Adventures Dark and Deep

Adventures Dark and Deep (ADD) is based off of 1st edition AD&D but under the premise of what would 2nd edition have been like if Gary Gygax had made it. I believe it was made by Joseph of the Greyhawk Grognard, and there is a great review of it at Classic RPG Realms.

It is currently in a play-testing phase and free to download.  (It is no longer in play testing and can now be purchased from BRW Games.)

I highly recommend reading the review because it does a great job of explaining what the game is and even taught me a little more about it. But what I'm going to talk about is what the game is too me.

I played alot of AD&D when I was younger but by the age of 12 3rd edition was out and since that was the edition I played for the next 13 years I am not exactly a veteran too old school gaming. I recently tried to get back into the earlier editions.

First I tried playing 1st edition since I still own the core books for that edition. It was fun for awhile but gave me head aches and my wife didn't like the edition at all, mostly I think it was because of things like font, organization and that touch of riddle Gary seams to be able to write into almost any paragraph.

When then tried the retro clones which simply felt too bland for me, and then even began playing basic D&D. Eventually switching too a version of my own that stripped alot of various aspects of charactor generation too speed things up and make them less confusing but I did it in a way as too not lose flavor at least from the players perspective.

This essentially left me playing AD&D adventures with a completely house ruled game.

Then I saw ADD, which as far as I can tell collects everything from 1e and lays it out in a format that is clean and useful but without taking anything away from the game. For example it includes many classes such as the Cavalier, Mystic and Jester I believe 17 in all.

The races chapter includes many popular subraces and the bestiary is divided into sections like Wilderness/Dungeon, Prehistoric and Extra-planar.

I can't quite explain it but it appears ADD is exactly the game I have been looking for I just hopre Joseph continues to support it for years too come.

Tomorrow I will talk about some of my experiences play-testing it and how I am going to have my new players role up their characters in what will hopefully be a very interesting way.