OSR White Box

Original Edition Roleplaying
The Old School Renaissance (OSR) movement has used the Open Gaming License (OGL) to create several games that are very close to the older roleplaying games in feel and play style. I am not a lawyer and the legal stuff is beyond my understanding, but what this means to me is that there are new games being printed that are close enough to my beloved White Box that any supplemental material created for the new games can easily be used with my older White Box. Now I know (from experience) it's possible to convert just about anything from one system to another with a little work, but it's also nice to have new products written specifically for my out-of-print favorite.
Delving Deeper is one such new game written to provide play that is very close to White Box. There are not a lot of new products that I have found specifically written for Delving Deeper, but that may come. Swords & Wizardry (S&W) is another popular game and has a white box version that I have found several new products written for. Labyrinth Lord is yet another popular OSR game that has a good following with several modules and other publications written specifically for it, but generally usable with any of the "old school" games. Labyrinth Lord more closely resembles the B/X version of the game, but there is an Original Edition Characters supplement that supports play very similar to white box.
I suppose no discussion of the OSR games would be complete without mentioning the Old School Reference and Index Compilation (OSRIC). OSRIC was one of the first, maybe the very first, of the older style roleplaying games written under the OGL and my understanding is that OSRIC pretty much pioneered this area of the hobby. There are a lot of publications for the OSRIC system and although OSRIC is closer to the Advanced game in style, all the older games have a lot in common and product for one is easily converted for use with another.  Back in the day we did this all the time, mostly on-the-fly. (Some of us still do.)
This post is not meant to bring the reader up-to-speed on the OSR, there are way better blogs out there for that than this one. I just want to point to a couple OSR games that seem most like white box and express my appreciation to all those authors producing support materials for the white box game, whatever title they fall under. I am sure it is all a labor of love as publishing for the hobby is not the way to riches (or so I've heard). Add my voice to the chorus of appreciative roleplaying gamers who are thankful that there are those out there producing so that we can enjoy their creations and continue to have fun with the game we all seem to love. If that makes me a fanboy, I can live with that.

Melee

A Metagaming Combat Alternative
One of the subsystems that usually gets tinkered with and house ruled in the White Box is the combat system. The original LBBs give us two combat systems, one heavily based on Chainmail and pretty much requires ownership of those rules to use and the so-called alternative system using the twenty sided die. I know a lot of gamers, myself have mentioned how hard it was to find those back in 1977, '78. The ones that sometimes came with the basic Holmes rules were crumbly and hard to read and the twenty sided dice of the day were numbered 0-9 twice. One had to either color code the teens with a separate color or throw a control die, such as a d6 along with the d20. If the d6 came up 1-3 you read the d20 as 1-10 and if the d6 showed 4-6 you read the d20 11-20. Doable, but not as simple as gaming dice have become.
The alternative system became THE system for most people and for later editions. And for some very good reasons. It's quick, can handle large groups of PCs and monsters and higher level play almost as quickly as small groups and low levels. A group can do a lot of exploring in an evening of White Box play. One of the reasons for this quickness was the rules were abstract. Abstraction allows White Box to reduce a lot of combat action to a simple mechanic that only requires the referee to check one table to see if damage is dealt. For some this level of abstraction was fine, others seem to desire a more intuitive approach to combat. For a time in the late 70's the group I played with used a combat system titled Melee.
White Box lends itself well to modification and it was easy enough to lift out the combat mechanics and substitute an alternative. Melee was a Metagaming MicroGame that consisted of a 17 page rules pamphlet, a hex battle map and a sheet of cut-out game markers. Melee, written by Steve Jackson (the American), used similar attributes to the White Box (strength and dexterity) and only six sided dice. For some it seemed more intuitive as Dex controlled one's ability to hit and armor reduced damage rather than making your character harder to hit. There was a companion MicroGame titled Wizard that covered magic using a points system. We toyed with it, but preferred the Vancian magic system of the White Box. Melee and Wizard together were called The Fantasy Trip and were supported by several solo dungeons and eventually a second edition called Advanced Melee and Advanced Wizard. By the time those products were released the group I played with were back to using the d20 combat system from the LBBs. Leveling one's character resulted in periodic increases in one's chance to hit under the LBBs, but Melee based one's ability to hit on the Dex score which didn't regularly improve with attaining higher level. We probably tried creating some tables to make it work, but eventually just settled on modification of the alternate system from White Box.
To this day, I still prefer the simple elegance of the White Box alternative combat system to any other system I have tried. Like many in our hobby, we experimented with more complex rules using "crunchy" combat mechanics and played some of those systems (looking at you Runequest) for many years. White Box's ability to handle many combatants quickly, even at the highest levels allows the game to progress at a good pace and there is nothing more important than effectively pacing the action to keep players and referee engaged.

