Holmes Basic Rules Download

[Paladin]

For those without access to the original rules, Blueholme is a good substitute. It's Pay what you want on DTRPG.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/m/product/109409

[Rex]

I can help answer any question, I have the original printing and all the BlueHolmes stuff.

[Valdus]

How was this different than Red Box- Moldvay?

[Rex]

Similar. The big difference is not race as class, Dwarves and Halflings could be thieves or fighters. Scrolls can be made at 1st level. It encourages you to house rule and run whatever you want. 5 alignments instead of 3. There are a few more but those are the big ones.

[atpollard]

How was this different than Red Box- Moldvay?

BLUEHOLMES is available on DTRPG for "Pay What You Want" so you can get it for free and check it out. HOLMES appears to have the same level of simplicity as the Moldvay Red Box, but be more like AD&D 1ed with respect to Class and Race. From what I remember of the Red Box, as an example, playing an Elf automatically meant being an Elf FTR/MU ... Elf was both a Class and Race combined. In BLUEHOLMES, one can pick Race and Class separately, so one could be a Human MU or an ELF MU or a Human FTR or an ELF FTR or an ELF FTR/MU.

For Weapons and Damage, BLUEHOLM has "classes" of weapons (Light, Normal, Heavy) with optional rules for all light weapons to do 2 ATT/R at 1D4, all Normal Weapons to do 1 ATT/R at 1D6 (used 1 handed with a shield) and all Heavy weapons to do 1 ATT/R at 1D10 (used 2 handed without a shield). The Red Box had different damage for each weapon (like AD&D 1ed). The base rules for BLUEHOLM were all weapons do 1 ATT/R at 1D6.

So there were lots of small differences that impacted the details, but growing up on the Red Box and only recently discovering BLUEHOLM, I wish I had known about it long ago. I like the changes and I like the way Mr. Holmes thought about Game Design.

[Paladin]

Holmes has become my jam lately. It's basically a more concise, well-edited version of OD&D.

And I don't blame anyone for the rush job on the editing of the original books. They were on a tight time frame and made it work. But Holmes does clear several things up. And it lessens the frequency of encountering wandering monsters and reduces the chances of encountering enemies completely out of your league at 1st level. Doesn't eliminate it, but still helps.

I still run the 3 lbb's in 90% of my games, but Basic is quickly making some elbow room at my table.