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Great news: The "B" of "B/X", the rulebook of the 1981 D&D Basic Set, commonly known as the Moldvay Basic, is finally available in print-on-demand (POD) from DrivethruRPG, 13 years after it originally appeared in PDF, and three years after its partner "X" (the Expert Set rulebook) POD was released. 

Find it here:

Moldvay Basic rulebook on DrivethruRPG

(all links to DrivethruRPG include my affiliate number)

The B/X ruleset has become extremely popular in recent years as the source of rules for the Old School Essentials retroclone, but now you can get an official reprint of the original. 

While this site is primarily devoted to the Holmes Basic set, I am also a big fan of the Moldvay Basic rulebook, which took Holmes' pioneering work as a base and developed it further. And I love the Sample Dungeon, The Haunted Keep, which I've written about here.

The module that was included in the Moldvay Basic Set, the 1981 revision of Gary Gygax's B2 The Keep on the Borderlands, is already available in POD, so together these products constitute the printed contents of the 1981 Basic Set (no dice and crayon, of course).

Find it here: 

B2 The Keep on the Borderlands on DrivethruRPG

While this is great news for availability of this particular rule set, the Holmes Basic rulebook frustratingly remains completely unavailable, either in PDF or print, for unknown reasons. The newly available Moldvay Basic POD means that they are still releasing/updating the available products, so this does give a bit of hope. Perhaps they are saving it for the 100th anniversary in 2077?

See also these previous posts on the Zenopus Archives related to Moldvay Basic:

Original Known World Campaign Documents (2022)

Chronology of D&D Sample Dungeons: The Haunted Keep by Tom Moldvay (1981) (2020)

M1 Blizzard Pass: Dungeon Design (2020)

Zargon Beckons (2015)

Ur-Known World (2015)

Expert Set rulebook: PDF notes (2013)

Ancient Treasures from the Cellars (D&D PDFs) (2013)

B/X Mud Brown and Pea Green Polyhedral Dice (2013)

Doctor Who’s Christopher Eccleston joins James McAvoy in an adaptation of Frankie Boyle’s murder mystery thriller Meantime, filming now

Doctor Who star Christopher Eccleston discovers lots of planets have a Scotland as he joins the cast of Sky’s latest crime drama. Meantime is a brand-new thriller with a darkly comedic twist. And it comes from the mind of Scottish stand-up comedian, presenter and author, Frankie Boyle. The series is currently filming.

Meantime adapts Boyle’s bestselling debut novel of the same name. It stars James McAvoy (X-Men, Atonement) as Felix McAveety, a drug addict and alcoholic whose life falls apart when his best friend Marina turns up dead in a Glasgow park.

As the police’s prime (and most convenient) murder suspect, Felix tries to clear his name. Easier said than done when still in the deep paranoia and fog of his addiction.

Enlisting the help of one of his most chaotic friends, as well as an ageing former Detective Inspector turned crime novelist (Josette Simon, Blake’s 7), Felix sets out to get to the bottom of things. However, he soon discovers finding the culprit is the least of his problems. Marina was involved in an AI company’s secretive plans but were they worth killing for? Meanwhile, GP and dealer Dr. Chong (Benedict Wong, Dr. Strange) is convinced they’re all characters in a computer simulation. Could he be right?

As their search for the truth quickly spirals out of control, the Scottish city turns into a dangerous (but hilarious) playground of murky edges and stunning twists.

Sky have not yet officially revealed Christopher Eccleston’s role in Meantime. However, it seems possible he might be playing the novel’s shady MI5 agent Jeremiah Brond. The series also features other Doctor Who alumni Shirley Henderson (Love & Monsters), Mark Bonnar (The Rebel Flesh/The Almost People), and Lois Chimimba (The Tsuranga Conundrum, Redacted.)

Boyle wrote the script alongside Neil Webster, with Jon S. Baird (Filth, Tetris) acting as director for the series.

The post Meantime… Christopher Eccleston Films Crime Thriller appeared first on Blogtor Who.

It's time to plan your "to crochet" list for summer - and we're here to help! Start picking your favorites - and then enter the Pattern Palooza Giveaway - Win 10 PDFs of Your Choice from Moogly! Most Moogly Patterns are Free... But... But some people don't like working from the blog - and that's […]

The post Pattern Palooza Giveaway - Win 10 Crochet Pattern PDFs from Moogly! appeared first on moogly. Please visit www.mooglyblog.com for this post.

