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I have been running Labyrinth Lord games since the beginning of the year. I have two active games in a single campaign setting right now, each meeting at least once per week. More than that, however, I've been playing the Moldvay/Cook version of Basic and Expert D&D, the game Labyrinth Lord "clones," since 1982. True, I left Moldvay/Cook for 1st edition AD&D sometime around '84, only a I really didn't. Like many folks back then, I mostly continued to play by the rules in the Moldvay/Cook books, and just bolted on the character classes, monsters, spells, and magic items from the "big books." So, in a way, I never really stopped playing Moldvay/Cook.
The revisions from the original release of Labyrinth Lord include some errata, some minor number massaging, and the art that's not in the freebie pdf version. Most of the revision is geared towards a dead-tree release that will involve books on actual shelves in actual gaming stores. There was a previous attempt at this, but the distributor went under before everything could be accomplished. With a new distributor and now a new edition with all-original art, Goblinoid Games is ready to take another stab at claiming shelf space at your FLGS.
So what is this Labyrinth Lord game? As a retro-clone of one of the early boxed sets of D&D, it's a pretty faithful adaptation. Unlike the original little brown books of the very first iteration of D&D, or even the hardbacks of AD&D, the thin (only 64 pages each) Moldvay/Cook books were expertly organized for easy use. Still, having all the monsters in a single listing, and "modern" improvements, like a master list of spells arranged alphabetically, make the game even easier to play than the originals.
Purists will be annoyed by some of the changes. The greatest is probably the cost of armour. In the original books, plate mail cost only a mere 60 gold pieces. In Labyrinth Lord, that same armour costs 450 gold pieces. The change is clearly aimed at spreading out the early part of the game where the players work their way up to more expensive equipment. It also gives players something to spend all their coin on. This is an issue in Labyrinth Lord because the majority of experience points earned come from treasure, not killing monsters. Since most characters will need to amass something in the neighborhood of 800 to 1,000 gold pieces to reach 2nd level, they will quickly have enough cash to outfit themselves and a few hirelings in the best equipment available under the original rules. With Labyrinth Lord, that might be dragged out into 2nd level, but not by much, not unless the character has a large number of hirelings. Labyrinth Lord also offers greater variety in things like armour and generic equipment, which is nice to have when fleshing out a campaign setting. Of greater annoyance to the purist will be things like the additional spells and clerics getting spells at 1st level.
If you're more interested in a fun game than a pure recreation of gaming from '81, Labyrinth Lord is a mixed bag. Labyrinth Lord is a very abstract game. It has all the trappings of traditional D&D, like hit points, armour class, and class-based character design. It even goes a step further than most games of that era and combines class and race, such that all halflings are sneaky woodsmen, all dwarves are warriors, and all elves are combination fighter/magic-users. Long story short, if your favorite part of RPGs is tweaking your character between games for optimal numerical performance, Labyrinth Lord isn't going to scratch that itch. On the other hand, it's a great little rules-lite game that's extremely customizable. If, for instance, you want to play a dwarven cleric, or a Howardian barbarian, there are tools on the web and in old Dragon magazines that allow you to create entirely new character classes in about a half-hour. If you're hungering for some Sword & Planet gaming, it's easy enough to add radium pistols and four-armed green-skinned martians. (The folks at Goblinoid Games have already given us some idea of how this might be taken to its logical extreme in their post-apocalyptic version called Mutant Future.) This simplicity also means that, as we've already seen, if there's something you don't like about the game, like, say Vancian magic, somebody has probably created an alternative. The raw version of Labyrinth Lord is a quick and lean exploration game. Whether in dungeons or across broader landscapes, the game handles issues of logistics fairly simply, with quick combats that rarely take even a half-hour to complete. Where it really sings, however, is in how easy it is to customize. In other words, if you're a GM who loves to tweak the game and make it your own, Labyrinth Lord is an exceptional skeleton around which to build your magnus opus. This also means that it's a great starting point if you want to learn about game design; tweaking and playing Labyrinth Lord can reveal why certain mechanics work the way they do, and how that affects play.
The quick, simple combat also means Labyrinth Lord is a good choice for games where combat is possible, but discouraged. Smart, low-level players especially will bend over backwards to avoid combat, where a single hit can result in death for a character. The game encourages the sort of lateral thinking that makes for good political or investigative games.
That said, while the combat system does point folks in that direction, once you go there, there's little in the rules for adjudicating things like diplomacy or searching a crime scene. While it's possible to add rules to cover those aspects, you do so in the face of one of the game's primary themes, which is to challenge the players more than the characters. The logistical challenges of the general exploration style of play are all player-focused; you can't mitigate most of these challenges by having a certain skill or rolling the dice. Combat is presented by the rules as a hurdle to overcome and a spoiler that limits how much exploring the party can do before they risk depleting their resources to dangerous levels. It's entirely up to the players to devise strategies for limiting the effects of combat and maximizing the efficiency of their exploration efforts.
This puts a heavy burden on the GM, and the success of a Labyrinth Lord game falls heavily on this person. Whether or not the players can harness a pack of sea turtles to escape the island or get the cyclops drunk falls entirely on the GM. Beyond some vague guidelines about rolling under a character's stat scores on a d20, there's little in the way of organized skill or stunt checks to rely on. A GM who paints a consistent and understandable setting for the players and embraces the "say yes or roll the dice" ethic can create a lot of fun with Labyrinth Lord. On the other hand, a GM who insists that there is one and only one way to solve the challenges presented to players will create a frustrating, and rarely satisfying, game.
And this leads me to probably the biggest strength of the game, which is its flexibility in play. Because the game relies so heavily on the GM, it also allows the GM and players to set the style, limits, and themes of play very organically, and then shift those over time. As your group moves their focus from one aspect to another, or grows bored and decides to mix things up with a completely new location or goals and techniques, the game rolls with you, offering very little resistance. Players can spend one session mapping the wilderness, the next battling hordes of orcs, and the third negotiating treaties and foiling blackmail attempts at fancy costume balls. Or even all three during a single evening. This keeps play fresh and the challenges always new and interesting, so long as the group as a whole can agree on the sort of gaming they prefer. Because players are not limited by what's on their character's sheet, issues like "spotlight time" and getting involved in the action are entirely up to their own initiative. The malleability of the game allows the players and GM to organically mold it into something that fits their style while they play.
Labyrinth Lord is therefore a flexible RPG that relies fairly heavily on the GM and the players to put some effort into making the game their own. Whether you're looking for a true "old school" game or simply want a game that will get out of your way while you create the sort of fun you and your friends are interested in, Labyrinth Lord is a strong contender for your fantasy game of choice. And at free, even a cheap bastard like me can't quibble about the price.
