast from the nightmare exposition that gygax laid like a trap for the unwary in the dmg sure we noticed all the differences in the two systems but back then chalked that up to being here s the basic expert version of the rules there s the advanced version of the rules mix and match until you get something that works and everyone understands one thing i did not do back then was run either b x or ad d in pure form at least not until i was high school age around 15 and up when i by that time was familiar with more complex systems and began to study ad d and b x for what they were as unique games rather than complimentary sets by that time i was playing palladium fantasy runequest tunnels trolls and even eventually gurps 1e with more regularity in my fanzine publishing days i had a spurt of interest in treating b x d d similarly to t t concocting material for the game as written including solo adventures it was a fun exercise in working within the boundaries of a system rather than finding ways to break it during this time and right up through my college years i continued to buy b x and later becmi sourcebooks and modules even if i mostly used them with ad d 2e by then anyway fast forward 35 or so years to the present and my interest in b x d d is rekindled with the new print on demand edition it s a compelling third contender in the arena where the young whippersnappers ose and shadowdark have been duking it out for one thing a lot of the material i have on my shelves aimed at either ose labyrinth lord or other b x retroclones is pretty compatible with original b x for another thing a shocking amount of classic b x material has made its way back into pod meaning i have also managed to begin restoring my collection of modules including many i never managed to snag back in the day this is not an unusual thing for me i have a habit of rediscovering b x every few years and looking at it on its own merits a sort of what could have been had i not dived into ad d instead of b x early on my entire pergerron the river kingdoms of anansis campaign setting actually started as a creative exercise in desiging a campaign which assumed only the character options magic and monsters of b x and source books were available for the world design now i am feeling that creative urge to do something new within the boundaries of b x again but this time i am older have less time and am growing more fussy with overly rules laden systems which is leading me to appreciate the more streamlined qualities of b x even more we shall see i have ideas i will likely post them as they come here this new venture may or may not cannibalize from ose and shadowdark technically the first shot of pergerron started in magic world but then became the basis for the b x iteration now pergerron is a weird d d 5e cthulhu hybrid mashup so is distinctly its own thing posted by doctor futurity at 11 29 am no comments email this blogthis share to x share to facebook share to pinterest labels b x d d basic dungeons dragons expert dungeons dragons ose shadowdark monday june 1 2026 cozy gaming obojima land of eem and other curiosities the idea of cozy gaming is a phenomenon which i have seen crop up in the domain of video games and can cover games ranging from stardew valley to animal crossing they originally sprang out of what i think was arguably a more child age focused genre of game designed to provide a game experience to kids which wouldn t horrify parents by focusing on crafting farming talking to npcs and solving non violent quests and stuff over the last twenty years this genre has sprung whole cloth into its own sort of thing where once video games were informed by tabletop rpgs now the reverse is true cozy gaming experiences in the tabletop scene are springing up and while i have as a rule of thumb mostly ignored this genre being that one who likes call of cthulhu mork borg and other skittery nightmares on my shelf i have made an exception for two games of note land of eem and obojima land of eem is based on some juvenile graphic novels about a skeleton bard trying to make his way through the eponymous lands of eem beyond the graphic novels you can use the game to explore a rather fabulous setting that reminds me of that adventure time cartoon a show which seemed rather fun albeit coming out waaaay too many years too late for me to enjoy it meaningfully obojima is a slightly different take on cozy gaming instead being a sort of world universe inspired heavily by studo jibli anime movies which i know a lot of people really love and which i have seen none of except for nausicaa valley of the wind it presents a land far in the future where relic technology of a bygone age is scattered about in a pastoral land overlapping the spirit world it s many denizens are a blend of natural and supernatural and there aren t too many high stakes problems going on i have one or two other games that may or may not count as cozy gaming depending on how you stretch the definition for example one might look at tales from the loop and the electric state to be somewhat cozy gaming adjacent insofar as they both depict semi post apocalyptic lands where bad things happened then as a side effect of this great and troubling collapse things got a lot calmer and then also a lot more interesting a key element of these games seems to be an emphasis on exploration and low stakes exploration in that you have weird locales and people creatures robots things to meet and talk to having more rather than fewer opportunities to talk to things is pretty key and that even if the atmosphere is eerie and weird it is also simultaneously relaxing or at least not nerve wracking so nothing like alien rpg or call of cthulhu the diametric opposite the cozy gaming genre likewise low stakes in that you are not likely ever going to need to save the universe fight a monstrous demon horde or protect the town from certain doom although i suppose creative use of the genre can allow for anything with he right context but the point being that you are far more likely in a cozy game setting to be protecting a local fishing pond finding new ingredients for a potion making friends with strange spirits or having a wild adventure with the legendary mister toad than anything else anyway this is a long way of saying i picked up obojima and while i am currently reading through it i may write more soon especially if i can convince my old group to give it a try posted by doctor futurity at 5 18 pm no comments email this blogthis share to x share to facebook share to pinterest labels cozy gaming tabletop land of eem obojima tales from the loop the electric state friday may 29 2026 quick review armor guy and goblin boy the mandalorian and grogu i actually watched and enjoyed all three seasons of the mandalorian on disney so i am probably the target audience for this movie i am not going to elaborate too deeply on what is a quintessential popcorn action flick other than to point out that at its core this movie feels to me like what star wars is actually about fun world building light but exciting action some fun characters lots of exotic set pieces and a story that just keeps on chugging along it is not about deep inner meaning philosophical elaboration or complex nuanced plots and yeah that means i think something like andor may be good science ficiton but maybe not good star wars anyway this movie showcases what feels a bit like a truncated mini season of the mandalorian focusing on a relatively tight and low stakes skirmish between the mandalorian and his pokemon grogu vs a series of renegade imperial warlords and a hutt clan along the way we get a secondary cast of characters that includes the super buff son of jabba the hutt and a funky alien guy i am told is from the cartoons that acts both as mando s getaway driver and alfred pennyworth the movie is well paced and very fast and the incredibly lush visual world building of hutt space is a pleasure to watch the bulk of the action in this movie is essentially john wick but in space and even feels filmed in similar manner to those films it works well for me but it isn t maybe as zingy and frenetic as some other directors have done for the star wars films it s also a very low key story told primarily through a guy who s emotionally deadpan hidden behind a mask and surrounded by puppet monsters for most of the movie so the fact that this has any emotional resonance at all is a bit of a miracle i felt this movie fit a few specialized genres really well first and most prominent is what i call the compenent male subgenre of a suitably male figure who is confronted with a cycle of violence and he unerringly and very comptently manages to wade his way through this is the genre occupied by john wick and other movies many of which contain bruce willis jason statham or keannu reeves in which the point of the movie is to watch our hero brute force his way through an endless wave of opposition with incredible style and panache the mandalorian does this repeatedly murdering hundreds of stormtroopers killer droids and lizard men with mesmerising efficiency the second subgenre this movie hits marks on is the dominion of competency porn which has been characterized as the genre of films about people who do their jobs really really well and who demonstrate great knowledge and ...