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Contributing host Ray MacKay recently sat down with Brock Smith about his Payne campaign, now on Kickstarter. You can watch the whole show with Brock on YouTube.   Ray: We…

The post Payne Live on Kickstarter appeared first on First Comics News.

Okay, I have been doing the podcast thing for several years now. And, truth be told, I always consider myself a small fish in a big pond. One of the…

The post Untold Tales of a Podcaster appeared first on First Comics News.

After nearly 28 years, one of the most influential voices in comic book journalism has fallen silent. Newsarama, the pioneering site that shaped how fans, creators, and industry insiders consumed…

The post The End of an Era: Saying Goodbye to Newsarama appeared first on First Comics News.

 Adapting the classic 1967 Hanna-Barbera series The Herculoids into the Sword of Cepheus (2nd Edition) system requires a blend of high-fantasy tropes and "lost world" science fiction. This blog entry picks right up from Thundarr the Barbarian & Crew NPC Adapted To Sword of Cepheus 2nd Edition RpgIn this setting, the Herculoids function as powerful, sentient "Monstrous Allies" or Needleshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11243274667834930867noreply@blogger.com0

The post Video of the Day – Magic Radio, 2025 appeared first on Blogtor Who.

                      With G-Man Comics coming up on their monumental achievement of 100th issues published, I’d like to congratulate the founders, Rik…

The post LOOK AT ALL THE HOMAGES: G-MAN COMICS HOMAGE COVERS appeared first on First Comics News.

By Craig Turner
Aspire2Hope
Generic/Universal
Levels: Ghouls as an ememy

In Faynford at the Staple, tension simmers beneath the smell of hearth smoke and fresh bread. Old fears stir as food grows scarce, livestock go missing, and whispers spread—of sickness, of shadows, of the dead no longer resting easy. Beyond the river bends and chalk downs, the Hundred is holding its breath. The boundaries between custom and survival, welcome and warning, are wearing thin. Something hungers in the dark, and the quiet strength of this land may not be enough to hold it back. Your road has led here. Whether by duty, kinship, or necessity, you have arrived on the edge of a story that will not wait. Will you uncover the truth before Faynford at the  Staple falls to fear—and to what walks in its shadow?

This twenty page horror-ish adventure describes a bucolic village, and the refugee situation that is unfolding as they absorb villages who have been displaced by war. It is quite long-winded and verbose for what is essentially an outline of an adventure. The outline part is ok, but the long-windedness results in confusion of the overall situation. Too much time on vibes and not enough time on specifics. 

I’m a sucker for Harn-like settings for adventures. Call something A Hundred and I’m drooling, for some reason. I guess it was 100 Bushels of Rye. Whatever. We’re here today because of that. And, then, we mix in, from the marketing blurb, what appears to be a horror element. I think horror translates well because of the emphasis on situations that it fosters. I can restart a monster, but the vibes and plot and horror elements are for the designer. I love my classic exploratory dungeons, but the journey to and from the dungeon, and shit going on in town, has always been a part of D&D and these little situations are great for dropping in to spice up the “downtime.” 

So, we got this village. Humans, halflings. The halflings were refugees about fifty years ago and have settled in. More war has caused an influx of new refugees. The locals kind of recognize kinship to them, accents, mannerisms, far less alien than the halflings were. Then a lamb goes missing. And a couple of people die from a new disease, ashskin. Things are tense. The local sheriff wants to relocate the refugees a little farther down the valley. This is the pretext for the adventure. It turns out that a local seedy patriarch is an agent for a foreign power and ashskin? That’s people turning in to ghouls. Did you recognize it by the name ashskin? I didn’t at first. And I love that kind of shit .Where you describe something to peoples faces and they don’t get it. They drop some gnawed bones and bodies here and there, and once you get to the graveyard and find out the graves were dug out from the INSIDE, well, the undead is up, so to speak. 

The adventure wants to outline a situation. It’s trying to present a map with various locations on it and then explaining what is going on at those locales. It provides some NPC overviews with mannerisms and goals, for the DM to drop in to the game and use as the party comes across them or seeks them out. It flirts with doing the right thing. And then it fucks everything up.

