Old Stomping Grounds

As I come to a close on Class Compendium and White Star is almost complete, I continue to find myself drawn back to fantasy gaming. White Star has dominated the six months of my gaming psyche, and before it I was writing up Swords & Wizardry WhiteBox stuff. Before that everything I'd done had been almost exclusively Labyrinth Lord - and quite a bit of it. Damn near 90 products for the Goblinoid Games classic. 

With all the problems I've had with Class Compendium I kept telling myself "I hope I never see another Labyrinth Lord product again." But there's the funny thing - after a few months of focusing on other things I did look at Labyrinth Lord again. I had forgotten my affection for the game that was my introduction to the OSR community. It was like a homecoming for me, if you'll forgive an overly romantic old man.

I don't see too many Labyrinth Lord products being produced by third party publishers these days. My own sales on LL products started to dip. I wondered - is it a dying game or was there always this solid, if not increasing, player-base for the game? I have to admit, sluggish sales on my own products helped turn me on to Swords & Wizardry. 

But when I look at my book shelf I see that I have four physical copies of the Labyrinth Lord: Hardcover, softcover, Braun softcover, and a PDF that's been printed and sheet-protected in a binder. I've got two copies of the Advanced Edition Companion, along with a plethora of supplements. Dolmvay, Lesserton & Mor, Amherth, Realms of Crawling Chaos, Barrowmaze, Larm, , and many others. That's a lot of money to invest in a game that one claims to "hope I never see again."

I'm finding my scouting around RPGNow looking for Labyrinth Lord products I may have missed over the years and for the first time in a bit I'm really excited at the prospect of playing Labyrinth Lord. I guess I need to remember never say never.