Does everyone remember the first incarnation of the Mazes & Perils fiasco? Well, it's back.
Were there changes made? Yep.
Does it really have anything to do with the Holmes set of D&D rules? Not that I can see, or at least no more than other OSR rulesets. To claim such a heritage is inaccurate to say the least. Misleading might be more accurate.
Do we really need another clone? No. But this really isn't a clone so much as someone's house rules that previously cribbed a heck of a lot directly from the Holmes Boxed Set.
I was going to do a side by side comparison of the two "editions" (earlier "pulled" edition and current "fixed" edition) but really, why bother?
If you grabbed it the first time around, the major changes are:
reduced expo tables
other tables that went high to low now go low to high, or visa versa, or mixed order
hobbits are now halflings
level titles are gone
OD&D style HD advancement is gone
movement rates were randomly changed to avoid repeating earlier rates
Listen, if you want a set of really good OD&D style house rules, pick up a free copy of the LOTFP Weird Fantasy RPG. Sure, Mazes & Perils is free too. But your time has value, so why waste it?
Or if you really want Holmes D&D, you could get this, por nada.
ReplyDeletethat is awesome!
ReplyDeletenot sure of the legality, but at least it doesnt hide it's source material or heritage ;)
The previous version copied whole swaths of text. I spent about 10 seconds comparing it to Holmes and after immediately finding lifted paragraph after lifted paragraph, didn't bother looking further. Much more a pirated edition, than a clone.
ReplyDeleteWhich, I wouldn't have given a damn about, if the author had been listed as Dr. Holmes and it had been put up on some dark hidy-hole of the internet, instead of on RPGNOW.
Not sure if the author was just that clueless about how clones are manufactured, or if he just didn't care.
I think it was arrogant cluelessness myself ;)
ReplyDelete