The Littlest Brown Book

This is a small-format (108x175mm) retroclone of the famous 1974 rules for fantastic medieval campaigns (playable with paper & pencils & miniature figures). It attempts to faithfully present the original rules with greater brevity & logical organization. 

I originally compiled this to make running my own campaign easier. It omits a lot, and is intended as a portable, quick-reference supplement to the original material rather than a replacement.

Features

• Packs (almost) all the LBB rules into 92 pocket-sized pages.
• Organized for easy use at the table, with rules of play gathered in Part I, lists of game entities (spells, monsters, treasure) in Part II, and campaign stocking tables in Part III. 
• Refactors many nested tables to require fewer die rolls while having identical (or near-identical) probabilities.
• Condenses monster information to just that needed to run combat, with a separate section covering lairs.
• Decorated with terrible charmingly amateurish illustrations by the compiler.
• Emojis(?) 🧙‍♂️

Fork This

The best way is to decide how you would like it to be, and then make it just that way!

- Underworld & Wilderness Adventures, p. 36

The Typst source code is available for download so that anyone can edit The Littlest Brown Book to their liking. My hope is that a minimalist presentation of the original rules can double as a serviceable chassis for further modding.

I've written a basic guide to modifying the source code here, and also recommend checking out the tutorials here and here. Typst can be used for free in a browser. (Note that the fonts Rye & Josefin Sans can be downloaded free from Google Fonts and uploaded to the online workspace).

Basic formatting rules that apply to the whole book are kept in LBB.typ, a template file (this includes rules used to 'reskin' certain phrases for inclusiveness & IP). The text of the game itself is in The_littlest_brown_book.typ, and relies on data in Monster_stats.csv and Random_enc_tables.csv. Illustrations are in Illustrations.zip and should be kept in a project sub-directory called Illustrations. 

Etc.

The 108x175mm (4.25x6.9in) page size was chosen because it is the smallest available for print-on-demand through Lulu.com. When I've had a bit more time to proofread and polish, I intend to link to an at-cost PoD version. For now, I've uploaded a version formatted to print as a half-page booklet on 8.5x11 in. paper.

Everything is licensed as CC-BY-SA 4.0, so feel free to use it in your own work as long as you give credit and release the results under the same license.