The NPC descriptions fit, maybe, two to three to a column. There’s a bullet for Appearance, Personality, Goal/Motivation, Quick, Disposition, and What they know. Maybe somewhere from three words to a dozen or so, and then the person ends with a little quote. This is all too much. It’s on the right track, a quick, a goal, what they know, but then it muddies it up with too much information that one needs to dig through. And this is going to be a theme here.

The locales, a half dozen or so, stretch on for a column or page, and then have their NPC’s, in the same format as above. It starts with a setting prompt, in bullet form: Light, Sights, Sounds, Smells. This is too much. Shortening this to  a sentence or two, including all of them in it, to give a little vibe would have been better. There’s a brief couple of paragraph description of the locations “the fields are well tended, it’s maintained through diligence.” Again, too much. The diligence comment it meta, and the whole location description is hard to sort through, I suspect, during play.  Terse. Hit. Get out. We want a quick vibe if its not super-important to the location to have details. Then we have a section called Plot. I’m looking at seven paragraphs, one or two just a sentence, like “Corwin is dead” or “Pip knows what that means, even if he struggles to say it properly.”  The plot section, what is happening, the meat of the location, what the party can find out and do and so on, is all muddled by this. This is NOT the time to get flowery with your language and clever with your descriptions. And yet it does, over and over again. This is a nightmare to dig through. This would have been the PERFECT time for all of those bullets. 

The overall plot, what leads to what and who’s doing what, is confused because of all of this. Cognitively it’s a problem. After a couple of times through this I’m still not sure I can explain the hows and wherefore and whats connected. I THINK 

The elements it wants to emphasize, the contention between the refugees, the more established refugees from fifty years ago and so on, these are not well handled at all. There’s little to bring these to life. The tension that should be going on isn’t added to by specifics. We’re not looking for everything spelled out and scripted, but vignettes, specificity, to drop in to make that tension come alive. Even the spying, it’s not really brought home. 

This was a good idea. Blaming The Others should be relatable to the players. The mixing in of the ghouls and people turning. Great potential there. But this would need a lot of effort to bring to the table. It knows to outline a situation, and it knows the major elements to hit, it just fails in doing that in a way that can be run or in bringing it truly to life.

This is $4 at DriveThru. The preview is four pages, not quite enough to get a good vibe check on it. Only the last page really gives you an idea of what to start to expect in terms of writing and presentation. 

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/562279/the-quiet-hunger?1892600

PORTLAND, Ore. 04/27/2026 — From the bestselling and award-winning duo behind Reckless, The Fade Out, Kill Or Be Killed, and Criminal(coming in 2026 to Prime Video) comics noir grandmasters Ed Brubaker…

The post WRITING WILL KILL YOU IN THE UPCOMING PARANOID THRILLER UNFINISHED TALES FROM ED BRUBAKER & SEAN PHILLIPS appeared first on First Comics News.

 Barrows & Borderlands (B&B) is a "Weird Science Fantasy" tabletop RPG designed specifically to bridge the gap between the Original 1974 Dungeons & Dragons (OD&D) and 1st Edition Advanced Dungeons & Dragons (AD&D).While it is heavily inspired by the "Little Brown Books" of the 70s, it isn't a mere clone; it's a "Needleshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11243274667834930867noreply@blogger.com0

The comic book world has lost one of its most influential storytellers. Gerry Conway, the prolific writer whose work helped shape both Marvel Comics and DC Comics, has passed away…

The post Comic Book Legend Gerry Conway Dies at 73 appeared first on First Comics News.

 Bringing Fel (Fenrir) from Campfire Cooking in Another World with My Absurd Skill into The Primal Order (TPO) requires translating his overwhelming "cheat-level" power into the language of Primal Base, Divine Rank, and Essence. This entry picks up from OSR Commentary - Can Castles & Crusades rpg be played with The Primal Order Rpg?!In TPO terms, Fel isn't just a high-level monster;Needleshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11243274667834930867noreply@blogger.com0

2000 AD Prog 2480 UK and DIGITAL: 29 April £3.99 COVER: JOE CURRIE In This Issue: JUDGE DREDD // SILENT WITNESS by Ken Niemand (w) Nick Dyer (a) John Charles (c) Annie Parkhouse (l) BRINK // THE CALL OF…

The post 2000 AD Prog 2480 preview appeared first on First Comics News.

