Published Settings

Here are some I like.
Generally I prefer to referee my own world. Like many I enjoy developing a milieu around an idea, my own preferences and the interests of my players. Running a homegrown setting, especially one that has developed over many years, has a richness and depth of detail rarely reached by reading the published settings of others. But from where does one get ideas for the homegrown setting? Well, from everywhere, really. Anything the referee reads, fantasy fiction or otherwise may find itself adapted and altered and added into the homegrown setting. I believe this was the way Gary Gygax and company originally envisioned the game.  Dave Arneson's Blackmoor and Gary Gygax's Greyhawk are original homebrewed settings, but one can see the influence of many sources of inspiration in the descriptions we have of those settings. Reading the works referenced in "Appendix N" will reveal a number of those influences.
Forty-five years after TSR published the original LBBs the hobby can boast of numerous published settings. Many started out as the homebrewed milieux of the various authors, some have now achieved fame on their own. There are also licensed adaptations of settings drawn from literature or other media IP complete with system stats so the referee need merely read the published setting and follow the suggested guidelines in order to play one's own version of Middle Earth, Barsoom, Hogwarts or whatever.
The freedom found in labeling your setting "homebrewed" allows the referee to make changes and take things where they seem to naturally want to go in the setting. One is not constrained by history or canon and therefore much of the worry of "conflicting facts" can be avoided. (Of course one may simply play those conflicts off as wildly spread rumors, outright lies or misunderstandings. Anyone who has studied history knows how this can happen.) The simple act of changing names (filing off the serial numbers!) can convert the source material to a homebrew (as long as one confines use of said "homebrew" to your table and makes no attempt to profit from the plagiarism.) More common is the borrowing of certain elements which are folded into the referee's own mix to create something which resembles a lot of sources, but copies none.
Besides the literary sources, one obvious place to go mining for inspiration is among the wealth of published setting material which has accumulated over the past four and a half decades since the Greyhawk and Blackmoor supplements were published. No doubt every referee has their favorite sources for such plundering, but I include here a few of my personal favorites.

The older adventure modules published by TSR are among my first go-to sources for inspiration, borrowing and adaptation. Many years ago I would run these modules (or attempt to) as written, but today I blend them into a larger milieu of my own making (which of course includes elements drawn from a variety of sources). I continue to find these modules of great value when homebrewed for use at my table. Even players who have experience with the original format of these "adventures" find enjoyment in how it has been adapted and changed.

The Middle Earth modules published by I.C.E. are another excellent source of inspirational material and I frequently turn to the ones in my collection not only for Middle Earth, but in general I have found the locations and adventures, both detailed and merely hinted at, are readily adaptable to most any setting. Want something for a Call of Cthulhu adventure set during our own middle ages, it isn't hard to find a few in the pages of these beautiful volumes.
At this point in my career as a referee I seriously doubt I could run anything someone else wrote "by the book" as they say. I am an incurable "tweaker", a do-it-your-selfer, and a meddler. I add-lib even when unnecessary, often just to amuse myself, quite honestly. The result is whatever the author wrote, I change it some. Having said that, I really like a number of the published settings just as they are written.

Hyperborea as it appears in Astonishing Swordsmen & Sorcerers of... is to my mind a quite brilliant setting. It is named after one of the imaginary worlds of pulp fantasist Clark Ashton Smith and is the creation of Jeffrey Talanian (North Wind Adventures). Mr. Talanian's Hyperborea is thick with pulpy atmosphere and AS&SH, in my experience, gives the most authentic feel for role-playing in a sword & sorcery setting. Alien gods, ancient civilizations, lost technology and secrets that man was not meant to know, it's all here in trumps in AS&SH.

