Random musings on books, code, and tabletop games.
The SWTOOLS VOS provides three shells, sh, hsh
(which adds a history mechanism), and esh (which adds
ed-style editing of the history). The release notes state
that the shells need the privileges DETACH and CMEXEC, but
under VMS 5.5-2 it turns out that they need the GRPNAM privilege
as well.
Well, it's my first program using SWTOOLS VOS this time around.
So, I finished by first program using SWTOOLS. It is a simple directory lister, called l, that interprets all its arguments as as file specifications to search for using normal RMS wildcards, or used *.* if not arguments are specified. It only returns the files with the highest version number, does not include the device, directory, or version number in the output, and converts the filenames to lower case. It should only be used to list files in the current directory. I needed it because I do things like
and I don't want any version numbers to end up in the names of the archive members, and so on.
Rafor is much better than Fortran 77. And Fortran has even more footguns than C when it comes to using separately compiled functions and subroutines, with no notices that I'd passed things with the wrong type until I actually ran the program and got a register dump because of an access violation.
I was not able to include things from
SYS$LIBRARY:FORSYSDEF.TLB using the Fortran INCLUDE
statement in ratfor, since it has its own include keyword , so I
separated that part of the program into its own Fortran source file.
Because that file wasn't run through ratfor I couldn't use the
standard macro definitions, like STDERR, so when I wanted to output
the filesnames, I just wrote a ratfor subroutine that would print them
and called that from the Fortran subroutine. A little clunky, but it
worked.
Annoying, the fc command (which compiles *.f files to
objects) doesn't work when run under mmk, so I had to write
a command procedure dommk that does mmk/noact/out=tmp.com
and @tmp.com to do the build. (I think this was somehow due to
having multiple levels of subprocesses: mmk's and
rc's.)
Anyway, the program ended up 48 lines of ratfor in three files and 84 lines of Fortran. The C program I started with was 170 lines (in one file), but doesn't work with the SWTOOLS shell's notions of I/O redirection.
Last edited: 2024-07-19 12:44:44 EDT
Today I fixed a 41 year old bug in the SWTOOLS VOS sedit commmand!
At work part of my job is to maintain an emulated VAX/VMS 5.5-2 system for one of our clients. I have been using the SWTOOLS Virtual Operating System recently (Unix style I/O redirection! And pipes!), and whenever I tried to use the sedit command it would die with an integer overflow:
%SYSTEM-F-INTOVF, arithmetic trap, integer overflow at PC=0002D6C9, PSL=03C00022
Improperly handled condition, image exit forced.
Signal arguments Stack contents
Number = 00000003 00000000
Name = 0000047C 08000020
0002D6C9 000017C4
03C00022 7FEF9784
0002D479
00001DC0
00000000
08000020
7FEF97B4
7FEF979C
Register dump
R0 = 0000000E R1 = 0002BAF4 R2 = 0000000F R3 = 7FF6A489
R4 = 7FFE5E0C R5 = 7FFE5EBC R6 = 00000000 R7 = 00000001
R8 = 7FFECA4C R9 = 7FFECC54 R10= 7FFED7D4 R11= 00001E94
AP = 7FEF9738 FP = 7FEF96F8 SP = 7FEF976C PC = 0002D6C9
PSL= 03C00022
Drats, drats, drats.
I use sed frequently on Unix, and it would be nice to have the SWTOOLS equivalent on VAX/VMS. What could I do but set the Wayback Machine for 1986 and dive in!
Those following along may want to read my post about how the Software Tools VOS organized its source files first.
The SWTOOLS VOS was written in Ratfor, which added structured control structures and other niceties such as macros, include files, and string constants to pre-1977 Fortran. I suspect that even as late as 1986, when the version of the SWTOOLS VOS was released, lots of installations were on machines that only *had* pre-1977 Fortran compilers.
Here's an example of Ratfor source, from sedit.r:
# copyf - copy file name to opened file fdo subroutine copyf(name, fdo) integer name(ARB) integer fdo integer fdi, i integer open character c, namstr(MAXLINE) character getch for (i=1; name(i)!=EOS; i=i+1) #get name into string namstr(i) = name(i) namstr(i) = EOS fdi = open(namstr, READ) if (fdi == ERR) call cant(namstr) while (getch(c, fdi) != EOF) call putch(c, fdo) call close(fdi) return end
You can tell it was inspired by Unix.
Here's the corresponding generated Fortran
SUBROUTINE COPYF(NAME, FDO) INTEGER NAME(2048) INTEGER FDO INTEGER FDI, I INTEGER OPEN LOGICAL*1 C, NAMSTR(2048) LOGICAL*1 GETCH I=1 23190 IF (.NOT.(NAME(I).NE.0))GOTO 23192 NAMSTR(I) = NAME(I) 23191 I=I+1 GOTO 23190 23192 CONTINUE NAMSTR(I) = 0 FDI = OPEN(NAMSTR, 1) IF (.NOT.(FDI .EQ. -3))GOTO 23193 CALL CANT(NAMSTR) 23193 CONTINUE 23195 IF (.NOT.(GETCH(C, FDI) .NE. -1))GOTO 23196 CALL PUTCH(C, FDO) GOTO 23195 23196 CONTINUE CALL CLOSE(FDI) RETURN END
Notice that the character variables got changed to LOGICAL*1?
That turns out to be 1 byte variable...
