An oft under-appreciated aspect of Advanced Dungeons & Dragons adventures are the many Henchmen and Hirelings that a player character can employ to perform a variety of tasks. The two are at times conflated or misunderstood. To make matters worse, there are both Standard and Expert subsets of Hirelings. The following quote from the AD&D […]

Roleplaying games typically do an excellent job of defining exactly what game skills and specific abilities can accomplish. However, a common dilemma arises at the table: what happens when characters who lack these applicable skills or abilities attempt something that reasonably ought to have a chance of success?. Various RPGs define this default probability in […]

In the Beginning was developed singularly for me and my family in our regular campaign play. We’ve been playing a homebrew campaign of my own design that most closely adheres to core 1e. We wanted to make use of Encumbrance, its limitations, and how it impacts movement; character disease contraction and parasitic infection; and many […]

So you’ve heard about it on Youtube or from a friend,.. or you watched an 80’s period show like Stranger Things and were intrigued by the idea of Old School Dungeons & Dragons. After a few Google searches you were stymied in answering the question, “How can I learn to play AD&D First Edition?”. If […]