Tekumel, the setting of Empire of the Petal Throne created by M.A.R. Barker, is one of the earliest game related settings and one of the best. It has a reputation for being a bit difficult to get in to, but the reward is well worth the effort. There is a lot of material published for the Tekumel setting and it is an alien and unique place, so it can feel overwhelming at first. I have found the best point of entry is the original Empire of the Petal Throne game book, originally published by TSR in 1975, but often reprinted. The setting material in that single system book is manageable and more than enough to get your Tekumel off and rolling.

Before TSR got around to publishing their adventure modules and setting guides Judges Guild (Bob Bledsaw and Bill Owen) designed and released a setting in the form of a number of play aids including a great city and a number of hex-maps and some light description material. The City State of The Invincible Overlord and the surrounding Wilderlands give the referee/judge an adaptable playground at a period when most of us were still struggling to figure out how to use this wonderful new gaming concept. The Judges Guild setting remains one of my favorites to this day.

A list of great settings worthy to be run as written has to include the mythological setting of Glorantha, home to various boardgames and roleplaying systems spanning several decades including the editions of RuneQuest. Glorantha is the imagining of Greg Stafford and is one of the more unique settings in adventure gaming. A floating square cube beneath a domed sky, Glorantha is home to gods and men who are in constant interaction. It is a heroic setting with elements of early bronze age (esp. Mesopotamia, Iliad and Odyssey) and Native American cultures.

Harn is perhaps the most realistic and detailed medieval setting published for adventure games. It is the creation of N. Robin Crossby and has been published by Columbia Games since the mid 1980's. Harn, together with the system N. Robin Crossby designed for playing in it which he called HarnMaster, gives the referee ample tools for judging an immersive role-playing experience nearly unequaled (partly due to there being relatively few fantastical elements). The beautifully detailed maps can nearly come alive when paired with the detailed articles describing life down to the domestic animals, flora and fauna as well as the fictional inhabitants, mundane and illustrious, the politics of village and nation and the practice of religion and what passes for magic in this world. In many sessions it has been hard to remember this is a fantasy setting, it can all seem so real.

One of the settings I won't hesitate to referee or play in is J.R.R. Tolkien's Middle Earth. One reason is that I don't ascribe to the practice of holding absolutely true to the source material as written by the good professor. I am OK with taking liberties...making Middle Earth one's own. Add some stuff, assume the professor never got around to telling us about everything there exists in Middle Earth. Reinterpret some of the "facts" as they are presented in the published works...perhaps that is only one version of things? There are more stories to explore in Middle Earth than the destruction of the One Ring.
If you have made it this far, dear reader, I thank you for your patience and interest. Let me reward you with an easy to use source of adventure ideas that I find to be extremely useful - old westerns! The "B" movie variety and '50s/'60s TV series. The characters are classical archetypes and the plots are simple, often involving moral choices that will engage your players when they have to make the hard choices for themselves. Watch an episode of The Rifleman or The Lone Ranger, etc. and see if you can't re-skin the characters and plot for your next fantasy adventure.

Games I Love

...But Never Play
As I look toward the end of another year, I am reminded of what I did not manage to bring to the game table this year. Some of those titles have been on my short list for years, but once again the earth has circled the sun and I have yet to find the right group, or the time, or the perfect adventure...there is no shortage of excuses. As a tabletop gamer who prefers face-to-face play I am relatively blessed being a part of two groups that regularly get together and roll dice. I also live near I-70 between Indianapolis and Columbus, home to Gencon and Origins respectively. I am also fortunate to have remained in contact with long-time friends with whom I get together a couple weeks a year just to catch-up, hang-out and game. In other words, I think I have played a lot of games over the past year.
Number of games played is one thing, variety is something different. No matter how often I get to actually play games, there never seems enough time to play nearly all the games I am interested in. Part of my personal issue in this regard is that I also enjoy many types of games, not just role-playing. So there remains a number of games each year that I would like to have played, but did not find there way into actual play, even solo. Conan: Adventures In An Age Undreamed Of immediately comes to mind as one I intended to play some this year, but didn't.

