Influences for the British Old School Renassiance

When I envisioned this blog, I saw a big long post about what makes the formative Brit gaming experience different to the US one.

However fellow Brit Blogger The Fighting Fantasist summed it up back in April, much more eloquently than I ever could.

http://fightingfantasist.blogspot.com/2010/04/british-osr-starts-here.html

Some interesting stuff in there, like the reason why on we got art by such luminaries as Russ Nicholson and John Blanche (who I never knew did the cover for  UK version of the original D&D game see below, which also had different internal art) instead of the rather cartoony art that our US peers associate so strongly with the early days of D&D and lots of differing cultural influences (which sent me down a trip down memory lane 😉 ).


John Blanche’s cover of the Games Workshop version of Original D&D, First UK print (Dec 1977).

2 thoughts on “Influences for the British Old School Renassiance

  1. That GW D&D is amazing … do you know how it differed from the US OD&D? I.e., did it include material from the supplements, were the combat rules better fleshed out, etc.? If you don’t know, no worries, just curious. 🙂

  2. The UK version was (I’m told, I’ve never seen one) the same as the US one just with different art. There’s a webpage somewhere I saw years ago that had a load of scans of the artwork but I’m at work now and can’t find it.

    I was shown a UK softback printing of the PHB on Saturday, I’d never seen one of those previously before so I hold out hope that I might one day see a GW D&D!

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