Mail Room: Labyrinth Lord 2E PDF

I like Labyrinth Lord, and it is good to see them back for another edition. The OGL is gone from this version, and we have one of the originals back. The game is not a strict copy of the original rules; it adds a few new races and tweaks a few things, which is interesting. The game is finally getting its own identity and flavor. This is taking BX as a base and moving on from there, without feeling it needs to pull in 1E material. This is the new king of the BX starting point games, where the 1E stuff is not essential, and the game should feel more like a 1E base.

A shout-out needs to go to the extremely close Basic Fantasy, a BX clone that hits all the right notes for many, and it uses a modern ascending AC system while being free to download and play. I can see how many would say "juststick with this" instead of supporting yet another BX clone, since the market already has quite a few of them.

Where Dragonslayer does more of a BX and 1E mix, Labyrinth Lord keeps 1E out of the game and just does its own interpretation of a BX ruleset. Dragonslayer is a nice and solid alternative as a replacement for the old Labyrinth Lord Advanced Fantasy, where we started to see 1E monsters and classes enter the game. Dragonslayer uses the 1E hit point scale, with fighters being a d10 hit die instead of a d8.

Dragonslayer is a fantastic game, well worth supporting and playing, and this is the king of mixed BX and 1E content, where you have the stuff from 1E, but a simple BX framework to play with it all in.

If you do not want to go with the full complexity of an OSRIC or For Gold & Glory, and you want to keep the base experience simple, and you want the 1E additions, then Dragonslayer is the perfect game for you.

Old School Essentials Classic Fantasy (now out of print) did a near-perfect BX implementation with no changes. When you start to fold in Advanced Fantasy, you lose some of the elegance and simplicity, and some of the classes (fighter) need quite a few mods and optional rules from the Carcass Crawler zines to feel worth playing. I see how OSE, to some, feels all over the place and needs a bit of tweaking to become fun, and the extra material required keeps it from being a one-book game.

OSE is currently experiencing an identity crisis and needs to find its focus. The revision next year will sort things out, and they make a few more changes to Advanced Fantasy to pull in some of the material people want, and to up their game to become a great one-book game.

On that "one book game" scale, I would rank these as follows:

1. Dragonslayer
2. Basic Fantasy
3. Labyrinth Lord 2E
4. OSRIC and For Gold & Glory
5. Old School Essentials

On my personal preference scale? I am a fan of 2E, but Dragonslayer hits a lot of the right notes for me, too.

1. For Gold & Glory
2. Dragonslayer
3. OSRIC
4. Old School Essentials
5. Basic Fantasy
6. Labyrinth Lord 2E

On the "Does this game have bards?" scale, from no to yes, we get:

1. Dragonslayer
2. OSRIC
3. Labyrinth Lord 2E
4. Basic Fantasy
5. Old School Essentials
6. Shadowdark
7. For Gold & Glory

I bring up bards since the class feels like it has an identity crisis, especially in old-school games. In a classic dungeon crawl, where the party fights to keep quiet, what use is a class that makes the most noise? Even the base book of Shadowdark skips the bard. In newer games, there is a tendency for the class to be the default choice for players who want to be disruptive or don't care about the game, and there is a flippant nature to them that reduces the seriousness some tables desire in gameplay.

And I have played bards for decades and see this too, so I am not a hater, but someone who is generally concerned that the bard class has lost its way. I am not a hater, and I see the confusion and how some lean into this class to disrupt the game. Sometimes they are illusionists, other times healers, other times combat mages, and yet other times they feel like the "default town class," and nobody knows what role a bard fills.

As a result, you see a lot of old-school games drop the bard altogether, and even core-book Shadowdark does this. They do have it as an expansion class (as well as the ranger), but they do not feel like "core book" classes, and there is a reason they are not in the base book.

Design meets the focus of the game, and some classes get dropped since they are distractions to the core experience that the game tries to deliver.