Conan: Adventures... by Modiphius is a game that adheres closely to its source, the fantastic fiction of pulp author Robert E. Howard. While games like White Box draw from a number of sources for their inspiration and are designed to give players a good experience playing in a variety of settings, other games such as Conan; Adventures... is very setting specific. I am actually quite fond of a number of single source games such as Dragon Age published by Green Ronin which is based on the video game property, King Arthur Pendragon by Greg Stafford which conforms closely to Le Morte d'Arthur, Adventures in Middle Earth by Cubicle 7 which draws heavily from their game The One Ring to give us a 5e version of J.R.R. Tolkien's Middle Earth.

Zweihander Grim & Perilous RPG won a Gold ENie award for best product of 2018. It is an awesome 600+ page monster homage to 1e Warhammer Fantasy Role-Play that out does the original in many ways including the "grim & perilous" imagery of the text and illustrations. I would really like to play/run Zweihander and/or the new Warhammer Fantasy Role-Play 4e recently released by Cubicle 7. Grim & Perilous is exactly how I prefer my fantasy gaming, but I have found it is a taste not shared by many of my friends.

Harnmaster is another system which is dear to me, but for which I struggle to find players who share my enthusiasm. I refer to those hardy role-players who willing suffer the constraints of playing with the often gritty realism of a medieval milieu. Those for whom a bountiful crop is reason to rejoice and who find reward in spending character time in prayer and meditation. Immersion is key to finding the rewards in such role-play and if feeling like you are experiencing a few moments in a life lived in a realistic medieval setting isn't your idea of fun, Harnmaster has little to offer. But if the idea of being able to present your lord with the most abundant barely harvest in memory and receiving the accolades associated with such service can tickle your fancy, Harnmaster and the associated world of Harn itself can deliver.

 Early this year I imagined playing a new version of my beloved GURPS by Steve Jackson Games called Dungeon Fantasy. Dungeon Fantasy comes in a nice big box full of brightly colored tomes and maps and stand-ups. It is "powered by GURPS" meaning it has that system's mechanics at its heart, but it is a stand-alone fantasy dungeon crawl version aimed at those of us who really enjoy that sort of adventure. The boxed set comes with everything needed to play including starting adventures and maps and cardboard figures specifically designed for the opening adventures. It is a role-playing game and a board game, but I have yet to get it to the table.

Generally the person who runs the game (referee) chooses the system they want to play. I am more often a player than a referee these days and therefore I play a lot of systems that are chosen by my friends. I enjoy most of them. The big conventions offer me an opportunity to play in a wide variety of games and that is where I generally get to play Shadowrun, Call of Cthulhu, Hackmaster, and Astonishing Swordsmen & Sorcerers of Hyperborea. On the occasions that I do get to referee at our home table, I generally run White Box. I have refereed a few additional systems this past year, the Pathfinder 2e Beta Playtest, RuneQuest, and Dungeon Crawl Classics RPG immediately come to mind.
Planning is a necessary prelude to running a game, although I find it no guarantee of actual play. (Getting to play also involves interest among your players as well as finding the open time slot.) So I ask myself, "What RPGs would I like to get onto the table in 2019?"

