Over at DriveThruRPG, a team has been making steady progress with scanning old TSR D&D and other games so that they can be re-released as a PDF.
Some of these titles even make it back to print-on-demand, and gamers have a way to get classic AD&D titles from the 80s or earlier onto their bookshelves.
This week, one of these re-releasing titles is compatible with Advanced Dungeons & Dragons 2e and is Battlesystem Skirmishes.
Written by Bruce Nesmith, who penned Dragonlance Adventures 1e and Ravenloft: Realm of Terror 2e, Battlesystem Skirmishes brings skirmish rules to D&D. Or back to D&D. The name is a bit of a clue!
The 120-page PDF costs only $4.99 and uses miniatures one-on-one. In other words, a mini of a warrior doesn’t represent a band of warriors but a single warrior, and the mini of a monster that the warrior faces also means a single bogey.
The attraction of the ruleset at the time of its release was that the warrior might well have been your D&D character, and you won’t need to tweak their stats to take part in the large scale skirmish. There weren’t any complicated formulas involved, but the rules got into handling spells and magical items on the battlefield.
Buyers today should be aware that this means you’ll need AD&D 2e rules to use Battlesystem, and that includes the Monster Manual and DMs Guide as well as the Player’s Handbook.
Goodreads says the book was published first in 1991. AD&D 2e was published in 1989 and, in fact, while there had been some Monstrous Compendium books out before 1991, the AD&D 2e Monstrous Manual wasn’t actually published until 1993.
It wasn’t just the skirmish game that Battlesystem covered. The book also included a complete guide to painting miniatures, although this talentless oaf can’t tell you whether it’s any good or not.
Other additions this week include Cardmaster Adventure Design Deck, which isn’t reviewing well due to quality concerns and perhaps the need for cards to be physical.
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