So, to start, I needed to run sedit in the debugger. That's easy enough:
% cd ~tmp
% mkdir sedit
% cd sedit
/dua1/software/swtools/tmp/sedit/
% get -r1.5 ~src/sedit.tcs >sedit.w
% ar xv sedit.w
patdef
csedit
sedit.r
sedit.fmt
% rc -d -v sedit.r
~bin/ratp1.exe sedit.r | ~bin/ratp2.exe >sedit.f
~bin/fc.exe -v -d sedit.f
for/noop/object=sedit.obj/nolist/check=all/debug=all sedit.f
~bin/ld.exe -v -d sedit.obj
$ link/exe=dua1:[software.swtools.tmp.sedit]sedit.exe/debug/nomap sys$input/opti
ons
dua1:[software.swtools.tmp.sedit]sedit.obj,-
dua1:[software.swtools.bin]rlib.olb/incl=(tools$main),-
dua1:[software.swtools.bin]rlib.olb/libr
% echo Hello | sedit "s/H/J/"
%DEBUG-I-CANTCREATEMAIN, could not create the debugger subprocess
%DEBUG-I-CANTCREATEMAIN, could not create the debugger subprocess
-LIB-F-NOCLI, no CLI present to perform function
-LIB-F-NOCLI, no CLI present to perform function
%DEBUG-I-SHRPRC, debugger will share user process
%DEBUG-I-SHRPRC, debugger will share user process
VAX DEBUG Version V5.5-023
%DEBUG-I-INITIAL, language is MACRO, module set to TOOLS$MAIN
DBG> go
%DEBUG-I-DYNMODSET, setting module DOCOM
%SYSTEM-F-INTOVF, arithmetic trap, integer overflow at PC=0002E345, PSL=03C00022
break on unhandled exception preceding DOCOM\%LINE 20
20: IF (.NOT.(CMD .EQ. 97))GOTO 23162
DBG> go
%DEBUG-I-DYNMODSET, setting module DOCOM
%SYSTEM-F-INTOVF, arithmetic trap, integer overflow at PC=0002E345, PSL=03C00022
break on unhandled exception preceding DOCOM\%LINE 20
20: IF (.NOT.(CMD .EQ. 97))GOTO 23162
DBG>
I guess we'll need a little more context.
DBG> type docom\1:20 module DOCOM 1: SUBROUTINE DOCOM(I, LINBUF, LINENO) 2: LOGICAL*1 LINBUF(2048) 3: INTEGER I, LINENO 4: LOGICAL*1 CMD 5: INTEGER K1, K2 6: INTEGER AQ 7: INTEGER IQ 8: INTEGER BUF 9: INTEGER LASTBF 10: INTEGER NLINES 11: INTEGER LINE1 12: INTEGER LINE2 13: INTEGER PAT 14: INTEGER PREVC 15: INTEGER NFLAG 16: INTEGER QFLAG 17: COMMON /CSEDIT/ AQ, IQ, BUF(20000), LASTBF, NLINES, LINE1, LINE2, 18: *PAT(132), PREVC, NFLAG, QFLAG 19: CMD = BUF(I+5) 20: IF (.NOT.(CMD .EQ. 97))GOTO 23162 DBG>
Ok, line 19 is where the the integer overflow happened. BUF is an
array of INTEGERs, while CMD is a LOGICAL*1, which, if I
look at the sedit.r source:
# docom - execute a single command at buf(i) on linbuf and lineno subroutine docom(i, linbuf, lineno) character linbuf(MAXLINE) integer i, lineno character cmd integer k1, k2 include csedit cmd = buf(i+COMMAND) …
started as a character and got translated to a LOGICAL*1, the
one byte logical data type. Normally that's ok, because we're just working
with ASCII, so any character should fit in in one byte. Lets take a look:
Oh dear. That's hexadecimal 173, which is decimal 371. No wonder we got an arithmetic trap, integer overflow.
If I look for occurrences of buf in sedit.r (using emacs
18.55.105) I see lots of lines like where buf is passed to
subroutine addint, which is not documented in the manual pages,
unfortunately, but is in the runtime library RLIB.OLB. On
VAX/VMS the source for that is in ~vms/rlib.w:
# AddInt Put int into intara if it fits, increment j # works with an array of integers integer function addint( int, intara, j, maxsiz) integer int, j, maxsiz, intara(maxsiz) if( j > maxsiz ) return(NO) intara(j) = int j = j + 1 return(YES) end
Yes, that's just putting an integer in an array and incrementing the variable that stores where the next one goes.
Ok, lets look at all the
addint calls.
Lines matching "\\baddint\\b(" in buffer sedit.r. 176: if (addint(int, str, j, maxsiz) == NO) 223: status = addint(nlines, buf, lastbf, MAXBUF) 224: status = addint(0, buf, lastbf, MAXBUF) 225: status = addint(line1, buf, lastbf, MAXBUF) 226: status = addint(line2, buf, lastbf, MAXBUF) 229: status = addint(NOTSTATE, buf, lastbf, MAXBUF) 235: status = addint(OKSTATE, buf, lastbf, MAXBUF) 236: status = addint(com, buf, lastbf, MAXBUF) 238: status = addint(0, buf, lastbf, MAXBUF) 242: status = addint(0, buf, lastbf, MAXBUF) 248: status = addint(0, buf, lastbf, MAXBUF) 256: status = addint(0, buf, lastbf, MAXBUF) 260: status = addint(EOS, buf, lastbf, MAXBUF) 269: status = addint(gflag, buf, lastbf, MAXBUF) 270: status = addint(pflag, buf, lastbf, MAXBUF) 271: status = addint(lastbf+2, buf, lastbf, MAXBUF) 273: status = addint(lastbf+j+1, buf, lastbf, MAXBUF) 276: status = addint(EOS, buf, lastbf, MAXBUF) 286: status = addint(fdw, buf, lastbf, MAXBUF) 452: dotext = addint(EOS, buf, lastbf, MAXBUF) 695: if (addint(p(i), str, j, maxsiz) == NO) 713: if (addint( s(i), str, j, maxsiz) == NO)
Some of the things they're adding to buf are clearly integers
(nlines, and probably NOTSTATE and OKSTATE), but those
EOS are the SWTOOLS VOS equivalent of the C '\0' that ends a
string, so those particular ones definitely hold characters.
