Barrows and Borderlands

Post Apocalyptic Gonzo

The Good Kind of OSR?

OK, first, the usual “Why I Ain’t Updated Lately” drivel. Because I’ve been a little depressed, a little distracted, and a lot lazy. Stuck and frustrated as I near the ending of a book twice as long as it was supposed to be, and unable to think of an ending, but lacking in even the energy and motivation needed to instead work on this, or another project, but instead, just spent hours not writing but also not allowing myself to do anything else. 

It looks like I might be back to writing tomorrow, but I have a few hours now, and I am slowly crawling out of my mental hole, so, I felt I should write something before the end of the year. 

So, let’s look at Bunnies and Barrows… no, Barrows and Borderlands. I saw an ad for this and decided to take the plunge. I’m glad I did. 

All In On Nostalgia

A lot of neo-old-school games go for a more modern “look and feel”, with full-color art, fancy binding, and so on. Barrows and Borderlands goes all-in on the stylistic quirks of the oldest games. The images on the top and side of the box are on paper, glued down, not printed on the box itself. Inside are four light-tan booklets, each with a black-and-white image on the cover and similar art inside. The booklets have a small bit of color in the “Barrows and Borderlands” logo on each, just like another game’s set of Little Brown Books. Very nice attention to detail.

The overall production quality is actually a step up from the original — the paper seems better quality, the binding stronger, the covers a tad thicker. This is subjective; I didn’t measure. My 0e “white box” rules are from the late 70s, and thus, have aged; perhaps in 50 years, these will be in the same shape. I won’t know, I’ll be dead.

Art is definitely not by This Guy I Know; perhaps he was unavailable. It’s a mix of original art and public domain; no AI, thank all the gods. (I would not waste time reviewing this if it used AI, period.) They also have about twice as many pages as their inspiration.

Ah, but what matters is… what’s on those pages?

Words. And some pictures. What a weird question. Sheesh.

Words. And Some Pictures

Hmm.

I was going to start off with “and they’re really in the Old School Spirit by having plenty of grammatical errors!”, but, here’s the thing… the PDF I have (purchased alongside the physical books) differs from those books! They’re clearly updating and improving the digital presentation, which is a Good Thing. It ruins some of my jokes, of course. Sigh.

Print: “Such as Malores, it’s[sic] elite legions of soldiers…”
PDF: “Such as Malores with its elite legions of soldiers…”

But, hey, both are still broken, as this text follows “A sampling of histories and lores exist within this book which suggest Nations
and Powers exist outside the Confines of the Borderlands. Such as[sic]…” . It should be “…of the Borderlands, such as…”. 

“Hang on, hang on. You’re criticizing that, after starting a sentence with a conjunction?”
“Yes. Yes, I am. Wanna make something of it?”
“No, no, carry on. Hypocrisy is fine as long as you lampshade it.”

Glad we’ve got that settled. Where was I?

Oh, Yeah, What’s It About?

Barrows. And Borderlands. You Really Ask Strange Questions.

B&B (which, to me, means “Bunnies and Burrows“) is one of the few “OSR” games to invoke the more insane, gonzo, side of 1970s gaming, and fully embraces the wild mix of themes and genres seen in the actual play of the era, vs. the dull, ‘kobolds and copper pieces’ attitude of many others. It is not a retro-clone, it claims, and it’s correct in that. This is what I wish more OSR games were: The kind of thing someone might have made as an early D&D competitor or supplement “for use with all role playing games”, vs “95% White Box/Holmes Basic + a minor rules tweak to satisfy the author’s pet bugaboo they’ve had with D&D since their half-orc cleric/thief got killed by a pit trap”.

Fine, Lizard, we get it. You like it. But what is it?

Sorta Gamma World + 16th Century + Standard D&D?

That’s a pretty odd mix.

Yes. Precisely.

The setting is vague. There’s enough details given to use the author’s world, if you wish: A flat Earth surrounded by a void, the result of a corporation meddling with a reality-warping device left behind by prehistoric saurians. There’s mention of four major civilizations, and between them, the eponymous Borderlands, filled with ruined cities and mutant monsters. All of this can be ignored; the rules mention “Dynaco” a lot, but it’s not deeply tied in to mechanics. There’s a very strong atmosphere of making this your own. The places mentioned are deliberately generic and archetypal: Oppressive theocracy, city ruled by sorcerer-king, swashbuckling pirate city, etc. 

Terms of Endearment

Rather nicely, before we jump into character creation, we get a list of key terms. There’s the 6… no, 7 attributes (the standard 6, plus “Radiation Resist”), THACO, Saving Throw, and so on. There is also “Skills”, defined as a chance on a d6 to do something, using a roll-low mechanic. (If your skill is 2, you succeed on a roll of 1-2 on a d6.) To be really old school, there ought to be some weird exceptions to this, like “surprised on a 3 or less on a d8”, or whatever. Perhaps there are! Let’s find out!

THACO or Not THACO, That Is The Question: As with a lot of old-school-style games, the default system uses THAC0 (which is actually a 2e innovation; if you look at the combat charts for 1e, you’ll see there’s a weird quirk where a range of Armor Classes are all hit only on a 20, and then begin to be hit by lower numbers. THAC0 requires each AC be hit by a number 1 lower/higher, depending on direction). However, you can, if you wish, reverse it, and use ascending AC and give a +1 to hit whenever THAC0 would otherwise go down. (Yeah, there’s a “to hit Armor Class 0” column in one of the 1e DMG appendices, but it doesn’t actually make a lot of sense if you look at the monster to-hit tables. Some creatures have a split value, too, which isn’t explained that I can see. But enough digressions.) (Hah! Never enough!)

Races

There are a lot more here than the usual pseudo-Tolkien set, though most of them are present, of course. Some of the options, like kobolds and greenskulls, are mutants, while others, such as dwarves and fairies, have always been around, but emerged after the Big Kablooie. You’ve also got mushrooms (Mycelians), and totally-not-elves (Starborn).

I figure I’ll roll some dice and see what seems to come up. I can roll 3d6 in order, or 4d6 (keep 3) and assign, or 2d6+6… I’ll go really old school and just do it 3d6 in order.

STR: 4 (Or maybe I shouldn’t do that…)
DEX: 10
CON: 3 (Are you kidding me?)
INT: 12
WIS: 12
CHA: 8
RAD: 9

Yeah, this ain’t happenin’. Let’s try again, 4d6, keep 3:10, 14,12,11,18!,16, 8.

So, I know have to arrange them, and to do that optimally, I need to pick a class. Hmm. In addition to the core set, there’s a free supplement “Radioactive Boogaloo”, which includes material that occasionally rolls into the main rules (PDF, of course; they won’t keep sending me updated print copies.) And one of the classes in it looks intriguing: The Geiger, which is a Paladin, except for mutants instead of undead. I’ll think about it. (The supplement also adds chronomancers, a robot PC race, and many other such goodies!)