For years now, I’ve circled around the idea that OD&D deserves a clearer articulation than it has ever truly received. Not nostalgia, not retro‑cloning, not wistful recollection — but clarity. The 1974 game is often spoken about, often imitated, often invoked, but rarely examined on its own terms. Its worldview, its assumptions, its machinery, and its ambitions have been obscured by decades of reinterpretation.
This project — which I’m calling The Cycle — is my attempt to restore that clarity.
The Cycle is not a ruleset, nor is it a manifesto. At the risk of sounding immodest, it is a Symphony: a sequence of Movements, each exploring a foundational pillar of OD&D’s design philosophy, each building upon the last. My goal is simple: to articulate the game as it was built, not as it has been remembered in various OSR projects. To treat OD&D with the rigor it deserves, and to give language to the ideas that shaped its play long before the hobby had words for them.
These first three Movements form the opening arc:
- Movement I: The World as Adversary
- Movement II: Class as Result Engine
- Movement III: Procedure as Worldview
Together, they establish the frame through which the rest of the Cycle will unfold — the world, the actors, and the machinery that binds them. Each Movement is written with academic discipline, but also with the mythic sensibility that OD&D quietly carried from its earliest days. Like the opening of a symphony, they introduce themes that will be developed, refracted, and deepened in later parts of the work.
I’m publishing these Movements not to elevate my own name, but to clarify OD&D’s. The game deserves to be understood with precision and respect, and if this work contributes even a small measure of that clarity, then it has done its job.
More Movements will follow in time. For now, I offer these first three as the foundation — the beginning of a larger restoration.
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