Thoughts on Holmes D&D

I spent a wonderful evening last night playing some Holmes D&D with the ever amazing Jeff Cape manning the DM's role.  The one thing that I've come to realize is when playing online it's best to try and use a fairly light rules system.  Getting bogged down with mechanics and rules takes the wind out of my sails.  I recently playing in a one shot 5e game, and it really left a bad taste in my mouth.  There was far too much checking rules, rolling dice and no real roleplaying per se.  Last night was the complete opposite.  And we didn't even roll any dice!  Jeff came up with a wonderful idea.  CHITS! 

Yes that's right, we printed off Chits and used them.  We were told that if we used dice we would have a -2 penalty to any roll.  The funniest part of that was one of the players hadn't realized what a chit was, he seemed to think that was our way of saying "dice".  After his first roll, we all had a good laugh when he was told about the penalty.  He quickly grabbed a piece of paper and scissors and wrote up a basic d20 chit. 

This was the truest way to play that game.  

I've been thinking a lot about holmes latetly.  I went down a bit of a rabbit hole after buying the pdf for Blueholme Journeymanne Rules.  After reading this blog: 

https://dreamscapedesign.net/2020/07/12/blueholme-brochure-wip/

and this:

https://dreamscapedesign.net/2019/01/05/the-known-world-of-blueholme/

I started to get really excited about the baked in world for Blueholme.  Another excellent resource is the Necropolis Of Nuromen , which includes a brief gazateer on the surrounding areas and the city of blueholme.  From reading these blog posts, it looks like there will be a Blueholme Brochure coming eventually from Dreamscape Design, and I for one am excited! 

Now this post here: https://dreamscapedesign.net/2015/05/30/camlann-castle/ 

Is what started to get the wheels turning, specifically the implied OD&D setting blog from Wayne's blog http://initiativeone.blogspot.com/2013/05/od-setting-posts-in-pdf.html Which I had totally forgotten about.  Please go and read the implied setting document.  I'll wait. 

Alright, you've read it.  And I'm guessing you have a copy of the Journeymann rules and have also read the Necroplolis of Nuromen.  You've started to realize that you can mix fantasy and sci fi in a world that has had some form of apocalypse.  The section that got me really excited is Part 6 in the rules "Creatures" and the ability to use monsters as PCs.  You may have also noticed that wondeful art on page 5 with the human, dwarf and the Dreenoi.  What's that? Well it appears to be a alien! 

And here's another little bit from Blueholme, the information on the "Old Ones", that helps to paint a picture.  

Sages speculate that the vast Underworld was the effort of many civilisations, toiling over the eons, but that it began with vast underground cities built by several pre-human species that came to the lands from regions unknown. Old ones flourished for millennia, but were ultimately overthrown....

All of this information paints a very interesting picture that has got me super excited to read and delve more into the implied setting of Blueholme and OD&D.