News
Welcome to the Remodeled RetroRoleplaying.com!
As you can see we are still remodeling the site. However, enough is complete that we can reopen. A lot of the ancient cruft that has accumulated over the years has been removed — most will not be back. New material will be coming to replace it.
RetroRoleplaying.com started out as a site devoted to out-of-print, unsupported, and/or out-of-style tabletop roleplaying games (and modern “retro-clones” of those games), started when my wife had oral cancer to give me something else to think about. Then came Microlite74. Within a couple of years the focus of my blog and this site turned from information and discussion about old school style games in general to Microlite74 and the various other Microlite20-based versions of TSR versions of D&D I was creating. This was partially because creating games is time-consuming and because I eventually starting creating these games as was way to get money to pay all the cancer-related bills. For the last 11or 12 years, everything else fell by the wayside.
I turn 65 this year and I’ve retired. The cancer bills are paid. While my wife was diagnosed with MS a few years ago, she has insurance that covers most costs (thanks to the fact that advanced MS is as close to an automatic disability qualification as you can get). So I intend to return the focus of this site to old school and OSR gaming in general again. As I love designing games, I probably will not stop releasing new games. However, the emphasis will not be on selling these games as I am not longer under pressure to make extra money to pay medical debts. Most new games will be free (or perhaps Pay What You Want).
I have a number of plans for this web site, but I haven’t quite decided exactly which of these plans I will go with. The first step in any of those plans, however, is remodeling this site. The fact that I’m far enough long to reopen the site after less than a week is a good sign, I think.
Here are the changes so far:
- New Look – It’s nothing special as I’m still not a visually oriented person, let alone a graphics designer, but it is an updated look. Be warned that I’m still tweaking it.
- Blog
moved back to its original home (blog.retroroleplaying.com on blogger).I’ve cleaned it up to remove all the out-of-date cancer fund drive footers and post solely related to said fund drives. There’s a lot interesting material there, especially in the early years 2008-2012. Note that most pictures are missing as they were stored on tinypic.
Update (7 March 2022): I moved the cleaned up blog back to this site from blogger to cut back on Google tracking of blog readers. - Reviews are gone. This was a silly attempt to link to old school game reviews on other sites in an attempt to provide a centralized list of reviews. I doubt I updated it since 2008 or so. It may have been a semi-decent idea when I started this site, but even if it was its time has long passed.
- Articles — Some ancient and generally outdated or pointless articles have been removed. For the time-being the short game system articles remain, however, they may eventually go as well as they really aren’t that good.
Some of the features I’m considering adding:
- Memberships — The web site will allow people to join so they can participate in some of these features I’m thinking about.
- OSR News — News postings of new games, supplements, adventures, settings, kickstarters, etc. Members producing such things will be able to post such news items directly to this news section.
- Reviews — Actual reviews of old school, OSR, and other interesting rules light games in stead of links to reviews elsewhere. Any I write will probably be short reviews (similar to the “capsule reviews” in the The Space Gamer magazine in the 1980s), but the review section will be open to RetroRoleplaying site members who wish to write reviews.
- Downloads — A download area where free games can be downloaded. Site membership will probably not be required.
- Forum — The forum will use bbpress upgraded with all the nice Dev4Press addons to turn it into a powerful and much more usable modern message board. The prime rules will be no personal attacks and no real world politics of any type.
- Special Interest Groups — Members will be able to create their own SIGs with a forum, document storage, and more. These can be used to discuss specific games, run play by post games, etc.
- Wiki — An easy way to extend the site without having to master complex software.
Naturally, as this site is currently a one-person show, most of these ideas will not turn into reality overnight. Some may not actually happen as not everything I consider a neat idea turns out to be practical or truly useful.
Stay turned for future developments.
New in Downloads
A two page Searchers of the Unknown variant tat has a few extras: e.g. STUNT and INIT values, character traits and bonuses, and a slightly more complex advancement system.
This is a draft version of an attempted revision of Microlite20 from 2017.
A zip file containing the original Microlite20 Tablet Digest rules in the following word processor formats: .docx, .doc, .odt. The .docx format is the original and was created with MS Word 2010.
A zip file containing the original Microlite20 rules in the following word processor formats: .docx, .doc, .rtf, .odt.
A one page adventure for Microlite20.
Warning: PDF loads with a "Cannot load embedded font Georgia" error on my system and most of the text is missing. It might display if you have the missing font on your computer. If you don't, this download is probably useless.
An Adventure for Microlite20: Hidden in the copse is a cave mouth underneath a rock outcropping shaped like a dragon's jaw. This is the entrance to the Temple of K'thu'uk, now the Verdant Kobold's home and holiest of holies. You have been asked by the Sheriff of Ashton (the closest Human Village) to clear the Kobolds from the area once and for all. Behemial Shoreson, one of the villagers, was killed in the Trapped Copse just a week ago. Enough is enough.
This is a zip file contains a standard PDF of the adventure and a pocketmod version of the adventure.
An adventure for Microlite: Someone or something is destroying the farms and hunting lodges near the city of Rockwall. Four farms and two hunting lodges have been discovered, razed to the ground. What is more concerning is the fate of the inhabitants; no survivors have been found, and at two farms, the elderly and lame were slaughtered and left for the carrion birds. The Baron of Rockwall has offered a 500 gp reward to whoever can find and destroy whatever is attacking the farms. Additionally, the Baron’s nephew, Alexander, was at one of the hunting lodges, and is now missing…
This is a zip file containing the adventure PDF and two map jpgs.
A Microlite20 adventure for first level characters. A simple wooden stick… but with the power to control anyone? Known as the Abyssal Scepter it has been stolen from the Priests of Woodcliff by a horde of goblins, worse, behind this theft is a master plan to destroy the town of Woodcliff entirely.
A one page adventure for Microlite20: The characters awaken to find themselves in a featureless white room surrounded by plain black walls. It is about 200' square with no apparent means of exit. There is no ceiling, only an unearthly white glow that illuminates the whole area.
A dungeon adventure for Microlite20 in Pocketmod format.