Wednesday, April 15, 2015

Mischief Inc pondering making their own OSR game/retro-clone

They've produced two modules (with a third due out soon, I believe) and apparently are considering making their own OSR game

What would you all think about Mischief, Inc. releasing our own OSR Core Rule Set?  We're thinking about something based on a hybrid of the 1st and 2nd editions of the world's most popular advanced fantasy role playing game with a few innovations relatively new to the rpg industry, along with one or two house rule elements that we have found to enhance our games from a 1980s-90s time frame.

We obviously can't give much detail at this point, but we'd certainly be interested to know if the OSR Community is still looking for the heir apparent, or if folks have generally settled in with their favorite by this point.

Such an effort would of necessity require a Kickstarter campaign.  On the upside, we'd not even begin the campaign until all three manuscripts were complete or at least nearly complete.  And we'd be able to pay some of the industry's best artists from the 80s-90s era to illustrate the books.  We are thinking of three case-bound volumes, a Player's book, a Game Master's book, and a Monster book.  Perhaps each would have its own KS campaign, or perhaps we could do all three at once.

Please tell us what you think via these forums, our Facebook page, or our email address!
As I've said twice, once on Dragonsfoot and once on their forums, I think there is room for another retro-clone/OSR game if it's AD&D based, since there aren't a lot of those (OSRIC, For Gold and Glory, Myth & Magic, Adventures Dark & Deep), and honestly, none that I think solve the problems with 1e.  Myth & Magic is a good attempt (albeit more 2e-ish) but its Kickstarter was a disaster

1e is probably my favorite version, but the classes aren't balanced (as Roger Moore showed in Dragon), the Bard is completely bonkers, there are annoying level limits and restrictions, and the thief just sucks unless you multi-class as fighter/thief or some-such.

2 comments:

  1. Honestly, AD&D 1e is *ALL* fiddly unbalanced rules that are cumbersome in practice. That's the vast bulk of the text.

    What saves it is everyone picks and chooses what they care to play. I'm a little doubtful that the system is very amenable to modification with it being so voluminous, and I suspect a heavy editing hand won't please many.

    Still, I'd be interested in the result of a serious try.

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  2. I didn't see this until now (a year later!)! Reaction at the time was pretty overwhelmingly negative, especially on Dragonsfoot if I am remembering correctly.

    I'd love to do a 1e clone (I've since soured on 2e) with some added/updated classes and races, etc, but I doubt there is much interest in it. What we're doing at this point is making suggestions in the adventures themselves of rules variations to use. An example is in the rewite of The Inheritance I am currently working on, we suggest that if someone really wants to play a barbarian that they use the Northmen – Highland Clans version presented in Dragon #148.

    Who knows, down the road if we collect enough of these system tweaks, we might release something, but I'm not going to collate things at this point into a manuscript unless demand suddenly increases based on interest in Mischief, Inc.

    *ah well*

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