Is a more OD&D feel game the natural evolutionary endpoint? Is OD&D actually AD&D?

[Ariosto]

I don't think Gygax was "glad to rubbish" D&D; as indicated (if memory serves) in that very column, he intended that it should remain in print.

His vision of AD&D as a standardized rules set seems to me more fully realized in WotC's games. I see 4E not as a return to rules-lightness and DM rulings but as a solidification of a rules-governed approach. Consider that the first three volumes have about twice the page count of the 1st ed. AD&D trilogy of MM, PHB and DMG.

I can see how the looser old-style approach might be something to which some more "advanced" players gravitate after having found it at first unsuitable. On the other hand, I can also see how it might actually be less intimidating for many novices.

The OD&D books indeed assumed a knowledge base uncommon among the unexpectedly wide audience to which the game's subject appealed. I had the benefit of being introduced via actual play with an experienced DM. However, I was not acquainted with the hobby of medieval war-gaming in miniature (and even WW2 board games from S&T magazine were something else). I found the Holmes Basic Set quite helpful, and suspect that I would have had a hard time with the LBBs ("little brown books") had I picked them up "cold".

For all that I prefer 1st ed., I can appreciate the greater accessibility of the 2nd ed. AD&D books.

WotC's games seem to me rather directed once again more at fairly hard-core hobbyists than at the general public. I see that not only in the rules-heaviness but in the increasing reliance on self-referential and other-game/media premises and assumptions (as opposed to history, mythology and classic genre fiction). D&D has become that much more "geeky."

That may be just what's wanted by a certain demographic ready to spend hundreds of dollars and many hours on the game, a market WotC naturally is eager to tap. Nothing in the past decade suggests to me an evolution of its product line toward OD&D's "Why have us do any more of your imagining for you?" attitude.

Old hands who never saw fit to "upgrade" to AD&D, 2E, 3E, 3.5E and 4E may have something in common with a wide segment of the public beyond our devoted game fandom. It's rare enough to find people whose eyes don't glaze over upon contemplating a 72-page rule book, much less a set more than ten times as long.

 

[S'mon]

Thanks for the Mythmere article Joe - I need to save this!

Article by "Matt Finch", creator of S&W. Posts as Mythmere.
*******************************************************

MY GUIDE TO MAKING AN OLD SCHOOL 3E CAMPAIGN

2) Don't allow purchase of magic items

12) slow down level advancement a bit, so that there are more combats and experiences between levels.

Here's a handy hint for an old school feel:

Do use these two - no or limited purchase of magic items, and slowed level advancement. I recommend sticking to a 1-10 or 1-12 level range.

BUT *do* use standard 3e encounter awards! Old school =/= "magic poor"! Non-spellcaster PCs such as Fighters absolutely must have access to decent magic items; arms & armour especially. If PCs can't buy gear, most of what they get will not be optimised for them. And that's ok.

If anything, you probably want to increase the number of +1 longswords and +2 daggers knocking around. Let them sell the excess - they can't do much with the money, after all - or (better) use them to equip hirelings.

It's also ok to tailor found magic to keep non-casters at parity with the casters. This is something you can't do in default D&D - give the underpowered Fighter a +5 sword, the Wizard demands it be sold and the cash split to buy stuff for everyone. Without free purchase of items, the +5 weapon sticks around and suddenly the player of the Fighter is having fun.

 

[joethelawyer]

How the PCs live their life? Are they gang members of some city mafia of some kind? Do they have power? Is this Pulp Fiction? Or are they like Martin Vail in Primal Fear (a bit more batmanish)?

The 3 PC's are bards. They are in a band. A band with a decidedly "Metal" look and feel. They wear studded leather armor when performing, etc.

I shouldn't have much trouble getting to do some risky fights or dungeon crawls once in a while. After all, If Mordenkainen, Robilar, the Grey Mouser and Conan come out of Castle Zagyg with a book describing a magic item like "Dirk Diggler's Ring of Enlarged Appendage" hidden somewhere on level 4, if they play true to the characters they have described to me, it ought to get them into the dungeon.

At higher levels, I would imagine the penultimate quest would be to find the three most powerful magic items ever made for bards:

Ringo's Drums of the Throbbing Beat
Sinatra's Amulet of the Seductive Crooner
and of course...
Tenacious D's Pick of Orgasmic Ectasy

They will desire these items as a means to increase their chances to pick up women, which is what all heavy metal band guys want anyhow.

