RetroRoleplaying: The Blog

About 10 days ago I posted a playtest report on Gryphons & Gramarye (see Gryphons & Gramarye Report from the Trenches: What Works and What Fails) where I reported that the Hunter class had problems and players really wanted a cleric class. This sparked a few changes to the game. I've eliminated the Hunter class (at least for the time-being as I still like the basic idea. I changed the Magician class slightly, it lost healing abilities and gained more nature-related spells. Finally, I've added a Paladin class.

The G&G Paladin is a competent warrior (like the Scout and eliminated for now Hunter class) who can also turn undead and has a number of prayers (including healing abilities). Prayers do not work like magic spells. They use a different system where the Paladin as to roll to succeed it obtaining divine help and the more times the Paladin asks for such help during a day the more likely the Paladin's deity is to say "sorry, no more for a while". The amount of help the Paladin's deity will give increases as the Paladin goes up in level.

I tried to post the first draft of the Paladin class to this blog a couple of days ago without success. For some reason pasting from Word isn't working for me right now (at least not if I want to keep anything like the original formatting). Therefore I decided to release an early public playtest version of Gryphons & Grammarye -- or at least of Gryphons & Gramarye Basic.

The goal of Gryphons & Gramarye is to recreate the style and feel of early fantasy roleplaying games (e.g. 0e, B/X, 1e) published back in the 1970s or very early 1980s without trying to duplicate the exact features of any of those games. Gryphons & Gramarye will try to do some new things with old school while retaining basic compatibility with adventures for 0e, B/X, and 1e.

This first public playtest version of Gryphons & Gramarye reimages the classes but otherwise mainly uses Microlite74 Extended rules. Public Playtest 1.0 has five classes classes: Fighter, Scout, Paladin, Magician, and Wizard. The Fighter is a very powerful warrior (better than a 0e fighter). The Scout is a less powerful warrior with outdoorman and “thief” abilities. The Paladin is a holy warrior with the ability to pray for miracles. The Magician has limited warrior abilities but wields illusion and nature magic. The Wizard is next to useless as a warrior, but can wield powerful magic.

These rules assume that the GM understands the basic concepts of roleplaying games, but provides information for both the GM and the players on the various “old school” styles of play. Gryphons & Gramarye can easily use adventures and material from early editions of the world’s most popular tabletop fantasy roleplaying game or modern clones. Note this is a set of playtest rules, the final version of Gryphons & Gramarye will likely be much different. Your feedback is welcome and will help shape the final version.

You can download a copy of Gryphons & Gramarye Basic Public Playtest 1.0 from the Public Playtests section of the Download are of Microlite20.org.

Due to several requests I've added Gryphons & Gramarye sponsorships to the benefits for RetroRoleplaying Cancer Fund donors. Donors (including those who have donated since the start of the Lazy Days of Summer RetroRoleplaying Cancer Fund Drive) will be listed as sponsors in Gryphons & Gramarie games -- unless they opt to remain anonymous (as about 50% of donors have in past sponsorships) in the following categories:

• Donate $25.00-$49.99 and you will be listed as a Bronze Donor
• Donate $50.00-$74.99 and you will be listed as a Copper Donor
• Donate $75.00-$99.99 and you will be listed as a Silver Donor
• Donate $100.00-199.99 and you will be listed as a Gold Donor
• Donate $200.00-299.99 and you will be listed as a Platinum Donor
• Donate $300.00-499.99 and you will be listed as a Electrum Donor
• Donate $500.00 or more and you will be listed as an Adamantine Donor

I hope you like this very early public playtest of Gryphons & Gramarye Basic. Comments and ideas are welcome as always.

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The Lazy Days of Summer RetroRoleplaying Cancer Fund Drive is on. Every $10 donated gives you one chance to win a one of the many early D&D, Empire of the Petal Throne, and early TSR games items items described in the above-linked post. Multiple drawings will be held as described in the above linked post. The highest donors will have a separate chance to receive an Artists of TSR portfolio. These are in addition to the usual PDF downloads and other benefits of a donation to the RetroRoleplaying Cancer Fund. To get help us pay our medical bills (and to get access to some special downloads and possibly the above mentioned lazy days of summer items), send a donation in any amount -- small or large -- to me via Paypal. Thank you!

As of the time of this post $634 dollars have been donated. That's about 18% of our goal and about 85% of the way to the first drawing trigger point of $750 dollars.