In the landscape of 2026, the traditional “geek den” has undergone a radical transformation. What was once a cluttered corner of a basement or a spare bedroom filled with mismatched…

The post The Collector’s Fortress: Why Interior Engineering is the Secret to Preserving Your 2026 Multiverse appeared first on First Comics News.

In Back Issue #167, we celebrate Girls, Women, and Ladies, as we spend some quality time with Squirrel Girl, Sue Richards, the Invisible Woman, Phantom Lady, Saturn Girl, and more. Featuring the…

The post Back Issue #167 coming in May from TwoMorrows Publishing appeared first on First Comics News.

The Legend of Korra comics have debuted on WEBTOON in a brand-new, vertical scroll format as part of the digital comics platform’s partnership with Dark Horse Comics. The Legend of…

The post The Legend of Korra Comic Series Launches on WEBTOON appeared first on First Comics News.

Mostly discussions about alignment (probably since time immemorial) seem to circle around 3 opens about it: it is just a suggestion for roleplay; it represents cosmic teams of some sort and isn't about character morality; and most commonly its bad and we just ignore it. 

Gareth Hanrahan's The Gutter Prayer suggests to me an interesting tweak to idea 2, one I haven't seen before. I mention previously the saints in that world who were empowered by the gods not due to faith or ideals, but rather due to be somehow psychic compatible with the deity, making passing divine power through them possible. You might say the saints are in alignment with the deity.

So, what if alignment was a bit like that? It does present being on a cosmic team but not a team the character chose, a team that they were born into. This connection would allow the character to speak alignment language and to be recognized as "marked" by that team, perhaps. Characters are free to behave whatever way they want, but they can't (or at least can't easily change) this affinity any more than they could change their bloodtype. It should probably be randomly generated or determined by class, I suppose.

For most characters, a lack of affinity with the ethics of the deity wouldn't be an issue under most circumstances, though for people like clerics and paladins who get more out of the connection, it would matter.

The metaphysical implications for a setting with this would be really interesting, I think. There are a lot of ways it could be operationalized. 

In my early years as a gamer, four artists truly defined my conception of D&D and tabletop fantasy art: Larry Elmore, Jeff Easley, Clyde Caldwell, and Keith Parkinson.

I first recall them being referred to as the “Four Horsemen” in the excellent 2019 documentary Eye of the Beholder. Since I’ve been writing so much lately about the artists who inspire my games, I recently sat down to rewatch it. You can find where to stream it from the official website here. If you’re curious, here is the trailer:

But back to the artists. Elmore, Easley, Caldwell, and Parkinson completely defined D&D for me as a teenage gamer. Little by little, I discovered the early artists who originally shaped the game (and they’ll get their own post!), but when I first started playing, these four were the absolute pillars of fantasy TTRPG art. You probably know them, so I won’t recount their entire careers—others have covered them far more thoroughly than I ever could. Instead, I want to focus on how they left an impression on me and inspired my campaigns.

Larry Elmore

For a long time, Elmore was my absolute favorite fantasy artist! He drew the cover for the very first TTRPG book I ever bought. That archetypal red dragon of the Mentzer Red Box (and yes, it only has one horn, look closely at the art!) beckoned me into gaming. But his influence went far beyond the cover. He drew most of the art in the Players Manual inside that box, accompanied by some amazing standouts by Easley. The images of the adventurer entering the dungeon in the solo tutorial, the illustration of Aleena, Bargle attacking her, and the adventurer acquiring equipment—these visuals were fundamentally tied to learning the game, and they remain with me to this day.

His art also graced the Expert set cover and most of the interior illustrations. I particularly love the one-page illustration of the duel.

He went on to do the covers for the Companion, Master, and Immortal sets, and I vividly remember the weapons illustrations in the Companion rulebook.

Whenever I saw Elmore’s art, I was entranced. His covers for the Dragonlance Chronicles and the Star Frontiers boxed set were undeniably a huge part of why I purchased those products. His aesthetics and clean lines defined civilization in D&D for me. When I thought of the classes and ancestries, I pictured them exactly as Larry Elmore painted them.