Well, if I want to debug that I'm going to have to rebuild the SWTOOLS
VOS with debugging turned on. Investigating it turns out that I need
to add /DEBUG to the macro and fortran
commands in asmlib.com, asmprm.com, build.com,
and compile.com in ~bin, and then execute
~bin:toolgen.com.
Once that is done I start stepping through various routines.
Eventually I figure out that it buf(19) is the element that ends
up with the 173 hex, and set a watch on it. And indeed it is getting
passed a 173. Sigh.
Doing a SHOW STACK in the VMS Debugger shows that the
addint() call that dies is in the subroutine compil(). Lets
take a look:
DBG> type compil\50:65 module COMPIL 50: STATUS = ADDINT(LINE2, BUF, LASTBF, 20000) 51: COM = CLOWER(LIN(I)) 52: IF (.NOT.(COM .EQ. 33))GOTO 23068 53: STATUS = ADDINT(1, BUF, LASTBF, 20000) 54: I = I+1 55: CALL SKIPBL(LIN, I) 56: COM = CLOWER(LIN(I)) 57: GOTO 23069 58: 23068 CONTINUE 59: STATUS = ADDINT(0, BUF, LASTBF, 20000) 60: 23069 CONTINUE 61: STATUS = ADDINT(COM, BUF, LASTBF, 20000) 62: IF (.NOT.(COM .EQ. 97 .AND. FD .NE. 0))GOTO 23070 63: STATUS = ADDINT(0, BUF, LASTBF, 20000) 64: STATUS = DOTEXT(FD) 65: GOTO 23071 DBG>
Line 61 is the one that dies. Here addint() is being passed the
variable COM. Lets take a look at the Ratfor source for
its definition:
# compil - "compile" command in lin(i) from file fd, increment i subroutine compil(lin, fd) character lin(MAXLINE), com
Oh, look, com is a character, that gets translated by
Ratfor to a LOGICAL*1, and it is a byte, while the integers
that get passed in are longwords, which are 32 bytes long… Uh,
doesn't Fortran pass everything by reference? So addint() gets
passed the address of a byte, but interprets it as the address of a
longword, so it picks up 3 extra bytes. For whatever reason, there is
a 1 in the byte right next to the byte for com, so we get (hex,
remember) 173 instead of 73, which is the ASCII for s, which the s
in our sedit "s/H/J/"!
Ok, that should be easy to fix: introduce an integer temporary
variable, assign com to it, and pass it instead.
Here's the VMS diff:
************
File DUA1:[SOFTWARE.SWTOOLS.TMP]SEDIT.R;6
206 integer comint
207 integer fd
******
File DUA1:[SOFTWARE.SWTOOLS.TMP]SEDIT.R;1
206 integer fd
************
************
File DUA1:[SOFTWARE.SWTOOLS.TMP]SEDIT.R;6
237 comint = com
238 status = addint(comint, buf, lastbf, MAXBUF)
239 if (com == APPENDCOM & fd != NO) {
******
File DUA1:[SOFTWARE.SWTOOLS.TMP]SEDIT.R;1
236 status = addint(com, buf, lastbf, MAXBUF)
237 if (com == APPENDCOM & fd != NO) {
************
Number of difference sections found: 2
Number of difference records found: 3
DIFFERENCES /IGNORE=()/MERGED=1/OUTPUT=DUA1:[SOFTWARE.SWTOOLS.TMP]SEDIT.DIFF;1-
DUA1:[SOFTWARE.SWTOOLS.TMP]SEDIT.R;6-
DUA1:[SOFTWARE.SWTOOLS.TMP]SEDIT.R;1
Recompile, lets see:
That did it!
