Hey, you got OD&D in my 4th Edition!

So, yeah, I'm running D&D 4th Edition right now. I've been wanting to run a nice campaign of OD&D or AD&D 1st Edition with my weekly group for a while now, but they pretty universally were more interested in 4th Edition. So NEW D&D is better than NO D&D I suppose, and, besides, it appears that everyone is having fun.

However, almost immediately I started to figure out ways to reference back to these older editions--if only to entertain myself while I'm being DM. Okay, nobody in my group knows about stuff like how the Outdoor Survival Map was the original campaign map but that wasn't going to stop me from using it. I originally filled in far more of the map, but I soon discovered that I needed the breathing room to let things grow more organically, so I've pruned the map back a bit from the earlier version. I'll fill in more of the castles and adventure locations as time goes on.

As you see:



(BTW: big thanks to Snorri over on the OD&D boards for posting this redo of the Outdoor Survival map.)

I'm also thinking of using the wilderness travel rules from OD&D or the 1st Edition DMG. I've never really done a hex crawl type game before, but I've been curious about this style of play for a while now. The campaign won't be a "pure" sandbox, but I definitely want to incorporate some sandbox like elements into the game. If I'm going to run this game old school I'm going to have to make some good wandering monster tables, but it isn't as easy as I'd like it to be. Looks like they may have to be "wandering encounters" or something, but I think it can work.

My most radical move though is going to be this friday: running a mass combat using Chainmail!

I'll post more about that today or tomorrow.