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Old School D&D

   24 April 2012, early morning

I’ve been on a serious D&D kick recently. (That would be Dungeons and Dragons, the nerdiest thing ever.) I discovered a few weeks ago, via Kickstarter, that the version of D&D I played when I was a little kid is still “popular”. There is a sub-culture of a sub-culture that is all about playing old-school D&D. People play versions of the game from the 70s and early 80s, and speak disdainfully about the version of the rules being sold today.

There are retro-clones of the old games, so if you don’t own a copy Red Box D&D you can pick up Labyrinth Lord which more or less reprints the rules in a way that avoids a copyright infringement suit. If you prefer the first edition of AD&D you can grab a copy of the OSRIC. There are also modern day re-imaginings of the old-style game. I recently grabbed a copy of Dungeon Crawl Classics RPG, which is very much its own game, but one clearly inspired by the same things that inspired the original D&D.

There are countless blogs all about this movement. Grognardia, written by James Maliszewski of Toronto, seemingly the most popular. It was from Grognardia that I learned about Loviatar, a D&D zine. I ordered a couple issues of Loviatar last week, and they arrived last night. I never get mail, let alone mail with my address written out in pen. It felt good. The little booklets were an enjoyable read as well.

I’m planning on converting funkaoshi.com into a D&D blog: stay tuned!

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