One of the things I've always found interesting about the LBL Software Tools VOS was how its source files were structured. I'll include here page 10 of the release notes from the release on the DECUS LT86 tape:
Release Notes Source File Structure The source code for `tool' is contained in a file [...SRC]tool.tcs (if the tool is portable across operating systems) or [...VMS]tool.tcs (if it is an VMS-specific tool). This TCS source file contains an edit history of all changes made to the source. The output of the `get' utility operating on a `.tcs' file results in a file (tool.w) which is all of the environment necessary to rebuild the tool, provided that the VOS is operational. The tool.w file is an archive containing: 1. All of the files "included" by the ratfor source code. 2. The ratfor source file, tool.r. 3. The format input for the manual entry, tool.fmt. 4. And optionally, any extra definition files needed to build alternate versions of the tool (eg. sh => hsh). As an example, suppose that you wish to change the subroutine "module" in "tool". The suggested scenario is as follows: $ !Fetch the file tool.tcs from the appropriate directory in the container $ !file on tape into st_src $ hsh % get ~src/tool.tcs tool.w % ar xv tool.w % ar xv tool.r module % ed module (make changes and write file) % ar uv tool.r module % rc -v tool.r % (test out new tool. repeat last three steps until satisfied.) % ed tool.fmt (modify writeup to reflect changes) % ar uv tool.w tool.r tool.fmt % cp tool.exe ~usr/tool.exe % delta tool.w ~src/tool.tcs (Identify in the comments the reason for the changes, and which modules changed.) % format tool.fmt >tool % ar uv ~man/s1 tool % asam <~man/s1 | sort >~man/i1 Placing tool.exe in ~usr causes the shell to find your modified version of "tool" rather than the distributed one. The last two commands above cause the manual entry for `tool' to correctly correspond to the utility itself. -10-
(It should be % get ~src/tool.tcs >tool.w with a “>”
before tool.w in the above procedure. Otherwise the contents
are echoed to the terminal instead of being written to tool.w.)
So, all the source files (source code and documentation) are stored
in an archive file, which contains another archive file that has just
the ratfor source, from which you extract the modules you want to work
on, and at the end update the archives in the reverse order! This
made organizing all the source much simpler, especially considering
some of the porting targets for this software didn't have hierarchical
directory structures, only flat directories. So when moving around
parts of the system, like when you were preparing the distribution,
you normally only dealt with the top level archives, the .TCS
files, and only worked directly with the files that were contained
within that archive and its child archives if you had to make a change
to the source files. Very clever!
(Source 1)
(Source 2)
When I was in college in the 1980s the school I was at used Digital Equipment Corporation VAXes running VMS, and didn't have any Unix machines. I was quite interested in Unix and the Unix philosophy, but was frustrated by my lack of access to Unix machines. However, Brian W. Kernighan and P. J. Plauger wrote a couple of books about writing tools in the Unix style: Software Tools was in published in 1976 and used Fortran as its portable implementation language, while Software Tools in Pascal was published in 1981 and used Pascal.
Here is a quote repeated on each book's cover:
Good Programming is not learned from generalities, but by seeing how significant programs can be made clean, easy to read, easy to maintain and modify, human-engineered, efficient, and reliable, by the application of common sense and good programming practices. Careful study and imitation of good programs leads to better writing.
Both books worked through writing software tools that were simpler but still useful versions of many of the standard Unix tools.
I got Software Tools in Pascal because I knew Pascal better than Fortran and worked through implementing each of the programs on the college's VAX, which taught me a lot about programming and was significant influence on me. I later got Software Tools because I wanted to read the section on implementing the ratfor processor which that book used to add additional control structures unavailable in the Fortran of the day.
I was not the only person who was influenced by these books. Deborah K. Scherrer, Dennis E. Hall, and Joseph S. Sventek at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory with help from others greatly expanded the set of programs from the book into an entire Virtual Operating System (VOS), and founded the Software Tools Users Group in 1976 to distribute it, eventually leading to ports on over 50 operating systems.
Luckily for me VAX/VMS was one of those operating systems, and the port appeared on various tapes distributed by DECUS, the Digital Equipment Computer Users' Society. Luckily MPL Corporation, where I worked at the time, always got the DECUS tapes and had a Fortran compiler, so I could install it there. I found it a very useful and usable computing environment.
Anyway, I retain a fondness for that software, known variously as LBLTOOLS, LBL SWTOOLS, and SWTOOLS VOS, and have begun using the version from the DECUS VAX Languages & Tools SIG tape from 1986 again on the (emulated) VAX I maintain at work. This gave me the opportunity create a PDF with the documentation for that version, which I'm making available here for the curious.
“I really enjoyed that book. The first computer book I read where I thought my world was larger after reading it.” — C. Paul Bond
Last edited: 2024-07-15 14:25:36 EDT
Fantastic Medieval Campaigns (FMC) by Marcia B. is a great retroclone and restatement of Original D&D: it's clearly written, well organized, contains a table of contents for the book and then a table of contents in each section, has a glossary and indices for monsters, spells, and tables, and uses the color backgrounds of the pages well to make finding the different sections easy. The art is charming and appropriate for a OD&D retroclone, and the layout is clean. It includes a retroclone of Chainmail, which is rare. I like it very much. And the PDF is free! I got the hardback color book and read it and want to run at least two campaigns with it, the first using its Chainmail retroclone, “Chain of Command”, and the next with the d20 based combat system.
