For those of you who do not own the OSRIC rulebooks or otherwise have access to them, you can find a link to the official references under Game Map -> File Links.
Local Rules on Character Generation:
1) Use Dice Roller. Roll 4d6, re-rolling 1s and dropping the lowest. If you roll 2 1s in your initial roll you re-roll one of them and drop the other. You may place your attributes as you wish or take them in the order that they are rolled.
2) All characters are starting at Level 4. NOTE: That is 12000 experience points which you can split between classes.
3) Use this table for starting money:
As you are working on your character take into consideration that the group was just 'chased' out of the City State. They will wind up in this little town/village where they will 'take' ownership of a small keep outside of town.
As they begin to interact with the locals they find out more about the situation and the story will move on from there.
Starting gold for a character of any level, based on this table:
We will be using the following alternate experience progression for this game:
The formula for determining XP is ([prior XP goal] + [2000 x the prior level number]). Thus, to go from 3rd level to 4th level, the new XP goal is 6000 (the prior goal for 3rd level) + 6000 (2000 x 3) = 12,000 XP for 4th level.
More on Character Progression
Another issue I would like to address is character level progression. While I realize the character creation rules indicate all characters start at 4th Level, that was intended for players to see from the progression table that they had 12000 experience points that they can split between classes. You could be a 3/3 or at 2/2/2 just as long as they total up to 12000 experience points. So, if anyone wants to update their character they are welcome to do so, just do it before you all leave Clovers Point.
Magic Items
So, for clarification, AD&D 1ed did not publish prices for magic items. Therefore, GMs used one of two methods for magical items when it came to character creation. First was very simple, you couldn't purchase magical items. That was the philosophy that the writers of 2ed. took as far as magic items. You could find them, you could convince someone to craft one, but nobody sold magic items.
The second option was to use previously published experience point values and multiply that by a factor of 2-4. Again there were two thoughts on this. The first was 2x for common, 3x for not very common, and 4x for rare, as far as availability. The second was just a random roll of a 4-side die with a roll of 1 indicating the item was not available for purchase in the local area.
After the publication of 3ed. many GMs began to use the prices published in the DM Guide for 3ed. I thought those prices were rather high compared to 1ed rules. It always seemed like that as each edition was published, the wealth within worlds increased because of the changes in the rules. As a result, moving your world from one edition to another meant a bit of updating and re-thinking as far as the 'treasure' that was available.
So, to clarify, this is the method that I use for all of my games:
Find the item that you are interested in obtaining on this set of tables:
Magic Item Tables
You will note there is a column for Experience Point Value and Gold Piece Value. Using the Experience Point Value column, find the magic item that you wish to obtain. Then make a 4-sided die roll and take the result times the Experience Point Value. That is your cost for the item. A 1 indicates the item is not available.