Challenge Players & Endanger Their Characters

How (I think) Gary Gygax played the game. 
I have been reading DM David and thinking about how I prefer a style of play summed up as "challenging players and endangering their characters". Perhaps that would have been a good title for the original game designed by Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson as it nicely sums up certain aspects of the early play style. Those of us who have played the game using the LBBs realize that starting characters in that system are in constant danger of being brought to zero hit points and therefore character death. Player skill involves avoiding this state of "death", often by coming up with creative solutions to challenges, avoiding direct conflict with monsters and tricking them out of their treasure. The original game is basically a dialogue between the referee and the players, sometimes with a designated "caller" or spokesperson for the player group who relays directly to the referee what the characters are going to attempt.
Team play is emphasized over individual character heroics in such game play. The Original White Box LBBs produce characters with no "skills", only ability scores, hit points and saving throws. The rest must come from imaginative play. Any adventurer may attempt to climb a wall, sneak up behind a monster and stab it in the back, disarm a trap or locate a hidden object. They are all "adventurers" and assumed to be skilled at their dungeon delving trade.
After the success of the original White Box, Mr. Gygax wrote the rules for an Advanced Game in three volumes. At the time of their publication, he noted that tournament play required standardized rules, hence the new system. The 3 hardcover volumes he authored represent a shift in Mr. Gygax's thinking from a DIY approach to a standardized one regarding rules. Tournaments were popular at the conventions of the day where gamers from many locations would gather to play their favorite game, frequently run by a referee, or "judge" who was often someone new to them. The publishing company, Tactical Studies Rules (TSR), which Gary Gygax had co-founded to publish the original game, ran almost all their convention games as tournaments - competitive play that emphasized player skill and the ability to avoid character death. The modules published by TSR were often adapted tournament adventures and thus the tournament style of play was further encouraged. B2 Keep on the Borderlands and T1 Village of Hommlet, both authored by Mr. Gygax, were notable exceptions and seem to be written more as examples of non-tournament, sand-box campaign style play where player agency is expressed in their choice of what lead to follow and what mischief to make in the setting. 
The tournament modules frequently begin with a short description of how you got to the front door and what your mission is. It is then assumed the players enter and attempt to accomplish the mission. The characters are built as a team, each reliant upon the others for survival and player skill and knowledge is expected to be used. Role-playing is what happens when players talk among themselves "in character", or when they engage an encountered creature in dialogue.
The Keep on the Borderlands and Village of Hommlet both start in a civilized and basically safe area where players may engage in role-play to learn about the surrounding area and about the opportunities there are for adventure. They may take as long as they like getting to know the locals (NPCs) and trading with them. If/when adventure is sought, the party of characters will leave the safe environs and enter the wilderness, either on their way to a known destination where conflict is likely to occur, or perhaps just to explore and see what they can discover on their own. The so-called sand-box can be expanded almost indefinitely as the players travel further and further afield.
The end-game of the early version of play, of which I am so fond, is for the character to acquire many levels of experience finally collecting enough wealth and power to establish a stronghold of one's own, castle, temple or tower, attracting followers and being awarded a territory over which to rule. This is "retirement" of the character and the successful completion of the "rags to riches" journey so much a part of the American tradition.
In this post I attempt to stay as true as I can to what I believe were the ideas of Gary Gygax when he was with TSR designing the World's Most Popular RPG. My thoughts are based on 45 years of playing his games and reading what he wrote and listening to what others who knew him have said about those days. In my folly I may have unconsciously portrayed Mr. Gygax as being more in agreement with my own preferred style of play than is fair, but it is my belief that in truth it is I who prefer his style of play. If in my ignorance, I unfairly misrepresent Mr. Gygax (and I leave that judgement to those who knew him), I sincerely apologize.

