(That’s never likely to be seen beyond this post).
So what the frig is Eyre Tor?? Or more appropriately, what was it?
Way back–before I’d ever heard of the #DelvingDeeper project–I apparently had a bit of time on my hands. Around 2007-2008, I was running a D&D campaign that included face-to-face play with a couple of disconnected groups, as well as some play-by-email. Fair to say, I think, this campaign was part of my early “retro” gaming scene experience. I was already prone to assembling detailed rules booklets for passingly interested players, but here was a new opportunity to indulge two of passions at once: a retro-rules booklet? I was hopelessly into it.
Between 2007 and 2010 there must have been six incrementally more complete drafts of Eyre Tor, culminating in a version 6.1 (depicted above) with its glorious cover and interior art by Tim Ide. But now I have just the two hard copies.
It’s kinda fun to browse thru it, looking back at how I must have been thinking about OD&D and house rules back then. Check out the audacious caption younger-me put on the inside cover of the final draft (2010):
Campaign Setting & Supplementary Rules Options for use with The Original 1974 Fantasy Role Playing Game and its Modern Simulacra
I’ll have to remember that 🙂
Inside there are some rules I question now, but there are also some that I’m still using today. The 10 second flyby of my then-house-rules:
* Three alignments (good, selfish, evil),
* Fauns as a player race,
* Rangers, Barbarians, Templars, Men of Faith/Sisters of Mercy as player classes, including new level titles for all player types,
* Silver standard, 1gp = 6sp = 36cp,
* Expanded equipment lists, poor/good/exceptional quality gear,
* Imperial loads/coarse-grained encumbrance,
* A bunch of complicated (and unnecessary?) combat rules,
* Whole new lists for spell levels 1-4 with spells such as The Irreproachable Susurrus , The Fiat Libation, The Inconceivable Perspicacity and The Confabulation of Lucid Colloquy to name but of few from a list of 70-ish mysteriously named incantations.
So still some potentially interesting stuff in there.
Perhaps ironically, I did approach both Matt Finch and John Adams with the prospect of pushing Eyre Tor as a S&W or White Box supplement, but neither had capacity to take it on back in 2009-2010. In retrospect, that may have been quite fortunate–ultimately, it meant that I had capacity to help on #DelvingDeeper V1 in 2012.
Enjoy!