Blood of Prokopius

Among the many musings I made about combat according to Holmes the other day, I asked this question based on Holmes equating morale with a ...

Those familiar with the works of Tolkien know that the origin of the orc is a deliberate breaking and twisting of elves by the evil guile of...

For any one who has spent any amount of time reading blogs in the OSR corner of the internet, Appendix N is a very familiar term, because i...

Today is the feast day of the martyr St. Eutychius of Melitene. Interestingly, what we know of his life story is in stark contrast to last w...

Over the past couple of days I have been musing about alignment. These musings have garnered some excellent commentary and food for thoug...

While answering Roger's question this morning I realized that I had failed to utilize the various spells with Evil as part of their m...

I have found that one of the topics that always gets comments (and more so than most other topics) on this blog is alignment . Yesterday...

As I've stated before , and despite my own attempt to re-imagine it , Alignment is one of the least satisfying aspects of D&D for me...

The more time I spend with Dr. Holmes and his Basic Edition, the more fascinated I become and, frankly, more surprised. I find that I am hav...

The Strength spell, found in Holmes, reads as follows: Strength — Level 2; Range: 0; Duration: 48 turns This spell increases a fighter...

Inevitably, when dealing with Holmes, one must come to terms with his unique version of the spell Magic Missile . I have to admit, I have be...

Today is the feast of St. Constantine and his mother St. Helen. Constantine is one of those historical figures that demonstrates the axiom t...

As I've pointed out before , Cook makes a distinction between the monsters in the Expert edition and those found in the Holmes Basic edi...

There are some major discrepancies between Holmes and Cook when it comes to Saving Throws. For example, Cook has Thieves begin with worse sa...

In my recent post about the thought experiment of creating an amalgam of the Holmes Basic & Cook Expert editions of D&D in isolati...

St. Isidore, celebrated today, is credited with bringing Christianity to the Greek island of Chios, where his faith was made public to the c...

Given the relative comfort (and even enthusiasm) for traps that have a save or die! mentality around the OSR, I was rather taken aback by t...

One of the interesting implications of the Wand Spells , Ring Spells and Potion Spells found in the Scroll Magic Items table in Holmes is ...

There is one more category of ancient spells implied by Holmes in his Scrolls Magic Items table: Potion Spells . Like Wand Spells and Ring ...

As he does with Wand Spells, Holmes lists Ring Spells under Scrolls in his Magic Items tables. Like Wand Spells, there are those that duplic...