Rifts

Why every referee should have some experience with Rifts!
The art and science of building an adventure setting can seem overwhelming.  The LBBs give only the vaguest of directions for what to do (vagueness is how they roll after all) and figuring it all out on one's own can be a daunting task. It has taken me many years to feel comfortable knowing what to do when designing a setting. I have been borrowing ideas from this referee and that, from one source and another for decades in order to formulate my philosophy of how to run a game.
Rifts is a role-playing game by Kevin Siembieda published by Palladium Books set in a post apocalyptic future where the release of atomic weapons and resulting death energy introduced ley lines that forced open various dimensional "rifts" in time and space which now connect Earth to lots of other realities. As a result, high tech enclaves still exist alongside very primitive populations, aliens and demons have invaded Earth, and many other planets and dimensions are accessible if one uses the rifts to travel off Earth. Magic now exists and players can choose from a plethora of character types, some wearing flying powered armor, some hopped-up on stimulants, some capable of tapping into the new magic and others who are much less powerful. Rifts is everything all in one setting and it is frankly overwhelming at first.
A quick study of Rifts however will reveal that it is probably unwise to use everything all in the same campaign. The referee, together with players, should make some choices about the the game they are interested in using Rifts for. What to include and more importantly, what to leave out. And this is where Rifts starts to teach us how to be better referees of any system.
What kind of narrative are you hoping to create through the game you will run? Is this to be an investigative/intrigue adventure or one of exploring the unknown? Will there be lots of combat? What power level are you preparing for? When running a Rifts campaign, the referee generally makes decisions about what to focus on and what to avoid among the many available options in order to promote the desired and agreed upon type of game everyone is expecting. Is the game about powered armor Glitter Boys flying around pounding huge monster space robot invaders or is it about a vampire haunting a village? With Rifts, almost anything is possible, but Glitter Boys can be out of place in a sleepy, back country village and their firepower isn't needed if the biggest threat is a Bram Stoker variety vampire who can be killed with a wooden stake.
To a lessor extent, these same concepts apply in White Box and most every other system ever designed. What gets included and excluded from the current campaign, where to set the power level, when to add elements to the rules (or take away) or customize systems, all with the intent of setting the game up to deliver the experience everyone expects and is most likely to enjoy, all this is a big part of referee preparation.
This discussion also underscores the importance of having some dialogue with your players before the campaign starts. The longer I game, the more I am finding a session zero where the referee and players discuss the details of a coming campaign face-to-face (and perhaps create characters together) to be very helpful in this regard. Nothing trumps sitting down for some conversation about the coming campaign to get everyone on the same page and excited about the game (and don't forget to take notes!). I believe it is time well spent and helps avoid all kinds of potential pitfalls that can occur when everyone isn't a part of the initial creative process.
Learning to referee Rifts is a good way to organize your thoughts on campaign creation and running just about any kind of game. Making choices about scope, power level, PCs, monsters, rules to include and exclude, and where the game may need customized are the choices a good referee makes when designing any campaign using any rule system. The enormous amount of options available in Rifts pretty much forces the referee to focus and make choices. I think it is a good habit to get into. It is almost a bonus that Rifts is an excellent game with a great setting.

Recent Arrivals

New Games I am Excited About

Paladin: Warriors of Charlemagne, authored by Ruden In 'T Groen and published by Nocturnal Media, is based on Greg Stafford's King Arthur Pendragon RPG and uses many of the same mechanics. Paladin, like Pendragon, is all about playing a knight in a legendary setting that draws heavily on period literature, in this case the Charlemagne epics such as The Song of Roland and which aims to immerse players into its multi-generational role-playing experience. Pendragon and Mr. Stafford's The Great Pendragon Campaign do an excellent job of just that. Paladin will hopefully do the same for Charlemagne.
The age of Charlemagne may be slightly less well known to American audiences than the romances of King Arthur, but is in fact more directly historical and just as fantastic and full of adventure, drama and entertainment as the legendary King Arthur tales. Charlemagne ruled from about 768 to 814 and these are the years of the Paladin campaign, which takes its inspiration from The Great Pendragon Campaign. In Paladin one plays a knight (or aspiring squire) in the service of the Frankish King, Charlemagne, acquiring Glory and honor and hoping one day to join the ranks of the great Paladins, knights who personally serve the King. 8th Century Europe is a wilderness ripe for adventure. The withdrawal of  the Roman Empire has left a huge power void into which the fledgling Frankish Empire is expanding. Pagans, invading Moors and Saracens, meddling Romans, competing Christian princes, supernatural forces of faerie, nature and the Evil One are all part of the epics and therefore available to the referee as potential fodder for adventure. The scope of material for Charlemagne's era including history and all the myths and legends seems even larger than that present in the Arthurian tales.
As with King Arthur Pendragon, the gaming challenge may be finding players who are interested in confining their role-play to the milieu of chivalry, knightly privilege and responsibility. Playing an honorable knight is a challenge (in my experience) that many Americans can find tedious. The hopeless romantics like myself perhaps welcome the role, but for many it just doesn't make sense to their modern sensibilities that people would behave as they do in the stories.

