it took me a while to finish it but it reignited my love for 1974 booklets. My clone - focused on wilderness travel.
you can obviously see the impact of YZE on the wilderness rules (although I had it in some form or other - much less polished of course - throughout the years of home-brew rules)
grab a copy. its FREE
ive been playing these two modules for decades with various groups and I firmly believe they are - each in its own way - a masterpiece - or as close as an adventure can get to that title.
a few years back, I started converting B10 to YZE with a campaign that used YZE as the engine to play in Mystara.
I was really excited and had plans and it started really well, wandering the grand duchy of Karameikos using the old hex map of GAZ1.
unfortunately, that campaign came to an end somewhere during the COVID years and I didn't finish B10 (not to mention starting on the conversion of castle amber). we finished the campaign somewhere before the party reached Sukiskyn and that epic battle ("the helms deep" of the adventure).
since then, I played a few dnd sessions in the Thunder Rift setting (a charming naive mini setting) and played castle amber (damn what a module! so many hooks and paths to further expand it. the peak of tom moldvay.) and I instantly knew this one should be converted to year zero as well (I was mainly thinking of locating the castle in the forbidden lands).
but first things first: I searched for the notes of B10 and I'm continuing the work on it. hopefully ill finish it in month and publish it.
somewhere last year, I had a party that wanted to play dnd... and dnd only.
they're old dudes like myself but they wouldn't allow themselves to play anything but old school dnd - take away the concepts of HP & "zero to hero" and they get lost...
so, I wrote a retroclone (a very short one) to try and inject a few elements that forbidden lands does well: namely wilderness travel, in the hope they will taste a bit and get "converted" to play FL (some did!)
I love old school dnd. it was the introduction to TTRPG to me back in the eighties.
this a humble attempt.
you can get it HERE along with a sample character sheet
stumbled on this ad from dragon magazine 1989.
couldn't find any info about it. probably one of those now known as "heartbreaker" games.
but the art is wonderful and makes me wonder what was the ruleset like.
oh well. another unsolved mystery.
done.
more oriented towards fantasy (skipped the driving sections) and I preferred the Forbidden Lands variation but still...thats one hell of an elegant engine. I love it.
Free league nailed it.
link: Here
The Barbarian Sorcerer:
It starts with The belief, that when a child grows up - the adults build the description of the world for him, explain to him what logic is and what the limits and tradition are.
When he's confident enough in his understanding of the basic laws (around the age of 4), he's ready to create his own world in imagination at a level that will be immersive enough for him - because he understands what the skeleton on which every world is built (the very fact that he has a reference point allows him the immersion and internal logic in the imaginary world) .
During his life after that, he's in a constant need to confirm the construction of the world presented to him in his childhood ("Whose son are you?", "Where are you from?", "When were you born?", etc.) and the interrelationship between the imaginary world he created and the world constructed in his description and in which he lives - is maintained .
The sorcerer, on the other hand, tries to undo the construction of the world during his lifetime, in order to discover what world would be left without such a reference point.
Either he will grow up to be a crazy ego maniac, or
he will turn into someone, according to the belief of the barbarians, who will reveal the real world, a world of spiritism where logic and the limits of logic are fundamentally different
and therefore he's able to do unbelievable things.
This is the extremely chaotic and socially disconnected sorcerer who is close to Wyrtha - where the wild without limits and life and death mix together.
The sorcerer knows that the four cornerstones of human existence (ancestor worship, fertility worship, birth worship and death worship) depend on him and his world-building power through communication with spirits.
Therefore the sorcerer derives from the sorcerer's ability to "tell a story" which has an effect because it takes place in the real world of the spirits and influences it (or more accurately, seeks to influence it, since Wyrtha is completely chaotic).
and now for the more lawful kind...
The Institutional Theorg (Prios. Men of Faith.)
Unlike the sorcerer, he does not wish to cancel the construction of the world, but enriches it more and more with knowledge beyond the official source of Prios (see the case of Father Sarvola, who is considered a heretic because of this),
the attempt is to understand the full picture and create an inner world that is richer in details while believing that there is a "puzzle" that only Part of it has been revealed.
Learning is the tool, the belief (!) that the inner world is meant to merge perfectly with the built world.
There is no imagination in the matter, only reality and reality is determined by the level of knowledge and education attained.
Wylda is the driving force and therefore what happened in Symbar is so fascinating (why did it fall and why did wratha took control and the pure magic disappeared - in other words, how did Wylda "let down" the kings of ancient Symbar or what did they do wrong).
The power of the theorg also stems from the story that tells the four cornerstones are not primarily under his control but under the control of the god Prios, but if he understands the reasons and structure (with the help of knowledge) why Prios imposed such laws, he will be able to harness the understanding to create magic acts that Prios originally intended for those who are chosen or specially gifted.
so yeah...we talked a lot and then drank more beer, basking in the afterglow of a very cool session where a healed divine ox looks at you and the GM says: "eox is healed. while looking into his eye before he leaves and wander the forest, that act alone gives you 10 XP for connecting with that spirit of the wild - now resurrected"
and....another beer and a tear.