So Labyrinth Lord 2E comes in as a BX+ game, rebuilding the basic game with a simple core but not feeling it needs to add any 1E content. It is closest to Basic Fantasy, which is a game very close to a modernized BX, but with strong ease-of-use features. Labyrinth Lord 2E adds new elements to the mix, so it is a fork of BX that maintains compatibility with BX. Some would want to stick with Basic Fantasy, Dragonslayer, or the 1E/2E clones over supporting another new BX game.

It is good to see an old friend return so strongly.

DCC: Advanced Labyrinth Lord as the +1 Game

Dungeon Crawl Classics always needs an "extra game" to pull from, which I call my "+1 Game." Why do we need a +1 Game for DCC? Well, DCC leaves a lot up to you, such as:

• Equipment Lists
• Vehicles
• Horses
• Wagons
• Boats & Ships
• Wilderness Rules
• Monsters
• Retainers
• Specialists
• Treasure
• Treasure Tables
• Magic Items
• Stronghold Construction

Advanced Labyrinth Lord has it all, even ship combat rules. Since Mutant Future is my +1 game for Mutant Crawl Classics, these two books complement the MCC and DCC rules nicely. And I am not using these books for an active game, so if I use them as reference books, that is fine.

You will not use the spells, which is a large portion of the book, but that isn't a problem. You will also use the DCC armor AC values and weapon damage.

AC is descending from 9, so DCC AC = 19 - LL AC. An unarmored AC of 9 in LL would be 10 in DCC. An AC of 2 in LL would be 17 in DCC.

Hit dice need to be increased by 1/3 or 33% from LL to DCC, using the giant types as a baseline. Also, use the larger hit die sizes like DCC does for larger creatures. Damage is about the same. Mostly, the monsters work well as-is, and you can throw a few special or extra attacks in as needed.

The magic item selection is excellent, and you can customize these with as many special and different properties as you like. Remember, in a DCC world, every magic item is unique! You could always tag a random LL spell (and the spell lists are numbered like random charts) to every magic weapon and armor, and give it one to three uses per day, and be fine. This way, the spells get used and are not rolling on the DCC charts; they are just spells for item properties.

If you have LL and are not using it, place it with your DCC collection and use it as your monster, gear, and treasure book. This book has it all, is easy to use, and works very well as an expansion to the game.

Mutant Crawl Classics: The +1 Game

There are few +1 games for Mutant Crawl Classics since the post-apoc OGL genre is small. However, finding a game to accompany MMC is possible.

My number-one pick is Goblinoid Games's excellent Mutant Future (MF). This one has been around a while, but it does not lessen the fantastic content you get here. Nearly everything is directly compatible, from low-tech gear to high-tech gear, monsters, rules for boats, robots, androids, and many more things packed into this book.

You need to do a descending AC conversion for all the monsters and gear, but it is 19 - MFAC = MCC AC.

The mutations in this game are perfect for monsters or other creatures, where you just want an "attack ability" and nothing for which you want to roll on a mutation chart. For example, an energy ray mutation here does a 4d6 beam of energy (roll or pick type) to 50' every three rounds. This is perfect for many monsters and works well with MCC as a creature power.

MF is a worthy game to play on its own, and if you want more for this game, pick up a copy of the old OSR standby Labyrinth Lord (LL). Use most everything out of here (except magic), rename the monsters, and give them a few random mutations, and you are all set. MF plus LL is a one-two punch of extra stuff for MCC and considerably expands your game while staying in the OSR.

The MF+LL combo is also a good "fantasy baseline" for MCC games, as Mutant Future assumes a Middle Ages level of technology in future societies. War is still made with siege engines and sword fighters, cities have walls, and the general level of technology is deficient, with most ancient artifacts forgotten or useless. Travel is done with carts pulled by mutant animals or boats on a river. There are no "Mad Max" cars here, and the knowledge of the ancients is more removed from everyday life.