Tough Referee Decisions

Are you ready for the hard questions?
OK, you think you are ready to run your first dungeon. You bought the White Box, deciphered the rules, chose a combat system, decided how to handle combat initiative (if any), assembled your dice and invited your players. Your map is drawn and you have included traps to trip-up the unwary, puzzles to puzzle the brightest, monster encounters both dangerous and entertaining. You have wandering monster tables, hidden treasures and you are ready for adventure. Basically that's true and many an evening's fun was had that started just this way. Tough decisions? Don't be discouraged, oh referee. After all, you are god within your own dungeon!
Have you thought about character death? How cheap is PC life in your dungeon? Suspense depends on a certain amount of player concern for the life of their paper avatar, but discouragement awaits the player who seems to always be the first to die. Is death permanent, or is resurrection readily available? Losing a higher level (what that is depends on the campaign) PC that has been adventuring for some months can be disruptive not only to the player of said PC, but to the campaign as a 1st level character now takes the dead PCs place. How does the referee balance things for a 1st level PC a midst a group of higher levels?
What happens when the lights go out? To players who all know what it's like to not be able to see, that is a scary thought, unless you can see in the dark. If you can, just blink a couple times to help your eyes adjust and yeah, things become clear again. Except for the players without the ability who are still just "in the dark". In the LBBs there is something about all monsters (any being not a PC) found in the dungeon can see in the dark unless being controlled by the players, or something similar (nrh). So an ogre can see in the dark right up to the moment you hit him with a charm spell and failing his save comes under the control of a player. Then the ogre is unable to see in the dark. I think the point of this is being in the dark is scary to players and that's a good thing for the game.
All players seek treasure and desire magic items, but how much to award them, that is the referee's dilemma. In White Box experience is tied to treasure and therefore players are motivated to acquire coin in order to level-up and be successful adventurers. Magic items are a fast-track to becoming more powerful and are therefore valued above their monetary value. Are there magic items for sale or do they have to be found while adventuring? Magic items can vary considerably in the power they grant to the PC and may unbalance planned encounters, but also make that PC much more effective than other PCs of similar level. Accidents happen and sometimes that too-powerful magic item gets into play. One of the tough challenges for the referee is how to handle that situation.
Balance is not directly talked about in the LBBs (iirc) and the idea of balancing challenges and encounters is a later edition concept. That said, referees do try to present players with a mix of challenges, some fairly easy, some hard, but achievable, and others which need to wait until PC abilities/levels increase. The LBB concept of the dungeon level and listing the monsters likely to appear on each level is an effort to let the players have some idea what level of challenge they are likely to be encountering. The idea obviously is that deeper levels have more powerful challenges/monsters and correspondingly more valuable treasures. Applying this mechanic to the wilderness adventure is a bit more challenging for the referee.
"What does my character do when he is not adventuring?" The time in between adventures or "down time" can be as important or not as you, the referee chooses.  In the LBBs there is referee advice to keep good track of time in the campaign. This makes sense if down time is important. Some referees require training in order for a PC to advance in level. In between adventures (maybe over winter if your campaign includes seasons) is a good occasion for this training to occur, if a mentor or trainer is available and if the appropriate amount of game time passes before the next adventure. One way to influence how much wealth the PCs have accumulated is life style costs and training. Spells may need to be researched and this takes time and money. Down time activities such as finding an appropriate mentor or teacher can become it's own adventure, if that is the way the referee wants to run things. How much "realism" do you and your players desire?
How to handle offspring and inheritance when the question arises, which is likely to happen especially in an immersive campaign with a fairly high realism factor. Players will want to bank some of their excess wealth and may even attain a status allowing them to own property and acquire titles. How much does my new PC, son/daughter of my old PC inherit is a question the referee may face. Allowing for multi-generational play, if incorporated into the campaign well, could presumably add yet another layer of realism and fun to the campaign.
Or you could go back to the beginning of this post and just run that one-off dungeon. My first campaign was a series of one off dungeons.  The only thing that could be considered campaign-like about it was many of the adventures started in the same tavern and they involved the same PCs who leveled up occasionally in between adventures. It is truly impossible to anticipate and plan for all the tough situations the referee will have to handle, so you may ask "why bother?" I will be the first to say, there's nothing wrong with just "flying by the seat of your referee pants!" After all it's just a game, have fun!