Once they get the women, they will of course have to roll their Performance:Sex checks to see how they perform. A roll of 1 means they either can't rise to the occasion, or the performance ends after 3 seconds.

Afterwards, of course, they will have to roll a Fortitude Save vs. Venerial Disease, which a surprisingly high percentage of the population of women in Freeport have. At least the women they manage to seduce, that is. I have a particularly insidious list of types of VD to choose from.

The penultmate bard instruments will also help them perform against their Nemesis Band: The Block brothers, whoe are a bunch of Kids, relatively speaking, named Jordan, Jonathan, Joey, Donny and Danny. They will somehow always get the best gigs, and the best women, and thus be a level or so higher than my players' band at all times.

If while they are perfoming a concert in a bar the floor erupts underneath them, and a worm ridden by Fafhrd blasts into the room, with his sword buried in its back and him holding on for dear life, well, I guess they'll have to fight, huh? And then deal with that big hole leading straight into level 5 of Castle Zagyg that now exists.

Lots of ideas are percolating.

 

[Remathilis]

Lots of ideas are percolating.

Good luck with this; I once played in a band-themed game*, but the group was less "Spinal Tap" and more "Josey & the Pussycats" (they solve crime! between gigs!)

Unfortunately, (and I don't know if your group is like mine, so take it as my experience and not a prophecy) games like this have a potential to become "jokes" and lose steam quickly. No one actually took our PCs serious, and arcane references and joke-names made it worse. Eventually, the game degenerated into one long joke, people began to do stupid things for amusement (like barfights. In every bar in town.) and we grew bored with the "new town, new mystery" format. I think the total game lasted 5-7 good sessions plus 1-2 "this isn't working" sessions before we retired the band and started a normal D&D game.

We were in college and the DM was a good DM (one of the two best I've played with) but after a few games the novelty wore off and all we were left with was a running joke. (Similarly, the same thing happened when the other best DM tried a "Legion of Evil" game were we were all evil henchmen to a powerful wizard overlord. It degenerated quickly into slapstick as well. Totally different players, totally different DM.)

So if your players are "mature" enough to keep the game going without turning it into some form of sophomore joke, more power to ya.

* The best part of that game was the band name: Chaotic Good. Esp. when the main singer (an CG aasimar bard) dropped the best line of the the game.
Mayor: You would help us?
Bard: Yes sir, that's what we do.
Mayor: Not everyone would be so quick to come to a poor town's aid.
Bard: Not everyone is Chaotic Good.

 

[Jack Daniel]

** Notice there are retro-clones of OD&D (1974), B/X D&D (1976) and AD&D 1e (1977-79) but none of BECMI (1980~1994) <snip>

...Not yet, but give me a few more months.

 

[joethelawyer]

Good luck with this; I once played in a band-themed game*, but the group was less "Spinal Tap" and more "Josey & the Pussycats" (they solve crime! between gigs!)

Unfortunately, (and I don't know if your group is like mine, so take it as my experience and not a prophecy) games like this have a potential to become "jokes" and lose steam quickly. No one actually took our PCs serious, and arcane references and joke-names made it worse. Eventually, the game degenerated into one long joke, people began to do stupid things for amusement (like barfights. In every bar in town.) and we grew bored with the "new town, new mystery" format. I think the total game lasted 5-7 good sessions plus 1-2 "this isn't working" sessions before we retired the band and started a normal D&D game.

We were in college and the DM was a good DM (one of the two best I've played with) but after a few games the novelty wore off and all we were left with was a running joke. (Similarly, the same thing happened when the other best DM tried a "Legion of Evil" game were we were all evil henchmen to a powerful wizard overlord. It degenerated quickly into slapstick as well. Totally different players, totally different DM.)

So if your players are "mature" enough to keep the game going without turning it into some form of sophomore joke, more power to ya.

* The best part of that game was the band name: Chaotic Good. Esp. when the main singer (an CG aasimar bard) dropped the best line of the the game.
Mayor: You would help us?
Bard: Yes sir, that's what we do.
Mayor: Not everyone would be so quick to come to a poor town's aid.
Bard: Not everyone is Chaotic Good.