There are rules for gunpowder firearms and cars in MF (the cars lack AC values, but that is easy enough to guess using the armor types), and the guns are an excellent addition, so you could hack in a "Mad Max" style game here.

There is also another option for a +1 game, the PoD versions of the original Gamma World, but only the 1st, 2nd, and 4th editions. I recommend 1st or 2nd. Note that the second edition has many more fantasy inspirations, and the layout and organization are terrible, but it has a complete set of monster art and lots of "stuff" to use. The fourth edition is like a cleaned-up second edition (with much more stuff), but they introduce many more rules incompatible with B/X, and the writing in the book is very long-winded.

Overall, Mutant Future is easier to use as a quick +1 game for MCC, but Gamma World is iconic in many ways. There is a massive tone shift in Gamma World, where GW 1st is more like Mutant Future, and GW 2nd is more like MF+LL with many converted-in-fantasy elements. The fourth edition of GW feels more like the early Fallout games.

As the editions were published, Gamma World generally got worse as it got farther away from its B/X roots, and they tried to make it a superhero or sci-fi game. The first edition has the best tone and setting, the second introduces iconic monsters, and from there on, they just keep adding tech and superpowers. Later editions of the game also got unwieldy in the lists of stuff they provided, and the organization could have been better.

The fourth edition was based on AD&D 2nd, but the game developed new rules and subsystems it did not need. This edition also needs to be revised. Instead of keeping something like mental attacks simple, they spend two paragraphs laying out rules about plants being only able to mentally attack plants and how robots and AI are not affected by mental effects. Instead of keeping it simple (plants, humans, mutants, cyborgs, and animals have brains and can be affected; computers and robots cannot), they spend two paragraphs laying out rules about how plants can only mentally attack plants, how mental attacks on machines fail, and so many other nuances I wish an editor with a laser-chainsaw would have spent more time here.

Many of them followed the desktop publishing fads of the day, overusing two-letter abbreviations to the point of nonsensical notation. They tried to look "cute" over having a readable book.

Mutant Future is a "reset" on the genre and gives you the best Middle Ages setting to use as a baseline society. I like basing tech and knowledge on a fantasy baseline since this lines up with 1970s fantasy inspirations the best. Once you enter the 1980s and 1990s, the games start copying Mad Max, Fallout, and other "pop culture sensation of the week" sources.

One problem with the 2nd edition Gamma World was the monsters; they have fae-like "Lil" and a massive list of powers in the setting. In our games, these became the only fae, when in the original spirit of the game, taking a fae as a baseline and applying a set of random mutations to it to create a unique species of fae is a much better option and keeps the game fresh.

Perhaps there are "glow fae" that have radiation powers and live around ancient reactors since they are immune to the energy and feed off it. This system is more like the MF+LL combo, where you pick a baseline fantasy monster, roll random mutations, and see what you can imagine.

The GW 2nd monsters can become far too iconic and take over the game like licensed IP, and it gets predictable and boring. I love the 2nd edition monsters, but in my version of the world, every monster or local species should be unique and different. You don't know if that mutated carp will shoot radiation beams, freeze the water, or try to take over your mind.

The world is much more unpredictable when you see something and have no idea what it can do, rather than repeatedly seeing the same old "rad fish."

All that said, using Gamma World as a +1 game for MCC is only for advanced referees with knowledge of the editions, the problems they introduce, and a love of the source material. The Mutant Future game is much more straightforward and easy. If you want the fantasy elements, MF+LL is far easier than GW 2nd and gives you infinitely more flexibility.

Also, the LL+MF combo is worth as playing as its own game, too. Even without DCC, this is a highly compelling combo that gives you the best of both worlds.

Also of note, Kevin Crawford is developing Ashes Without Number, an update of his old Other Dust game, and a game in the same genre as Gamma World, MCC, and Mutant Future. Any of the ...Without Number games are excellent, top-quality toolkits, and it is worth keeping an eye out for this one.