Author: Aron Clark

Holmes & Clark

Aron Clark5 Comments
Original artwork by Justin Russell – link tree

In 2019 I started running Basic D&D using the Holmes Blue Box, I’ve written about that here. During that time my games were heavily house ruled with ideas that addressed how I wanted the game to work at my table. As new players joined in my open table games I committed to convert these house rules to something that more resembled a traditional rulebook.

It was an interesting, if not difficult, project producing a complete rpg rulebook. Even when this project was informed by concepts that are now familiar within our hobby. My guiding principle in this work was to produce an accessible reference to my interpretation of the game; simplifying concepts and to perhaps offer something new.

2020 and the quiet years that followed allowed me to run more games using these rules, all the while shaping and refining the presentation. What exists now is something that matches my original vision and these rules have been tested in well over a hundred sessions with dozens of players.

This work which I’ve termed “Holmes & Clark” is offered here without charge. Print on demand copies are made available at cost. My hope is that others will pick up these rules and attempt a game like D&D that is not overly complicated with expense or minutia, and rather; enjoy a fantasy adventure that can propel the imagination and excite the mind.

Google Drive Folder – includes the following:

  • Google Doc of the Current Release
  • PDF w/o gutter offset
  • PDF w/ gutter offset
  • PC Control Panel
  • DM Control Panel

At Cost Lulu Print on Demand:

  • Softcover – w/ gutter offset – current Lulu price $4.50
  • Hardcover – no longer available, sadly Lulu cannot produce an acceptable full-bleed color cover.
  • We now have a Discord server! Please get in touch if you would be interested in joining the conversation there, or find the link in the rule book.

Preview Pages

Update Nov 10

Jason Conerly of the Nerds RPG Variety Podcast has be on as a guest recently to talk about ol’ school games and the Holmes & Clark rules in particular. You check out that episode here.

The You Tuber “Hex Pressed” has done a read through (flip through?) of the Holmes & Clark rulebook. Check that out here.

Update Sep 30

Even AI shares its opinion on Holmes & Clark, find that 10m podcast here.

Advanced Bundle of Adventures

Aron Clark4 Comments
Peter Mullen cover for AA16 w/ Prisma Gothic filter.

In January of 2023 Bundle of Holding offered a large collection of Advanced Adventures, these being originally designed for AD&D 1e / OSRIC.

Always on the lookout for the next adventure for whatever campaign I’m currently running this bundle was irresistible, especially when a few comments on Redit mentioned how good some of this work was. SOLD!

However, the collection was delivered as 43 (!) separate pdf files without great detail on PC level range for each. So I set these aside without much attention.

3 months later I was starting to cast around for the next adventure for my bi-weekly Saturday game and went back to this collection, creating an index of sorts to better facilitate my review.

That index is available here. Perhaps others will find it useful as well.

As an aside – if you’ve run or played in any of these adventures I would love to hear your feedback about them. The google sheet above is shared with “commenter”privileges.

ChatGPT-DM

Aron Clark7 Comments
Sure! How about Classic D&D from 1978.?

Last week I read a blog post from an author who was pushing on ChatGPT-DM to run a game of D&D with little success. I didn’t exactly agree with how this author was interacting with the bot so I attempted a similar exercise. You can read a log of this exchange here.

While I had great fun engaging with the bot in the end I concluded that the bot itself has limited memory capacity and no logical decisioning needed for a game of D&D.

I had hoped to be able to teach the bot to do basic DM functions like make a reaction check and apply those results to the evolution of an encounter. It was not to be.

Finally I asked the bot to create a short blog post on our experience along with the challenges we faced:

Recently, I had the pleasure of playing Classic D&D with ChatGPT, a language model trained by OpenAI. We decided to create three characters: Neria, an Elf Lord, and her two bodyguards, Farman and Vaseline, who were also sea elf fighters.

Despite the challenges, we had a lot of fun playing Classic D&D with ChatGPT. The language model was quick to respond and provided us with interesting scenarios and challenges. We enjoyed the interactive nature of the game, and it was exciting to see how our characters’ actions influenced the game’s outcome.

Overall, our experience playing Classic D&D with ChatGPT was both fun and challenging. We encountered some difficulties with different rule sets, but we were able to overcome them and continue with our adventure. We look forward to playing more games with ChatGPT in the future.

https://chat.openai.com

Perhaps an embellishment, but no matter.

Long Live the Fighters!

Aron Clark2 Comments
Fight On! Issue #1 cover art by A. Reyes

My on-going Black Tower adventure game had long ago stretched out beyond the initial dungeon location with transits between nearby town and back, then on to other regional dungeons, and now across the high seas. Placing before my players an far away ocean destination I had intended offer a few island locations sketched by a favorite designer Gabor Lux. Though I couldn’t recall if these were fist published in Knockspell or the Fight On ‘zines.

As I set about leafing through hundreds of pages of OSR material from the halcyon days of 2008, and thinking to myself: “there is so much interesting material here. How will I hope to recall it’s location for some future game? I need a sort of index…”

Checking with an academic friend I settled on the conspectus model, collecting details on: issue, page number, article title, article category, author, and any additional notes I might care to add.

noun
con·spec·tus (kən-ˈspek-təs)

1: a usually brief survey or summary (as of an extensive subject) often providing an overall view

You can find the start of this conspectus here, which currently covers the first 4 issues of Fight On! My plan is to publish regular updates to this work, but I would certainly welcome other contributors. Also I would be happy to see anyone take and expand on this format for other materials.

As this material is published in a Google sheet it should be easily sorted, filtered, analyzed, or exported. I would suggest making a copy of the file for these purposes if necessary.

AD&D 1 Eeeeeee

Aron Clark5 Comments
Portion of the AD&D 1e DMG as illustrated by David Sutherland,
filtered via Prisma, Gothic

I am an unabashed AD&D 1e enthusiast, but I certainly appreciate this game isn’t for everyone. For me 1e is as beautifuly complex and powerful, like a formula 1 race car. Like a like a race car it needs specialized tools and training to operate.

As a player one of the key tools is the classic character sheet, which was originally designed to capture as much detail any player could need for play without referring to the core books. In all my plays over these past few years I immediately returned to this familiar tool. However, this sheet requires a sharp pencil, a good eraser, and keen eyesight; all of which fail me in one way or another from time to time.

Get pdf versions of these MadIrishMan classics here

I have been playing in a regular bi-weekly game, but with our astral plane adventures I realized that my careful scribblings were an inefficient nod to the past. Casting around online for a cloud based AD&D 1e character sheet I found a number of Google Sheets that approached what I was looking for, and using one of these as a baseline I tweaked it for my own needs.

Snapshot of the latest iteration of this 1e character sheet, grab a copy here

If you have an interest in playing AD&D 1e I can suggest two additional resources.

1. Anthony Huso has written extensively on playing 1e RAW on his blog: The Blue Bard.

2. Allan Grohe my 1e DM also keeps a blog with plenty of interesting content on this topic: From Kuroth’s Quill

September 18 Update – Spell Cards

Print & Play spell cards, should be just shy of 2.5” x 3.5” that is the standard for CCGs. Get them here.

July 21 Update

I’m leading a group of players tentatively towards Huso’s Castle of the Silver Prince. Our goal to hew as close to the 1e core rules as possible: 6 second segments, weapon modifiers vs AC, grid based combat, level caps, training, the whole lot of it.

In my own study and prep of the system and creating a sample character I wrestled with the scattered class and demi-human requirements. All of this I initially consolidated to a single page, but has since grown to 5, which you can find here.