Coming up with a player quickstart for 1974 Dungeons & Dragons three “Little Brown Books” (3LBB OD&D) is a bit harder than for other games. If you consider just the 3LBBs, there just isn’t much that is set in stone, and a lot is left to referee interpretation. This is, of course, the charm of the thing. But it means that by its nature, any quickstart I come up with will have house rules and interpretations of my own. This is in contrast to the Moldvay quickstart, in which it is all rules-as-written, and the White Box FMAG quickstart, which lies somewhere in-between the other two.
Still, I’m providing the source LibreOffice document, so you can tweak it to suit your own campaigns. Here is a summary of my own house rules in the PDF version:
- There is a small STR adjustment for Fighters to attack and damage rolls.
- There is a coin carrying adjustment for high or low STR scores.
- WIS gives a save vs. spells adjustment.
- Fighters have some added class skills.
- Magic-User (MU) starting spells are codified, and the 1st-level spell list adds spells from the Greyhawk supplement.
- The Holmes scroll rule is reflected in the equipment packs (choose 100gp or a 1st-level spell scroll).
- Elves can be the Fighter or MU single classes.
- Only Clerics can speak their alignment language.
- Extra languages are for humans only, and the languages table is my own creation.
- Demi-human abilities are a merge of Chainmail, 3LBBs, and Greyhawk.
- Encumbrance is my simplified system that tracks just coins carried.
- Equipment packs are as in the other two quickstarts, modified slightly to reflect the OD&D equipment list.
- As usual, I’m leaving out some details like the explicit chance of Elves finding secret doors, or of non-humans hearing noise. That reflects the fact that the referee will be rolling those, not the player.
OD&D Player Quickstart (LibreOffice)
OD&D Player Quickstart (PDF)