As I mentioned about six weeks ago, my next free RPG project will be Lords & Wizards: a game combining that “strange combination of 0e and 1e I used in the late 1970s” with some of the ideas from B/X and some of the more interesting ideas from Microlite74. Now that all my promised Microlite74 projects have been completed, I’m ready to begin serious work on Lords & Wizards. Here are some of my plans for the Lords & Wizards system. I’m open to comments and suggestions as well.

• Separate races and classes.
• Class levels range from 1 to 14 (like B/X). There might be some type of “epic advancement after that, but this is undecided.
• Arcane spells up to 6th level can be memorized and cast. Divine spells up to 5th level can be memorized and cast. Higher level spells can only be cast as rituals.
• Spell lists will be mainly from 1e.
• There will be lots of monsters provided (at least those of core 1e).
• The world will have no magic, low magic, normal magic, high magic, and very high magic areas with the magic level of an area affect how spells and other magic work. GMs can easily ignore this by making the entire world “normal magic” (which just uses the standard rules).
• Psionics will be included in the rules, but will be optional.
• Mutations (think Mutant Future) will be included but are optional. They can be caused by magical radiation (left over from ancient wizard wars) and by being born in a very high magic area. Or those who want to run science fantasy games can have mutations caused by actual radiation. Even if one does not want to use mutations for characters, having lists of mutations and their effects provides a way to quickly create new monsters the players will not be familiar with.
• My Body Point/Hit Point system will be used.
• My Background system will be used.
• Science Fantasy play will be supported, but optional. While mixing science fiction and fantasy in campaigns is somewhat uncommon now, it was relatively common in the 1970s.

Lords & Wizards will be a major project. I don’t expect to have it ready for prime time for 8 to 12 months. Donors to the RetroRoleplaying Cancer Fund will have work in progress access and a beta version will be released to general comment at some point (when it’s ready). Progress updates will appear here, of course.