Grappling in the OSR

Gothridge Manor 8 Preview

L-O-C-K in the OSR!
L-O-C-K in the OSR!
L-O-C-K in the OSR!
Lockin’ in the OSR.

(Apologies to John Mellencamp)

Look, a preview!

A while ago, +Peter V. Dell’Orto and I decided that it should be possible, and more importantly, it would be fun to apply the principles of Technical Grappling to a game as widespread and popular as D&D.

We were (are!) in +Erik Tenkar‘s Swords and Wizardry campaign, and it is a very streamlined ruleset, so we decided that we should base it on that, since it’s easy to make things more detailed on the fly, but harder to strip detail out.

But what to do with it once we were done? Fortunately, +Tim Shorts had answer in Gothridge Manor, an independent zine with a heart-to-size ratio at least three sizes larger than it might first appear.

So look for it soon, and buy it when it appears! While you’re at it, I intereviewed both Tim and Erik on the Firing Squad a while back.

Over on G+, +Axel Castilla asked if this woudl be compatible with D&D5, as well as the OSR/Swords and Wizardry game. My answer is probably worth adding to the post:

The reason we picked the OSR as the basis is because of the very limited amount of information given for monsters in that system. D&D3.5 and D&D5 (in the form of Pathfinder and Fifth Edition, the books I have) use near-full writeups for monsters, mostly with full stats and bonuses. So if we’d written it up that way, you couldn’t back convert easily to OSR. Writing “OSR-first” allows you full compatibility.

So ultimately, you should be able to use these alternate rules – assuming you like them – for any variant of D&D.