Although I'm rather explicitly not an old school gamer, I've been reading (as I said last post) Grognardia, and have therefore become somewhat more aware of the retro-clone movement, in which folks utilize the OGL to replicate the rules of older editions of Dungeons & Dragons, make the content open, and then write new material compatible with these cloned rulesets. In theory, I suppose, the retro-clone games themselves become somewhat superfluous, except as a gateway to the new material, since you could just use the old material itself outright and not need to "clone" it.That said, and my tastes notwithstanding, I find this cover image from the OD&D (1974) retro-clone Swords & Wizardry to be really interesting, and evocative in a nice, nostalgic kinda way. Anyway, here's a quick snapshot from the website of the fine Swords & Wizardry folks, http://www.swordsandwizardry.com/.
2 comments:
In terms of D&D clones, Labyrinth Lord is my preferred flavor, but I have to admit that I like the S&W cover a lot better than either of the two official LL covers - that's why I did some photoshop work and made my own LL cover out of a Death Dealer Frazetta piece.
I think if I were to engage a retro-clone, LL would be the one I'd play, too. I've long said that if I had to play an older version of D&D, I liked BD&D much better than AD&D.
Presentation-wise, though, LL lags behind BD&D, I agree. Of course, that's not hard to fix myself; I can slap any image I want onto it. I do like the Swords & Wizardy image, for it's bizarre Erol Otus look-a-like qualities, if nothing else.
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