Wieliczka Salt Mine, Galicia; ARTIST Name: Rocault, Jules; BOOK Title: Les merveilles de l’industrie, vol. 1; Author(s): Figuier, Louis; Publisher: Paris: Furne, Jouvet et Cie, 1873
I’ve been running a bi-weekly game for a group of regular players for the past 5 years. This year we’ve been engaged in a historians’ exercise of AD&D 1e “rules as written”. Anthony Huso has been our librarian who has introduced us to this Herculean effort, though our own study of the text has been rewarding as well. In fact, i have been publishing my own AD&D 1e learnings here on this blog when I have something worthwhile to share.
We are playing Huso’s epic “Castle of the Silver Prince”. This campaign begins at level 0 and includes all the nuisanced AD&D stuff: training, weapon speed, combat segments, percent based reaction rolls and more.
The campaign does refer to an abandoned ruby mine as an adventure location, but is unkeyed. As our play moved closer and closer to the ruby mine I experimented with actually keying an AD&D 1e dungeon.
You can find that key along with some notes on how I approached the work here.
You can find a summary of our campaign events here, recorded an managed by Archivist AI.
Trinity College Library, Dublin, Ireland britannica.com w/ Prisma Gothic filter
In March ‘26 I read Matt Schumer’s “Something Big Is Happening”, which encouraged me to explore AI more than scratching I had been doing at the corners. Copilot, Notebook LM, Gemini Gems are all things that I had experimented with; most as search without ads, research primers, and custom agents to help shape complex messages.
Schumer fired my imagination in his descriptions of software development through natural language and the concept of machines building machines. Here was an opportunity (for $20 a month) to try my hand at building software applications that I dreamed of as a washed up CS undergrad who happily cut over to history. Like many of my technology adventures I apply them to my hobbies first to help me learn their practical and professional applications.
I started big, I mean really big. Why not build a tool that could be used to play Holmes & Clark solo. I wrestled with context preservation, establishing design principals, project instructions, false declarations, and genuine hallucinations. It was great!
I scaled back in some areas, established a framework that is improving results, and in support of my regular AD&D 1 Eeeeeee game tinkered with some Claude.ai skills to serve my immediate needs and produced:
DMG Appendix A – Random Dungeon Generator – in progress
DMG Appendix C – Random Dungeon Stocking – done
DMG Appendix C – Random Party Generator – done
DMG pg xx – Random Gems & Jewelry – done
Custom Magic-User Spellbook Generator – supporting PHB, UA, and Wizards Spell Compendium via data sourced from What’s In Your Spellbook (thank you Delta) – done
The spellbook generator is based on principals I’m using to define higher level characters, where spell and magic item selection are significant blocking points in my preparing for play quickly.
Here’s a sample library of spellbooks & user guide, both prepared in just a few minutes by the Claude.ai skill that could produce trillions more in whatever combination might be of interest.
Please let me know if there is any interest in reading more about how I’ve been experimenting with AI or if the above skills might be useful to you too.
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.
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.
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 ‘25 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.
Aug 2 ‘26 Update
One year later and our bi-weekly AD&D is going strong and a few interesting assets to share.
Ever wonder what treasures are hidden away in the hoard of the Halfling Master? Dig into this blog for news, ideas, reviews, and other in depth information about anything surrounding the OSR, TTRPGs, and Miniatures hobbies. No piece of loot is too small or insignificant to be explored.
On the Tabletop 