But, but, but! The back cover text says “problematize our preconceptions of a text (or even a whole genre)” and mentions “falsehood”. And the contents of the last page of the text, which is labeled “This Page Intentionally Left Blank.”, are certainly not blank, and expresses opinions of D&D that must surely offend many D&D players. I'll quote it here:
Fantastic Medieval Campaigns is a recreation of what is at best a deeply reactionary work of art—if not a fascist one altogether. We recognize now that the authors, as well as some who were in their circle, thought quite badly of women, indigenous people, and others. However, we should let the text speak for itself because it speaks loudly. The book is a guide to fantastic war game campaigns, where the players take on the roles of sword-and-sorcery adventurers seeking greatness. They will begin in the Underworld simply slaying monsters and retrieving treasure in the form of gold, legal tender ready to be exchanged on the open market. As characters accumulate treasure, they acquire superhuman abilities and political power to boot. Heroes, Thaumaturgists, and Bishops emerge from their colonial katabasis conquering land by which to become Lords, Wizards, and Patriarchs. They will establish sanctuaries and, with their vast armies, turn the tide against the forces of evil chaos they have always ‘resisted' thus far. The setting in general is one where might makes right, where the violent extraction of resources is central to the protagonists activity, and where participation in these things is rewarded with not only political power bu the sort of physiological and supernatural power which colonizers and fascists imagined themselves to have. It is a mirror to the desires and fantasies of its original authors, a bunch of white, straight, cissexual men in the Midwest, just as it is a reflection of boys' pulp literature at the height of American culture about crushing one's enemies and driving them before oneself and hearing the lamentations of their women. All in all, this work was not written in a vacuum nor did it spring fully formed from the heads of its creators. You can use this book however you like or even attempt to play it with the mindset of a midcentury American man, but do not delude yourself with regards to its content or to the fantasy which it encodes. That being said, as the author, I offer up this work for analysis, critique, and reflection.
Well, that certainly put the coyote in the chicken house! It is definitely controversial in OSR circles. Honestly, though, I'm not sure that furor was worth following.
I just want to point out that, whatever the author's opinions of D&D, they wrote FMC so they could more easily understand the rules, so they could better play D&D with their friends, and according to a friend of theirs they spent over a year working on it.
Regardless of whether I agree with their views or not, FMC is a well written game and its author should be proud of it. It can be used to run some great games. If you don't agree with the author's views, just ignore them and play the game.
[I should have posted this a long time ago. Oh well. At least it's being posted now.]
I really wish I'd gotten a copy of Steve Jackson's Melee in 1977 and Wizard in 1978 when they were published by Metagaming, and Advanced Melee, Advanced Wizard, and In the Labyrinth when those came out in 1980. Together those make up the game The Fantasy Trip (TFT). Melee and Wizard are the basic combat and magic rules, published as board games. Advanced Melee and Advanced Wizard are the full combat rules. And In the Labyrinth adds all the other stuff necessary for a complete roleplaying game.
But I never saw them in any store in my area. I did meet one person who played The Fantasy Trip, probably in 1981 or so, but never got to talk to him about it; we were both quite busy with other things at the summer camp from hell. Wish he'd brought his rulebooks…
I picked up my copies of the original Advanced Melee, Advanced Wizard, and In the Labyrinth much more recently. Probably in 2018 or so. Thank goodness for Internet game stores.
In 2018 Steve Jackson Games kickstarted The Fantasy Trip Legacy Edition, with new versions of Melee and Wizard and a new version of In the Labyrinth that contained everything from the original as well as the rules from Advanced Melee and Advanced Wizard, and I backed it, and got a LOT of stuff. I liked the new edition of The Fantasy Trip a lot. But I didn't have a good chance to play it for a while.
There were some interesting changes from the Metagaming version of The Fantasy Trip to the Legacy edition.
And the PDF of Melee is available from Steve Jackson Games for free!
I got to play Melee online in 2023 and had fun. It took a while for everybody to get used to the way combat works — it's a hex-based tactical combat system that strives for verisimilitude, and is quite different from anything that the others were used to. This group has been playing Mini Six from Antipaladin Games mostly before this, with some of Deep7's 1PGs thrown in; previously we've played a lot of Labyrinth Lord from Goblinoid Games and Savage Worlds from Pinnacle Entertainment Group, and while Savage Worlds is played on a square grid battle map, it's still not tactical in the same way as TFT, DragonQuest from SPI, or GURPS from Steve Jackson Games. I played a lot of DragonQuest and GURPS (TFT's younger relative) in the 80s and 90s, which both have hex-grid based tactical combat, and enjoyed them a lot, so TFT's system wasn't such a shock to me.
Anyway, I backed Steve Jackson Games' TFT kickstarters as well as Gaming Ballistic's kickstarters, so I've got a lot of the stuff published for The Fantasy Trip Legacy Edition. It's a pity I'm not playing face to face these days, because most of those kickstarters were loaded with neat stuff for face to face play — megahex tiles, cards of all kinds, neoprene battle maps, and more.
I continued playing Melee online, and added in Wizard. Eventually I plan to start running a TFT campaign using the many adventures released by Steve Jackson Games and Gaming Ballistic. And they've released a number of solo adventures, so I plan on playing those as well.
Right now I'm working on a hexcrawl using TFT, to be played somewhat in the West Marches style, with a long past apocalypse that destroyed a huge empire. The idea is the people are moving back into the areas left abandoned for centuries after the apocalypse due to inimical magic that has recently retreated.
Melee is a person-to-person combat board game. A Melee character has two stats, Strength (ST) and Dexterity (DX), and a secondary stat, Movement Allowance (MA). ST determines what weapons you can use. DX determines how hard it is for you to hit your opponents: you roll 3d6 equal to or under your (adjusted) DX to hit (noted as a 3/DX roll). MA determines how fast you can move on the hex grid battlemap. Human characters start with 8 in ST and DX and have 8 more points to allocate however you want between the two, for a total of 24 points. There are NO dump stats, and every combination of stats, weapons, and armor results in quite differently performing characters, which interact with the combat system in interesting ways. Unarmored humans start with MA 10, but most armor reduces a characters MA. Armor also lowers your DX. When you are familiar with the system you and one or more friends can create characters and fight a battle in an hour or so, but when you are first starting out it will take a while to internalize the system so it runs quickly. Melee also has various nonhuman opponents: bears, wolves, giant snakes, giants, and gargoyles. It also has fantasy fighters: elves, dwarves, halflings, orcs, goblins, and hobgoblins, who start with different minimum ST and DX, sometimes with different maximum total points. Characters gain experience and when they have 100 they can trade it in for a point to increase ST or DX. Up to 8 points can be gained this way.