Warhammer Fantasy Role-Play (WFRP) 4th edition published by Cubicle 7 is perhaps just the opposite role-playing experience. Set in the Old World of a fictional Reich loosely based on a renaissance era Holy Roman Empire (historically what Charlemagne founded) where money, greed and self-interest have largely replaced courtly romance and chivalry, the "Grim World of Perilous Adventure" offered by WFRP seems in many ways more familiar to modern Americans.  Social mobility is more common and behavior is less restricted by birth and class. Players may feel free to openly brawl about in the streets and alleys as is suggested by the cover illustration (which recalls that of the 1e WFRP). Its Warhammer so Chaos is the big threat and cults and demons can be found lurking anywhaer. I have heard WFRP described as a smash-up of Call of Cthulhu and D&D and that rather seems appropriate. The current 4th edition has much in common with the 1st edition by Games Workshop and I see that as a positive. The 4th edition does bring the profession and percentile mechanics into the 21st Century and is a much improved game, very much to my liking.
Of course Games Workshop, the original publisher of WFRP and developer of The Old World has taken that setting forward and into The Age of Sigmar. There is good news ahead for those in the hobby who prefer the newer setting. While Cubicle 7 WFRP 4e retains the older setting for this product, they are promising an Age of Sigmar role-playing game for next year. I have not explored The Age of Sigmar much, but it does look to have its own appeal, enough for me to invest in that version of the game once it is available. Yes, I enjoy the WFRP system that much!

B/X Essentials, published by Necrotic Gnome (author, Gavin Norman), is now a complete game system with the addition of the final two volumes. The Monsters book and Adventures and Treasures book are, much like the first three volumes titled Core Rules, Classes and Equipment and Cleric and Magic-User Spells, a digest sized retro-clone of the Basic and Expert rules reorganized so as to seamlessly combine the two original volumes in a modular format allowing for ease of reference at the table and flexibility if one wants to alter setting/milieu. The modular nature of the system allows for replacing Classes and Equipment or the Cleric and Magic-User Spells or any of the other booklets with something more directly tied to a different setting while retaining the Core Rules and any of the other books.
Necrotic Gnome is one of my favorite OSR publishers at present and has recently given us Dolmanwood and the Wormskin zine in addition to B/X Essentials. With original content, evocative art and very inspiring characters, the Necrotic Gnome products have been among my favorites since I first discovered Wormskin a year or so ago. Moss dwarfs...need I say more? The Dolmanwood and Wormskin setting is a unique and fresh take on an enchanted wood that can easily be the entire setting for its own campaign or dropped into another setting.

