White Box - Fantastic Medieval Adventure Game

White Box - Fantastic Medieval Adventure Game is an OD&D clone written by Charlie Manson.

I discovered it recently via Path Peculiar’s twitter. He displays some nice previews of the book, so linking the tweet here.

I love this iteration of #DnD. It’s so streamlined and elegant. This book can do pretty much everything I want in a D&D campaign. #ttrpg pic.twitter.com/d3sHwfyas0

— Paths Peculiar (@PathsPeculiar) October 12, 2020

You can still find this black and white cover book here for only $4.29 (!!!).

I like this B&W cover better than the new one in color. From what I can tell it goes nice with the art in the interior of the book.

I am very impressed by this little game. The biggest plus is definitely that all the art in the book fits very nicely together for a succinct look and feel!

It reads well and is quick to get through. Its rules light and a lot of things is left up to the Dungeon Master to make judgment calls on.

Being an Old School Essentials player (B/X clone), I was surprised to find that OD&D did not have race-as-class! (Yes, yes, I know. I am new to the old school DnD games, when I started playing it was already the era of 3.5ed!). Generally the rules are very similar in White Box and OSE. Picking one I would still go with OSE. However with the price of White box I will start recommending this instead for people new to OSR searching for their first game to try out!

Another interesting note about the rules: Throwing burning flasks of oil has its own set AC, it does not use the target AC. This makes sense as someone in plate armour would not be more happy than someone in leather to have burning oil pour in between the armour!