Wizard adds a third stat, Intelligence (IQ), and a lot of spells. You've still only got 8 points to spend between the three stats, so characters can have 32 points total. Wizards can know as many spells as they have IQ points. Spells are rated by the IQ necessary to learn them. Wizards roll 3/DX to see if they've cast their spells correctly. Each spell has a ST cost to cast; some spells can be continued with a different ST cost. Typically if a wizard fails the roll to cast the spell it still costs 1 ST. Wizard also adds a couple more monsters, Myrmidons, and two sizes of dragon: 4 hex and 7 hex. Wizard is scaled well to work beside Melee as a person to person combat board game.
In the Labyrinth (ITL) adds some elaborations to combat and magic, as well as all the things necessary to make The Fantasy Trip a complete roleplaying game. In particular, they add talents, non-magical abilities. Talents allow a character to try to do something, or makes something anybody can do easier. Talents are rated by the IQ necessary to learn them, and by how many points IQ points they cost to get at character creation. Talents cost twice as much (in IQ points at character creation and in XP after character creation) for wizards as they do regular “hero” characters. Regular heroes can learn spells, but they cost triple (in IQ points at character creation and in XP after character creation) what they cost wizards. ITL adds lots of spells, many of which have non-combat uses, as you'd expect from an RPG.
Finding out if your character succeeds is a matter of rolling dice equal to or lower than your stats. For easy things you roll 2 dice or even 1 die, normal things take 3 dice, while difficult things take 4, 5, even or more dice! Look at the chance to roll a 14 or less on 6d6! Yikes!
Melee and Wizard are relatively simple person to person combat board games that serve as an introduction to the full system.
Uses only six sided dice.
Tactical hex grid based combat with verisimilitude.
The RPG is a complete fantasy roleplaying game in one 176 page book.
ITL's one page Quick Character Generation lets you quickly roll up a new character with interesting features and personality.
The Table of Jobs.
Creating Magic Items.
ITL's mini setting of the Village of Bendwyn and Southern Elyntia.
Characters, even complicated ones, fit on a 3×5 card.
It's got a free app, TFT Helper, for iOS and Android!
(See Retro-clone and Neo-clone for definitions.)
All of the retro-clones and neo-clones mentioned below are games with which I have some familiarity. Many of them I've played. The others I've read. All of them have something interesting to recommend them.
There was a time when Wizards of the Coast hadn't made old versions of D&D available easily, and the retro-clones were very important then. Even now some retro-clones or neo-clones have better presentation than the original rules (Old-School Essentials Classic Fantasy) or present a simpler version of classic rules (Labyrinth Lord: Revised Edition with Advanced Edition Companion for AD&D), or provide additional details and further development of a particular D&D version (Adventurer, Conqueror, King System).
And, of course, if you are playing with kids who might not have the money to buy PDFs of old versions of D&D, many of the retro-clones are available in PDF or online legally for free.
Want a simple, clear, exceptionally well organized and presented version of the classic Basic/Expert D&D (B/X) rules? See Old-School Essentials Classic Fantasy.
Want races separate from classes and the most of the extra classes, races, and many spells from AD&D 1E, all on the 1 to 14 level scale of the classic Basic/Expert D&D (B/X)? See Old-School Essentials Advanced Fantasy.
Want to play classic AD&D 1E modules with all races, classes, and most spells from AD&D 1E, on a mostly 1 to 20 level scale, with 9th level magic user spells and 7th cleric spells, but with simpler mechanics? See Labyrinth Lord: Revised Edition & Advanced Edition Companion, or Advanced Labyrinth Lord.
Want something almost like AD&D 1E? See OSRIC.
Want something that feels like Original D&D, just what was in the three original Little Brown Books? See Swords & Wizardry Whitebox, Labyrinth Lord's Original Edition Characters, Delving Deeper, or Fantastic Medieval Campaigns, especially if you want a Chainmail-style system for individual and mass combat. Do you also want the thief class? See Swords & Wizardry Core.
Want something that feels like Original D&D, just before AD&D 1E came out, with the races and classes (except for gnomes and illusionists) and spells familiar from AD&D 1E, but simpler, on a mostly 1 to 20+ level scale, with up to 9th level magic user spells and 7th level cleric spells? See Swords & Wizardry Complete.
Like the 1 to 14 level scale and the lower hit dice of Basic/Expert D&D, but want more detailed rules, especially magic research, economics, and domain play (the D&D end game, where the players build strongholds and rule), with rules for building campaign specific classes and races, and don't mind some slightly different mechanics? See the Adventurer, Conqueror, King System.
Want the 1 to 36 level scale of Frank Mentzer's BECMI rules or Aaron Allston's Rules Cyclopedia? See Dark Dungeons.
I think I looked at Basic Fantasy first, but it wasn't what I was looking for at the time.
All its PDFs are free, and the print on demand books are very inexpensive.