Factions

Setting the Stage
In the samurai movie Yojimbo (A Fistful of Dollars, or Last Man Standing, they're all the same story) the main character comes into a town and finds two factions at war with each other. That's all that's needed for the set-up and action adventure is the result. Any adventure can be added to through the use of factions. Conflict inside the game setting can be exciting. And there is no real risk of injury or loss because "it's just a game". Any loss that may occur is inside the game world and only affects an imaginary "character" of course. Conflict can produce "winners" and "losers" inside a hobby that is generally non-competitive. Conflict causes the player to think, strategize, expend resources and roll dice. Factions lead to conflict.
In my campaign there is an ongoing (30+ years) war between elves and men. In addition to making it interesting when someone decides to play an elf PC, the war gives me two powerful factions between which to create constant conflict. The existence of factions in the milieu allows for many possible plot lines to play out. It is not hard when reading a book or comic, or watching TV or a movie to see how the conflict there-in could be adapted to the White Box campaign. I hesitate to use the word plot because I generally like to avoid plotting out story for the PCs. I find it much more rewarding to present a situation (usually more than one) and see where the PCs go with it. Any story that comes out of this style of game play is as much theirs as mine and entertains us all.
Ideally I think factions should exist at every level of society from small rivalries between neighboring shopkeepers to wars between player races and at every level in between. The competing factions give the players opportunity to roleplay and the PCs can react any way they choose. They can ignore the whole thing, as PCs often ignore adventure hooks, opportunities and even rumors of treasure. Or they may choose to get involved.  They may help one faction or the other or alternate back-and-forth between both (as in the movies). They may even decide to join a faction or two. Such membership comes with ready-made friends and ready-made enemies. Lots of fertile ground for adventure!
Law, Chaos and Neutral alignment can be seen as three factions in conflict with each other or at least two in conflict and one that is, well, "neutral". Each alignment faction has it's membership races as outlined in the LBBs and the conflict between those factions is presumably why orcs and other members of Chaos are generally hostile to men of Law. Not everything in the campaign need revolve around alignment, however, and you may find that the inclusion of additional factions makes the action at your gaming table that much more fun for everyone. In the meantime, if you haven't seen any of the three movies listed above, you might want to check one out.

Milieu

Setting, context, background...
The authors of the White Box talk about milieu, which is not a word I run across frequently outside of reading things written by Mr. Gygax. In game terms milieu seems to refer to what surrounds the game action. Atmosphere or mood is part of it and certainly the facts about the in-game society, geography, flora and fauna (and NPCs) and technology are all contributors to the milieu. For most of us, the authors included, White Box milieu seems eclectic, borrowing from one source and another and mixing with our own inventions. The classic tabletop fantasy role-playing game draws heavily from stories that seem to date back to our earliest times. The heroic myths of ancient Greece talk about entering a labyrinth to defeat a monster, save a princess and win glory (experience) and honors (treasure). Sounds like a dungeon crawl to me.
What goes into the milieu and making it all "workable" or believable is the job of the referee. Even the one-off dungeon crawl adventure has a milieu that is set by the type of encounters the players are likely to have. One approach is to look at dungeon ecology, what are the inhabitants doing down there, what do they eat, how do they get on with the neighbors? Another is to look to backstory for the reason the dungeon exists and therefore what the explorer is likely to find there. Is this a talking, negotiating dungeon or a fighting dungeon? Are things internally consistent within the dungeon setting or zany, unpredictable and bizarre? Sometimes a gonzo, anything goes type approach works, but that adventure has a different feel to it than one developed along more logical themes.
The White Box urges the referee to connect the gaming sessions and adventures under the umbrella of a campaign. Certain game mechanics such as PC leveling, don't make much sense unless used in campaign play. The fantasy campaign involves the referee developing a milieu that remains constant across many gaming sessions and connects them through common characters, ongoing endeavors and any story-lines that develop from play. I think the word "milieu" suggests a process where-by the referee actively creates the context/milieu/setting based on personal choices. Obviously this is the way it was done by the White Box authors and the earliest players who had no canned setting to take off the shelf, open and insert players into. The best referees I know still build their own milieu even when using a published world or setting by modifying, adding to, etc.
Fantasy authors seem to create a milieu for each novel or series. One exercise I believe is helpful to understand the role of milieu in our adventure game is to think about a particular novel or fantasy series in terms of milieu. What are the components that make up the milieu in that story? How does milieu shape the characters? How does it affect action? Is there anything there you would like to use the next time you referee?

