Dark Dungeons, and falling in love with OSR

My first introduction to OSR in general came when I began reading Zak Sabbath's D&D With Porn Stars blog.  On an older blog of mine, back around 2013, I posted a story about my infamous "naked paladin" and joked that people found my blog by Googling Naked and D&D, trying to find his blog.  Instead they found my old blog and everything goes on from there.  I won't go into why that old blog fell apart, too many reasons to list.  But from that blog I began reading.  Zak had me hooked on table-top games that weren't all about optimizing characters with the right feats combined with the right spells from the right splat books.  I think the biggest problem with 3/3.5/PF, besides power-creep, was that D/GMs became to permissive.  Let me state that we have every right to, but that comes with the responsibility to read up on what was "OP" and what would turn a character into a card-carrying member of the "Pirates Who Don't Do Anything."

I mean, Fighters are basically vegetables already...

I have my own d20 system that I personally use.  It is somewhat E6 mixed with a few rules that made each class unique: Fighters alone can get the Fighter Bonus Feats, no one else can touch them; and Clerics were spontaneous casters like Sorcerers.  Even there, you can still get Wizards who could not only be Fighters and Rogues, but do those jobs ten-times better.  Even Pathfinder Society games have characters retire at 12th level, because they couldn't fix the problem of the end game.  Basically, if you did not roll up a full-casting class, you might as well pack up and go home.  People don't like getting replaced, everyone wants to feel like they are special or that they are contributing.

After a while I cam across the idea of retroclones and discovered Dark Dungeons, a clone of the Rules Cyclopedia which was published in 1991.  Many have called this their "desert island" RPG, since it covers a wide variety of play styles.  And how!  Dungeon crawling, kingdom management, extraplanar adventures, and other things fill up the original book.  Few other fantasy offerings before and since have covered such a vast array of offerings.  And with a bevy of alternative rules, you can increase the replay factor of the rules.  For once, I can say I give a shit about the rules!

Dark Dungeons isn't a pure clone of the Rules Cyclopedia, that would be a copyright issue.  However, what is found in there is a loving adaptation that anyone who loved those now 25-year old rules will embrace.  The artwork is all public domain woodcuts, which sometimes feels like they don't match the text around it, but that can happen with such things.  This held me over until I got a PDF copy of the Rules Cyclopedia.  However, I still desire to play from these updated rules more, since anyone can get a hold of them for little to no cost.  

I think that is what I started to love about the OSR, they are like craft beer.  They are, for the most part, lovingly made and show a desire to make a fun game that anyone can find entertaining.  Some do hold strong to archaic and confusing rules, but many seek to clarify, and adapt.  I don't see one getting rich from being and OSR author, but one can certainly become a master at their craft and provide entertainment around a gaming table for years to come.  And that is why I love this subculture within a subculture.

You can find Dark Dungeons, available at DriveThruRPG, by following this link.