I notice that the character class tables all go to level 20. I wonder if this is a residual artifact of the D&D 3E character classes going to level 20, since it doesn't match the B/X model that that is implied by the Basic Fantasy website with the statement “The Basic Fantasy Role-Playing Game is a rules-light game system modeled on the classic RPG rules of the early 1980's.” Compare that to Labyrinth Lord's rescaling of B/X to match AD&D.
Original Edition Characters is a player's supplement for Labyrinth Lord that provides characters more like those of Original D&D. (OECPDF, OECPOD)
While Labyrinth Lord: Revised Edition (LLRE; PDF and POD) has been criticized for not being a completely faithful retro-clone of the Moldvay/Cook/Marsh Basic/Expert D&D rules (B/X), I think it still holds a useful spot. The changes that were made in the revised version of Labyrinth Lord made it easier to be used with Advanced Edition Companion (AEC). It adapted the 1–14 level scale of B/X to the scale of AD&D 1E, generally about 20 levels, and with AEC it added the separate races and the additional classes, spells, monsters, and magic items of AD&D 1E.
There are versions of LLRE and AEC available for free: No-art LLRE and no-art AEC.
Advanced Labyrinth Lord compiles the information from Labyrinth Lord: Revised Edition and Advanced Edition Companion into one convenient book (ALL, PDF and POD).
Swords & Wizardry is inspired by the original D&D booklets and associated magazine articles. It comes in various versions, depending on how much of the supplemental material you want.
I find the original D&D booklets very interesting from a historical standpoint, but find Swords & Wizardry easier to use at the table.
This is inspired by the original three booklets of D&D, so it includes only the Fighter, Magic-User, and Cleric, so it strips away everything but the absolute essentials.
This adds the thief class.
If you are looking to play something with the feel of AD&D 1E, but want something even simpler than Labyrinth Lord: Revised Edition and Advanced Edition Companion, this is an excellent choice, as long as you don't need half-orcs, gnomes or illusionists.
I like how it discusses different ways to interpret the original rules, often giving more than option for use with S&WC.
Old-School Essentials (OSE) is published by Necrotic Gnome in two flavors so far, Classic Fantasy and Advanced Fantasy.
In my opinion, OSE has improved the clarity, organization, and presentation of its rules over the already very good Basic/Expert D&D rules.[1] As well as clear wording it uses layout and typography to enhance its presentation of the rules, from the use of one and two page spreads that completely cover one subject to the careful use of bold and bullet points to call out important information, OSE really shines. The adventures that Necrotic Gnome have produced for it (The Hole in the Oak, Winter's Daughter, The Incandescent Grottoes, The Isle of the Plangent Mage, Halls of the Blood King, and Holy Mountain Shaker) continue this excellent use of layout, bold, and bullet points to present their information clearly and without the dreaded “wall of text” or “read aloud text”.
Old-School Essentials Classic Fantasy (OSECF) is the best organized and presented version of the classic rules from the Moldvay/Cook/Marsh Basic/Expert D&D sets. This is the game that I wish had been around when I started playing. There is an SRD (OSESRD). I particularly like the Classic Fantasy Rules Tome, which collects everything into one substantial book, but there is also a version split into multiple books covering separate sections of the rules, so that the magic-user can look up his spells while the fighter is looking at the combat rules.
Old-School Essentials Advanced Fantasy is the best organized and presented version of the ideas of the classic rules from 1st edition AD&D, scaled to match the 1–14 level scope of the Moldvay/Cook/Marsh Basic/Expert D&D sets. If I was starting a new D&D campaign these are the rules I'd use, all things being equal.
Old-School Essentials Advanced Fantasy is collected in the Player's Tome and Referee's Tome.
The name of this system is usually abbreviated as ACKS. One of its explicit design goals for to supply more rules for the end of game of Original D&D, where the players built strongholds and ruled, hence the name. It also has a more detailed economic system. It is more complicated than OD&D or B/X, but in a completely different way than AD&D 1E.
It uses some different mechanics, especially for “to hit” roles, so it might be considered a Neo-Clone, but it is inspired by B/X D&D, and keeps to the same 1 to 14 level scale of B/X. I particularly like its rules for building your own campaign specific classes from the Player's Companion.
I looked at OSRIC (OSRICKnK), (a free OSRIC PDF is available, as well as a free PDF of the Usherwood Publishing OSRIC Pocket SRD version) but was more interested in Basic/Expert D&D retroclones at the time. I think it is a well written, organized, and presented restatement of AD&D 1E. The Black Blade Publishing print edition is a very nice offset printed volume with a sewn spine. The Usherwood Publishing OSRIC Pocket SRD (PDF, POD) is quite affordable. I just wish OSRIC wasn't missing some of the classes. (I miss the Monk in particular.) I was also surprised by how many of the little quirks and restrictions of AD&D 1E have been ironed out, although many remain. Usherwood Publishing has some supplements that add some of the missing classes, though I'm not sure I like all their versions.
Dark Dungeons is available in a free PDF (DDFreePDF), a hardback (DDHardback), a paperback (DDPaperback), and a deluxe color edition (DDDeluxe). It has a home page.
This is a retro-clone of The D&D Rules Cyclopedia.
Dark Dungeons does have changes from the Rules Cyclopedia, integrating some optional rules, extrapolating, clarifying and adjusting other rules, and integrating rules for Immortals. It does not include the Mystara setting and cosmology elements. The monsters differ somewhat.