Art as Inspiration

Imagine Me This...
The piece above is from the new Deluxe Tunnels & Trolls and I think it's a nice piece, but I chose it rather randomly in order to make a point with this post. Inspiration for our hobby can come from stories we hear, books, comics, movies, even real life and the evening news. Art, good art always tells a story and the piece above seems rich with stories. I like to see illustrations in my books, especially game books because they suggest so many stories and characters to me. Just looking at this seated fellow and asking myself "who, what, where, how and why?" gets the creative mind working. So what can we gather from this Liz Danforth piece without asking her what it's all about. Well, the obvious it's a person seated holding a bow. By the looks of the face, I'd say definitely a human male, not young, not old. The rugged but not ragged clothing suggests someone used to the outdoors and probably able to reasonably take care of himself. The terrain in the background is somewhat rugged, hilly and wooded.  There is a statue of a humanoid near what appears to be an unpaved road or path. There are a few birds in the sky. There appears to be a frown on the man's face.
So letting the imagination go where it will, a referee could conceivably create an evening's adventure and entertainment from what we see in this picture. Give the fellow a name, tell us where he is and why we find him there. What is the significance of the frown, of the statue, where do the paths lead, why is he seated? With a cooperative group of players and a willingness to improvise, this could all be handled on-the-fly. With time to think and study and plan, a picture such as this can supply the inspiration to develop a fleshed out adventure. I could offer you my interpretation, in fact I'm resisting the urge to do so. Why, because you can do that on your own and doing it on your own, letting your imagination run freely is a big part of the fun of our hobby. Enjoy where YOUR imagination takes you.

T&T Solo Adventures

No Referee, No Problem
It's way less of a problem today than it was back in 1976 to find someone to run an adventure. Thanks to the internet, finding a game, or a group, has become an easy task. It's hard to imagine, but there was a time before internet, before computer gaming, before personal computers of any kind. Buffalo Castle, as far as I know, is the very first solo dungeon and it allowed a single person to play Tunnels & Trolls by themselves. The solo adventure trend would catch on and several T&T solo books followed the publication of Buffalo Castle. Then others started designing solo adventure books, often with their own simple rules in the same book, under titles such as Fighting Fantasy, Lone Wolf, etc. Eventually several major role-playing systems did their own solo adventures and together with the solo adventure paperbacks which appeared in many bookstores, the entire solo gaming experience became quite popular for a time.
With my purchase of Deluxe Tunnels & Trolls at Gencon recently, I have been reading through that tome and unboxed some of my old T&T solo adventures, including Buffalo Castle. Written by Rick Loomis, owner of Flying Buffalo Inc., publisher of T&T, Buffalo Castle is a 38 page, 8.5" x 11" paperback booklet nicely illustrated with art by Liz Danforth. One of the nice things about T&T over the years is the "fellowship" that has been the creative genius behind T&T, (Mr. St. Andre and friends including Rick Loomis and Liz Danforth) have remained consistently involved. In other words, I see the same names on the new dT&T rules that have been on T&T products from way back.
The organization of Buffalo Castle is each numbered page has several lettered paragraphs so that there is a 28 B and a 15 A, etc.  The way the solo works is simple and efficient. The player gets up a character using the T&T rules and reads the intro paragraph(s) which gives the background and any special rules for the solo. Buffalo Castle is obviously a castle, the player goes inside and moves around by making choices that sends the PC to various numbered and lettered entries where puzzles and encounters with various traps and monsters may occur. Basically it is a dungeon crawl without a referee, Mr. Loomis having set the whole "dungeon" up through the design. Having played through Buffalo Castle again yesterday evening I can say it may not be the only gaming option for those evenings at home alone, but it's still a fun option.