To date I’ve run my game using as a source book some modified versions of Labyrinth Lord. I made the effort to actually create physical books which has been well received. The idea with these books was that if I needed to make further changes to the text, they would be easy to update (they have re-openable bindings).
However, the more I’ve worked with it the more I notice most of my changes are in reverting SRD-isms from LL back to the original B/X. Also, I worry that while having completely custom books for home campaigns are awesome, they may be a put-off at conventions (vs. a “known system”).
So I sat down and tried to create a short document of all the house rules and changes from B/X that I want to use in my campaigns. It was sometimes hard to pull out stuff that’s clearly contradictory to the text vs. a common ruling I use for something that’s simply not mentioned in the text. There’s a gray area there, and I want to leave the door open for Finch’s “rulings not rules” concept. That is, I want to be able to change my mind on the fly based on the situation, and it’s easier to do that when the area you’re talking about is simply not covered by the book at all.
So here’s the result, what I’m calling my B/X Changelist. I’ve managed to whittle it down to 3 pages by being very concise in my language and preferring formulas to charts, especially where XP progression is concerned. Please feel free to take a look and send me any feedback you may have. I’d especially like to hear from anyone who knows B/X, has played in one of my games, or best of all both. I’m sure I’ve missed a few things, and I wouldn’t be surprised if some bits of it need rewording or further explanation.
Download the B/X Changelist.
Boy, in general I very much like these house rules. Actually the one thing that’s just a tad unclear is whether these are meant to “patch” LL or B/X?
Sorry, these are meant to patch B/X. The point is to drop LL entirely and switch to B/X with reasonable set of changes. Had I tried to make the same document for LL it would have been several pages longer, all just to undo the SRD-isms introduced by LL.
Cool — that’s what I’d guess but wanted to make sure. Some of the race abilities, etc., are really restatements from B/X, so that made me ask.
Right, my point there was to be as explicit as possible about what abilities are tied to race and what abilities are not. This way if a player is going to make say a dwarf thief, he can just look at the bullet points on the sheet to see everything being a dwarf grants him, and then look up the thief class in the book for everything else.
looks good. 1 clerical error though I believe:
“Electrum coins are still worth 5 gp.”
Some good stuff here, pretty standard.
One note, when borrowing rules from other people/games/etc. you should credit them. You didn’t come up with all of these, yet by not crediting the creator, you are implying that you did.
What are/were you using for a critical hit list? I don’t see a table in these pages (though sometimes I’m pretty obtuse…please correct me if I missed it).
Thanks!
Nice! The critical rules referenced in this doc is actually something I’ve retained in my OED games. You can find my post with the tables I use here:
https://www.paulsgameblog.com/2010/02/07/reducing-the-deadliness-of-dd/