I picked up For Gold & Glory after it appeared on a couple of lists of faithful retroclones as the best 2e AD&D retroclone. This was my system back in the day though my books have long gone on to charity shops or others who wanted them. I thought it might be nice to have at least one set of those rules on my shelf in case I ever wanted to spin up Planescape in the original system again or run any of Huso's stuff like the Fabled City of Brass...
The additional kicker was that it was discounted on DriveThruRPG when I looked so obviously it was fate.
Print-on-demand copy, cover art by Walter Crane
First impression - the hit of the full nostalgia. This was a treat for me, like picking up a memory. Starting from the shape of the book being generally the same as the old Monstrous Manual to the formatting of the logo. Of all the OSR retro-clone stuff I have put my hands on this was the one that really hit the 'oh yeah, this brings me back' spot.
Effectively this is the PHB, the treasure and magic item parts of the DMG and the Monster Manual sandwiched into a single book. We are missing the 'running the game' bits of the DMG but otherwise this is all you need between a single set of covers. Structurally the book comes in four bits - the main, rules part which has 13 sections and then 3 appendices of Magic, Treasure and Beasties - all of roughly equal size.
The book itself looks great, filled with public domain art with some inspired choices and details from paintings to complement the text.
First we have 94 pages of rules - dense and compact, here you can see where a lot of the effort went into chasing down and clarifying rules. The opener talks of where the author compiled it all from, starting from the AD&D rules, then back-filling from Basic or Dragon magazine for gaps then drawing on Sage Advice or the Dragonsfoot forums for the remaining gaps. Here we have the heavily road-tested version of the AD&D 2e system, as mentioned.
It is fascinating to come to this system relatively cold, after 20 years of 3.5e and more recently 5e. Elements like THAC0, sure those were famous, but things like the tables of percentage chances to get things done. The purge of % rolls and focus of everything onto d20 was one I had forgotten. There are some classic elements like prime-requisites for characters and stat requirements for classes or races that I had also forgotten. The game is a more humanicentric one, with just a few additional races. Of course you could draw on the vast wealth of AD&D options from back in the day but seeing the rules set down as a faithful copy it is interesting to remember it was just humans, elves, dwarves and halflings.
Then we get 105 pages of magic, with all the spells you would expect - less the names of some famous wizards of canon lore. You have the old highly dangerous illusions rules which is refreshing. And casting time! Which I never properly used in my old games. Lots of these spells have details well beyond the modern version - different reincarnation tables for different classes for example or different variations of Symbol spell depending on how quickly or carefully it is created. While I am not the deepest fan of magic I appreciate the effort put into hammering out the loose ends of these spells and distilling out years of play experience into the descriptions.
Next we have 96 pages of treasures and magic items - with wonderful old style treasure-hoard generation tables including names for dozens of gem types, commodities, objet d'art value modifiers - I remeber this. I remember a naga I rolled up in the mid 90s ending up with a super fancy blue glass bottle or decanter that was worth a fortune - and was never encountered by the players at all. There are potion incompatibility tables! Lots of potions and I suspect a great deal of the improvements in this book have gone into cleaning up the descriptions of items like these and tidying up inconsistencies. I have not the patience to make the item by item comparison but I bet it is here. Layout through out is nice, clean, the spacing is good. The design is spare with colour illustrations but everything else monochrome, including the tables and it works well. ~I particularly like the flying carpet picture they found on pp270.
Lastly we get a Bestiary of 60 pages with most of your favourites, some slightly renamed. *ahem* gazer, you floating multi-eyed orb, I am looking at you. *ahem* The art choices are very good here. Even though this is going up against the stiff competition of the AD&D 2e Monstrous Manual which was one of the greats, it holds its own. Here the coherency of the publically available art through the whole book helps a lot because the implied world is clear in your mind. We get representations of things there is art for (giants, dragons, djinni) from the old fantasy paintings which allows you to fill in the blanks from just descripionts for the ones without images. It is a lot more compressed, than the single monster per page of the old compendiums and the like but no harm to my mind.
We wrap with 6 pages of Index at the back, OGL licenses and the legal stuff if you want to create your own FG&G works. I am somewhat puzzled as to what that might be since surely you would effectively be creating AD&D bits?
Overall I liked this a lot - it is a compact set of rules, all you need in one book. I have a significant fondness in my heart for getting things a few years after they launch, once the shake-down is complete. Here you have the 30-year road-tested version of these rules. They do what they do very well - of course whether what you want is to play this ruleset is a question you must answer for yourself. The one point to be aware of is that this assumes you know what you are going to do with a ruleset. You get classes, rules, magic, treasure and monsters - all the tools to run the game - but no plans for what to do with them, no DMs advice, dungeons, adventures or the like. The only setting is what is implied in the art and the monster descriptions. I have no problem with this as you can use FG&G as the key to unlock some of the greatest settings ever launched - from Al Qadim to Planescape, Spelljammer to Dark Sun - all these are compatible.
This was a real treat to pick up and a solid nostalgia blast for me. Kudos to the team, especially whoever went through and picked all the art.
For other reviews see They Might Be Gazebos or Kingdom of Maircoan.
No comments:
Post a Comment