I recently did a re-read of my 1970's era D&D library (which is pretty close to complete and in surprisingly good shape). It got me so fired up that I am going to launch a new campaign using the core Judges Guild materials (City State, related books, the Wilderlands guides and maps, which I have a complete set of). These were the main setting materials we used when I was a kid (lightly sprinkled with TSR pastel modules, naturally). But the question I have in mind is what game system I want to run. OD&D is the traditional choice, particularly in the modern OSR crowd. But back in the day we actually played these things using 1E AD&D (at least in 78 and 79, when the books were available). And the heretic in me is also contemplating something like The Fantasy Trip, or original Runequest, or Dragonquest - all of which are old enough and cool enough to feel like valid matches with the vibe of original JG materials. Discuss....

Well there is my Majestic Wilderlands rules plus Swords & Wizardry. I can also supply you with the beta version of the new edition I am working on. It can work as a S&W supplement or a stand.alone RPG.

cool; thanks for the suggestion. I don't know much about your Majestic Wilderlands rules. What are its similarities and differences with respect to canon D&D?

If you're looking for the balance point between OD&D and AD&D1, you can't beat S&W Complete.

Though to be honest, when I ran it, I found it lacking (e.g. on how to handle encounter checks, retainer loyalty, etc.) and ended up supplementing it with bits from both B/X and AD&D1. But that's just my biases showing.

My D&D-flavored poison of choice is ACKS, which is what I'd default to here, but being only passingly familiar with the the Wilderlands and CSIO I might be tempted to try DCC (if it's gonzo enough) or even RQ6/Mythras (if it's Conanesque enough).

Be a heretic: run it with The Fantasy Trip. Because it sounds like it'd be a blast, and selfishly, that's what I would want to read about - if you post campaign details/logs here. And you need a followup to your TFT thread from last year.

Honestly, The Fantasy Trip is probably the funnest first-wave fantasy roleplaying game out there, just in terms of the balance between ease of play (the core rules literally take 10 minutes to learn and require almost no page turning to execute) and richness of the tactical action (it is basically like you wrote GURPS as a game instead of a fucking PhD thesis). The only down side is that all the stuff that makes a D&D campaign a campaign - hirelings and henchmen, riches, construction, long-distance travel and exploration - are not really folded into the game. Pre 2E D&D is structurally messy - stuff is spread out all over the place and often presented as just a weirdly formatted table with no notes. But, the stuff is there. The game addresses basically everything you can think of doing. Actually, much more so than in later editions with their 500 pages of core rules in glossy hard backs. I'll have to contemplate a bit more...

The great thing is, there isn't really a bad choice here. The City State/Wilderlands materials can be approached as almost systemless, assuming you have an IQ over 80 and so can figure out how you want to interpret things like '3 huge ogres', or 'Sir Blatherington, 7th level ftr'.

Quote from: Larsdangly;942922cool; thanks for the suggestion. I don't know much about your Majestic Wilderlands rules. What are its similarities and differences with respect to canon D&D?

• Uses the single number save of Swords & Wizardry
• Uses an ability system to adjudicate non-combat actions
• Every character can use any ability but some are better than others. It why I call it an ability system not a skill system.
• Has a attribute bonus system that ranges from -3 to +3 not as generous as d20, not as generous for strength as Greyhawk or AD&D, but better than OD&D core for all other attributes.
• OD&D Monsters and Spells work 'as is' although I have my take on them which mostly involves converting percentages to d20 rolls because 90% are in 5% increments. Plus my take are tweaked in light of my experience running S&W campaigns.
• Did the same for Magic Items. Also magic weapons and armor are more of a mix and match system.
• More classes including an Rogue series of classes which are better at non-combat abilities than other classes.
• Classes are Cleric with tweaks for ten deities, Fighter, Berserker (Holy warrior of Thor), Soldier, Paladin of Set, Myrmidon of Set, Magic-User, Thothian Mage, Trehean Wizard, Runecaster, Setite Theurgists, Burglars, Thug, The Claws of Kalis (Assassin order), Montebank (street wizards), and Merchant Adventurers.
• The classes are not hyper detailed like in 5e or d20. They have anywhere between two to six abilities that distinguish them from Fighter, Magic-User, or Thief.
• More stuff specific to my Majestic Wilderlands like my take on Demons. However because I use a lot of standard fantasy tropes and MW is a vaguely medieval fantasy society most find it useful for their games.
• All the rules are under the OGL.
• Combat is more standardized with character able to do two actions per round. The basic two actions are a half-move and an attack or casting a spell.
• Use the ascending AC system from Swords & Wizardry. Mirrors the odds on the OD&D matrix.
• Mundane weapons optional effects for example a Mace get +1 versus plate armor.