Games That Might Have Been

What If...
I love this book and its companion volumes (Bestiary and GM's Toolkit). Adventures Dark & Deep is my favorite OSR iteration of the Advanced Game and its successors. If you are not familiar with Adventures Dark & Deep it is a work of interpretation which starts with 1st ed Advanced and takes it where the author, Joseph Bloch, thinks Gary Gygax might have gone had Mr. Gygax gotten the chance to do a 2nd edition. For inspiration, Mr. Bloch says he consulted as much written by Mr. Gygax as he could find that is pertinent to the subject. Mr. Gygax of course didn't come right out and say, "I would have done it this way" regarding a 2nd edition, but he did write many articles, subsequent games and internet postings that were consulted by Mr. Bloch in designing Adventures Dark & Deep.
The reason this is my favorite is that Mr. Bloch keeps what I like, omits what I find troublesome and doesn't go where I would rather the game didn't go. In other words, Adventures Dark & Deep is something I agree with...whole heartedly and that doesn't often happen, my friends. Rule systems are an important element of play for me and although I am a big fan of DIY adventure gaming, there is something really sweet about reading rules that I am in agreement with, touching on all the right spots. This is a game I can take to the table and tell my players we are playing this game "by the book" - "rules as written".
Playable races in Adventures Dark & Deep are the classic ones and half-orcs are described as "ugly vicious people". The monk is gone, the assassin is relegated to the Appendix as an option along with the weapons verses armor class adjustments. Mr. Bloch keeps weapon speed and weapon length in the main table for use in certain combat initiative circumstances. PC classes include Bard, Jester, Cavalier, Paladin, Cleric, Druid, Mystic, Fighter, Barbarian, Ranger, Mage, Illusionist, Savant, Thief, Acrobat and Mountebank, enough to cover all the bases and give players plenty of variety from which to choose. The rules for multi-class characters makes sense (I don't often say that about multi-classing) and there is the option to change class, once, if the PC qualifies and the referee agrees. The rules for secondary skills are acceptable, don't seem to get in the way and may even add something positive to the game depending how they are used at the table. Armor class, saving throws and spell magic is in keeping with 1st ed. with casting time given in seconds which is more intuitive and easier to handle at the table than segments. There are welcome additions including rules for social class (optional, but realistic) and family that seem to lend a bit more depth to the PC and a more realistic feel to the implied setting. New tables for handling surprise and shooting-into-melee add a further degree of realism. Critical hits and fumbles are optional mechanics (as they should be).
A word about Alignment: Alignment in Adventures Dark and Deep is essentially the same as in the Advanced Game Gary Gygax wrote. It is both a moral compass for characters and a way to divide up the forces competing for dominance in the milieu. For me, it isn't D&D without alignments. Alignment is an important part of setting up the sides or teams players will be a part of and the ones they will compete against. (In Greyhawk cities and countries have alignments - representing the team/side they support and the moral standards one can expect the population to abide by). The alignment concept supports a certain world view that has been common in fantasy literature, that of "good verses evil", clearly defined and in conflict for control. It isn't the only way to write fantasy and it isn't the only way to play a fantasy RPG, but it is the way I like my D&D.
Even if Adventures Dark & Deep didn't set so well with my personal game sensibilities, I would probably find it an interesting read as I have many other speculative treatments of role-playing games that might have been. Elf Lair Publishing's Spellcraft & Swordplay by Jason Vey is an interpretation of the classic Original RPG if its authors had stuck with the Fantasy Supplement from Chainmail rules rather than the "alternative system" which became d20. Spellcraft & Swordplay is an interesting game that uses only the common six -sided dice which were available everywhere in the '70's. The game advances the basic ideas as found in Chainmail to a fully fleshed out vision of what Mr. Gygax might have written. I find it interesting reading to say the least, although I have never taken Spellcraft & Swordplay to the table.

Champions of ZED by Dan Boggs is another interpretation of what the world's most popular fantasy RPG might have looked like under different design circumstances. Champions of Z(ero)-ED(ition) includes some interesting differences both from what authors Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson eventually published as the World's First RPG and from Spellcraft & Swordplay. Mr. Boggs, who also authored Dragons At Dawn - a study of how Dave Arneson's original Blackmoor campaign was perhaps played - and has researched extensively the early, pre-published versions of the game, how they were played and what the discussions of the day can reveal about what might have been. Champions of ZED, like Adventures Dark & Deep and Spellcraft & Swordplay are works of historical research as well as speculation.
The "what if" game is fun to talk about and to play as evidenced by the number of hobbyists who spend hours doing just that. Adventures Dark & Deep, like the TSR Advanced Game, is complex and "crunchy". There are a lot of rules. What makes it stand out for me is the choices the author makes with regard to rules and his interpretations which I agree with to some degree. While I generally prefer rules that leave more room for a DIY approach, Adventures Dark & Deep has become one of my favorite game systems.