I know many people love his Dragonslayers and Proud of It piece from the AD&D 2nd Edition PHB, but I honestly wasn’t a fan. I understand what he tried to convey with the new heroes slaying a small dragon, but it didn’t catch my eye the way his other work did. I did, however, love a lot of his Dragon Magazine covers from this period. I read SnarfQuest, too, though I wasn’t a massive fan.

I still own a copy of Reflections of Myth: The Larry Elmore Sketchbook. I loved that book! I would often turn to a specific drawing in it and tell my players, “This NPC looks exactly like this.”

I probably would not have looked twice at Shadowrun if it hadn’t featured a cover by Elmore, and the same goes for The Crystal Shard novel. Larry Elmore’s art was my true gateway into Dungeons & Dragons and fantasy TTRPGs in general. In my imaginary, perfect D&D book, all the class and ancestry illustrations are drawn by him.

I was lucky enough to meet him and take the photo you see above at Gen Con 2010.

Jeff Easley

Elmore did all the covers for the BECMI boxed sets, but when I “graduated” to the Advanced version of D&D, all the covers for the orange-spine books were painted by Jeff Easley. While I later acquired copies of the original PHB, DMG, MM, and Deities and Demigods covers, when I first got the core books, it was Easley’s art gracing them.

His art seemed darker, more grown-up, and much more foreboding. This was definitely the “advanced” game. While his covers for the AD&D 2nd Edition books rarely come to mind as my all-time favorites, they were so prevalent that they heavily influenced the aesthetics of my growing fantasy world.

I loved The Magister supplement for Forgotten Realms, and Easley’s cover for it. That specific piece of art became the appearance of a major NPC in my campaign. His covers for the Rules Cyclopedia and Wrath of the Immortals are also pieces I treasure because of their connection to my favorite TSR-era campaign world, Mystara.

Clyde Caldwell

Caldwell is perhaps best known for his Ravenloft cover, featuring Strahd looking like a classic movie vampire, and that recognition is well deserved. But for me, he will always be the artist who drew the covers for my favorite series of supplements: the Gazetteer series.

For me, his covers encapsulated what each region of the world represented, even if the Shadow Elf on the cover of the Elves of Alfheim was drawn as a Drow. Mistakes happen!

Later, his Resilient Wanderer art from Magic: The Gathering directly inspired the look of an entire culture in one of my campaigns.

Then there is…

Keith Parkinson

If Elmore was my favorite of the four as a young gamer, Parkinson would become my favorite of the four as an adult.

I actually saw his art before playing D&D, inside the Amazing Stories 1986 calendar I got in late 1985. It featured work from all the artists in this post. I remember staring at the art, trying to invent stories to match the scenes. While the fantasy art was great, it was the post-apocalyptic sci-fi (even if I didn’t know to call it that back then) that really caught my eye.

There was an Elmore piece (Epsilon Cyborgs from Gamma World, see above) and an Easley painting (The Fallen, featuring a man in power armor defeating a dinosaur while another attacks, an image I frustratingly cannot find anywhere online). But it was Parkinson’s art—the cover of the calendar, which would later become the cover of Gamma World 3rd Edition featuring the Ultimate ATV —that I remember most vividly.

I absolutely love his fantasy work, too. Lord Soth’s Charge is amazing (and he remains one of my favorite D&D villains). The North Watch from Dragon magazine issue 137 is breathtaking.

And, of course, the seven covers he did for the Death Gate Cycle books.

Then there are his Rifts covers! The original edition features the Splugorth Slaver, Mutants in Orbit, and Atlantis. I was a massive Rifts fan in the 1990s, and seeing his art in those books completely blew my mind.

Sadly, he passed away in 2005 at only 47 years old. But his art continues to inspire me today.

I love the work of all four of these artists. They were incredibly formative to me as a young fan of fantasy and sci-fi, and as a burgeoning Game Master. Even now, when a scene takes shape in my mind, when I describe a location or NPC to my players, or when I write about my campaign world, the images created by these four men shape my imagination. I am forever grateful for their art, which has so deeply enriched my life, and this hobby I enjoy so much.