In general the 2nd Edition of the MW rule reflect everything I been doing since 2008 when I wrote the current MW Supplement. My plan eventually to publishes this as a series of supplement to Swords & Wizardry. Each part can be used like any other supplement but when combined form my take on classic D&D.

So anyway, I been giving people copies of the raw rules to try out and you are welcome to them them if you want to try it for a classic D&D campaign especially if it set in the Wilderlands. Because it based on OD&D, it works as is with the original Wilderlands material.

While organizing some of my JG stuff I hadn't read in a while, I was reminded of the shit-show of the way they organized CSWE: a huge, nicely drafted color map (great...), three books filled with a complete description of every point of interest in the city (I'm still with you...), and no correlation between the two whatsoever. If you haven't seen it, the idea is that the referee is provided the pleasure of deciding themselves how they want to organize the city, keying each entry to a specific building using the hex numbering system. Sounds like something that might be a feature if you are a self-starter. But the entries are organized alphabetically. So, unlike the lists of villages, lairs, etc. in JG booklets that are organized by hex number, there is no way to look at the map and then turn to book and find what you decided goes there. The only solution is to write the name of the place on the map. But there are, like, 500 entries (or more!). So, you need to totally cover the map in scribbles. I guess I did it (at least in part) because my map is partly filled in. But it's such a pain in the ass. And so different from all the other CS/Wilderlands materials. It doesn't make much sense. I figure they just produced the material without thinking it through very carefully, never intended to play test it or anything, and dumped it out as-is when they ran out of time or energy. Oof. That said, it is a pretty great map for a huge city, and a lot of the entries are as amusing and useful as the classic CSIO ones.

Yup CSWE had some flaws. What I did is gave each major section a code (like GG) then what I drew on the map was GG1, GG2, GG3 etc. I then wrote separate lists of what was in GG sorted by the number. So it wasn't hard to call out what businesses the PCs were seeing.

That makes sense. What I seem to have done (judging from what I recall of my decades old notes...) was to mark the map with a small capital C or S to distinguish between the city book and shops book, followed by a period, followed by the minimum number of lower case letters needed to uniquely identify the entry from the alphabetical list. I guess the advantage of this is that you don't need to refer to a separate list - just look at the map and turn the appropriate book entry.

Go for DragonQuest because of the magic/summoning rules.

Just to throw more 70s-style fun in the mix, why not do it with Tunnels and Trolls?
I would do a mini-campaign of a few sessions that way, at least. Other systems are probably better for a full campaign.

I've used a variety of D&D and variants for Wilderlands, 5e is definitely the one I find works best.

Why's that? I don't have any problem with 5E, but I am not sure I understand why it would be particularly good for a City State/Wilderlands campaign. 5E turns a bit of attention back toward travel, fief building and other between-adventure activities that get important in these sorts of extended campaign settings, but not nearly to the level you see in OD&D and 1E. Between that, and the fact that everyone is stated out for something more like 1E or late OD&D, I would have thought 5E would take some work.

Quote from: Larsdangly;943875Why's that? I don't have any problem with 5E, but I am not sure I understand why it would be particularly good for a City State/Wilderlands campaign. 5E turns a bit of attention back toward travel, fief building and other between-adventure activities that get important in these sorts of extended campaign settings, but not nearly to the level you see in OD&D and 1E. Between that, and the fact that everyone is stated out for something more like 1E or late OD&D, I would have thought 5E would take some work.

Another virtue is that the power curve of 5e works out to be similar to that of OD&D. And to anybody else reading this I know this because I have run 5e and OD&D on back to back multiple times over different levels from 1st to 10th.

So for the most part you can just sub in the 5e equivalent into the original. The only issue is that the otherwise excellent NPC statblock are not 100% equivalent to a character of the same level/hit dice. So that may vary. But in general if a troll is called for a 5e troll will work and so forth and so on for orcs goblins, whatever.