Delving Deeper (Delving Deeper Description, Delving Deeper PDFs) works very hard to be as faithful to the 3 Little Brown Books of Original D&D (along with the relevant partsof Chainmail, with which they were intended to be used) as possible. The Delving Deeper V4 Reference Rules Compendium is a Print-on-Demand version of the three booklets. There is also the Delving Deeper SRD. I was particularly interested in Version 5 of Delving Deeper, as that promised annotated versions of the three booklets, but only one of the annotated versions has been completed so far.
Fantastic Medieval Campaigns (FMC) is a retro-clone of the three Little Brown Books of Original D&D and Chainmail, available for free in PDF and in print on demand. I gather it was something the author did just so they had something easier to follow when playing OD&D with friends. I'm glad they made it available.
Unlike a lot of clones of OD&D, FMC, as well as including the familiar d20-based combat system, also includes a clone of the Chainmail rules, which can be used either for individual combat or mass combat. FMC is very well organized, and could be used by someone new to D&D to play in a group where everybody else is using the OD&D rulebooks, or as the rules for a whole group.
Basically, FMC is a very well written and organized restatement of Chainmail and the three LBB. The layout and design are uncluttered; the art is charming, the organization is superb, and the writing is clear. The physical book is an excellent example of the possibilities of print-on-demand, with the different sections of the book printed on different colored backgrounds, making finding specific sections much easier. The table of the contents at the front of the book is reasonably detailed, and each section has its own table of contents as its first page, opposite the title page for the section. The book has a glossary and indexes for monsters, spells, and tables.
In the end this is an exceptional restatement and clarification of the original game.
If you want even more information, you could try Taxidermic Owlbear's D&D Retroclones (and downloads) and Wikipedia.
There are also retro-clones of games other than D&D, if you go looking.
Nothing I'm saying in this post is new; I'm sure other people have pointed out these or similar things in the past. I'm just trying to get my observation down in concrete form.
Someone asked why Old School Essentials (OSE) gets so much attention in the OSR world, and why Swords & Wizardry (S&W) doesn’t get more. I like both games very much, and have pledged for Kickstarters for both systems, but I think that the reason that OSE gets more attention, especially from from those new to the OSR, is that OSE provides specific and explicit step by step procedures for running the game structures that are at the center of the game.
In the article from 6 September 2019, Game Structures — Addendum: System Matters, Justin Alexander talks about how the dungeon crawling structure that originates in Original D&D is completely missing from D&D 5E. (The rest of his series on Game Structures is also interesting.)
OSE preserves (as you’d expect as a faithful retroclone of the 1981 Moldvay/Cook/Marsh Basic/Expert edition of D&D) those procedures and presents them clearly. Much of the same information is available in Swords & Wizardry, but the reader has to synthesize most of it from paragraphs and pages of text, rather than having a step by step procedure to follow.
Looking at OSE, there are at least 12 procedures, most of which have explicit lists of steps. (Page numbers are to the OSE Classic Fantasy Rules Tome.)
† Indicates step by step procedures.
Dungeon Adventuring†, p. 108.
Wilderness Adventuring†, p. 110.
Waterbourne Adventuring†, p. 112.
Encounters†, p. 114.
Evasion and Pursuit, p. 116.
Combat†, p. 120.
Strongholds, Construction†, p. 134.
NPC Encounters, Adventuring Parties, p. 212. While not numbered this is sequence of bullet listed procedures for generating Basic and Expert NPC parties, and High Level NPCs.
Designing a Dungeon†, p. 224.
Designing a Wilderness†, p. 226.
Designing a Base Town†, p. 227.
Placing Treasure, p. 229.
Rolling a Sentient Sword†, p. 272.
Control Checks†, p. 273.
The fact that OSE has an online SRD is also an advantage; S&W used to, but it is not currently available.
In Swords & Wizardry there are only a couple of step-by-step procedures.
Initiative and Order of Battle†, p. 35.
Generating a Random Treasure Hoard†, p. 131.
Swords & Wizardry’s other procedures have to be extracted from one or more paragraphs of running text.
S&W tends to rely on examples and prose descriptions rather than explicitly numbered or bulleted lists.
“Monsters in the Dungeon”, p. 76, could easily have been part of a “Randomly Stoking the Dungeon” procedure.
Compare OSE's “Wilderness Adventuring” to S&W's “Wilderness Adventures” on p. 80. The OSE version is an explicit list of steps, while the S&W version is a wall of text.
Compare OSE‘s bulleted Morale procedure, p. 123, to S&W's, p. 39.
Compare OSE's “Rolling a Sentient Sword” to S&W's “Intelligent Weapons”, p. 138.
I'm sure that the designer of S&W and its ardent players use procedures much like OSE's to actually run the game published, internalized as good practice from the original games over the users, until they don't notice the lack of or more difficult presentation of these procedures in S&W.
Much of the credit for OSE's procedures goes to Moldvay, Cook, and Marsh, who designed the version of D&D it retroclones, but much also goes to the exceptionally clear presentation of those rules by Gavin Norman of Necrotic Gnome. The series of OSE adventures also published by Necro Gnome have also been excellently presented.
I have been pleased to see S&W's presentation improving over time (the use of two page spreads for most of the class presentations in the most recent S&W Revised was a great improvement), and I expect to see the presentation continue to improve.
Well, I've not been entirely missing in action — I've been posting on my other blog Lacking Natural Simplicity, Another Take (and Gemini capsule) — but it's true my output has been way, way down. Such are the vagaries of life, I suppose.
Anyway, I hope things will be picking up around here.
