Not mine, but I am excited for it. Labyrinth Lord: Revised & Expanded, aka Labyrinth Lord 2nd Edition, is now out from Daniel Proctor and Pauli Kidd.
Labyrinth Lord didn't start the OSR, but it certainly propelled forward.
I have gone into this edition in detail yet, but there are some fun additions.
What does the book have?
For starters, this is Labyrinth Lord. Not Advanced. This is a good take, I think, with the recent announcement of Old-School Essentials favoring their "Advanced" variant. So this is for people who want a true B/X experience. Proctor mentions that the design goal of is really now an extension of the B/X rules, with First Edition material, "while making those rules closer to how we all played anyway." This has always been the appeal for me since the start.
There is no OGL here. This is released using the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.
Classes are the classic B/X race/species as class. There are some new ones and revised ones. Brownies and Cyclops are new classes. Burglers, Hobfolk, and Wizards are revised. Clerics, Elves, Dwarves, and Fighters are closest to their B/X forbearers.
No new spells as far as I can tell. Some druid spells are added to the cleric lists.
There are some fun new monsters. Among them are: Baboon (Higher), Banther (love this guy!), Booglin, Cyclopean and Cyclops become two distinct but related types, Glastig, Goadt (love these guys too), Goat of Calamity, Hawkbear, and more. I won't list them all here, save the surprises.
The monster stats are presented in tables while their corresponding write-ups are separate. It reminds me a little of how OD&D did things. It saves space on the page for certain.
There are still plenty of wandering monster tables and treasure.
The biggest addition is the adventure from Pauli Kidd, "The Heart of Traviya" a min-campaign for 1st level characters. Not to give too many spoilers, but the idea the village has been split into three separate but connected worlds is a really fun one.
We also have our map of the Known Lands from LL1 and a good index.
The layout is clean and sharp. It evokes B/X more than say OSE or ShadowDark does, and at least in terms of esthetics, it works as a successor to the B/X line. Not 100% a fan of the monster layout, but I can also see how it would work well in game play.
I think Proctor's insight is spot on. A new retro-clone is a step backwards. To move forward the "clones" must evolve and provide something new. This new Labyrinth Lord is the platform for Proctor (and hopefully more Kidd) to do just that.
Looking forward to seeing what is next.
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