I know what you mean. I am going to mix in the serious stuff too, in good doses, so as to keep them on their toes. One minute trying to nail a groupie, the next running for their lives from a demon.

 

[M.L. Martin]

** Notice there are retro-clones of OD&D (1974), B/X D&D (1976) and AD&D 1e (1977-79) but none of BECMI (1980~1994) or 2e (1989). This, of course, discludes the idea Pathfinder is a 3e clone....

BECMI doesn't need a retroclone--it's got the Rules Cyclopedia.

2E suffers from its strengths in this regard--the great settings are the property of WotC, the openness to customization and making the rules your own reduces the common ground and the potential audience for clones unless you want to redo half the line, and much of the other space is taken up by C&C, OSRIC, et al. Besides, it suffers from having been caught between the opprobrium of the 1E loyalists and the works of Ryan Dancey, Master of d20 Propaganda.

 

[Umbran]

The characters do not want to adventure in the classic sense. they want to sing, get laid, get rich, and get drunk. If there's a fight, so be it, but they wont ever seek out a fight. That's their personalities as they have described it to me.

As players they want some action, of course, but the characters will not.

Honestly, where I come from, that reads not as a selling point, but as a problem. I am happy to provide hooks, but the characters need to be the kind who will grab the hooks - and those hooks are possibly deadly, and they know it. If I have to force the PCs to do cool stuff, we have problems. What you describe are not the sort of people who actually have a reason to seek out deadly situations.

You seem to come back to Fafhrd and Grey Mouser as an analogy. Yes, they had a love of wine, women, and song, but hey were also adrenaline junkies who sought out trouble on a regular basis. They wanted adventure, with a passion. It was part of the fullness of life, for them.

 

[Orius]

As I see it, "old school" is a feel, a vibe, an approach to playing. The essence of this "old school vibe" is not dependent upon what rules set one plays with but has more to do with how one uses the rules... It could be argued that 3E took a big step back to old school when it formulated the core mechanic, with a Difficulty Class that could be assigned on the fly (although, again, it is more a matter of how you approach the rules).

I feel the same way, it's the DM and flavor, not the rules that make it old school. And I'd say 3e didn't step back to old school, but rather it made old-school improvisation easier by having easy to assign DCs, and the "+/-2 when in doubt" modifier. Some players complain that 3e's skills take away from roleplaying; I feel the skill rules make it much easier to adjudicate a lot of non-class based actions that would have been rules on the fly in the old days.

It's part of why 3e is my system of choice. I find it relatively easy and smooth to run (though granted, I've never gone into the high or epic levels), and I feel comfortable DMing old school with it. But also my best DMing occured while using 3e rules, so maybe there's some nostalgia there.

Something I've taken from Grognardia though is that a module-based campaign is part of a paradigm that originated with 1e AD&D (and B/X to a lesser extent) - true OD&D play as originally envisioned did not involve modules at all, and was much more freeform environment exploration. I would like to do something like that, but I'm not sure if it's possible in the twice-monthly open-access games club setting I currently GM in.

As far as sanbox + modules - yes I have successfully done it this way previously. I think it works best with shorter modules that can be easily integrated with a setting. With longer modules it becomes more of an adventure path type campaign.

This was the structure of 1e, at least in the early days. It didn't have the campaign settings, you went through a series of modules. The modules of course didn't have the whole free form exploration of the original game because many of the memorable ones originated as tournament adventures that were played more or less one-shot. Perhaps Basic D&D played like this too. In any case, they were just a dungeon that a DM could drop anywhere in the world. And I agree with you that adventures were probably at their best when they were just that one dungeon with the plot hook that could go anywhere.

That changed with the rise of Dragonlance though. Granted, not all 1e modules were just a simple plug-and-play dungeon that could be dropped into a world, there were stinkers as well. But after Dragonlance, I think TSR turned to making adventures with big epic storylines, sometimes in a way that players found unsatifying (i.e. the Time of Troubles). This continued through 2e. I rarely bought adventures myself since I preferred to make up my own stuff, and sometimes trying to integrate a mini-campaign into a world isn't easy. However, I usually try to make sure my campaign has a place for Night Below or Return to the Tomb of Horrors, as I'd like nothing better than to run those in their entirety someday (I have used pieces from the beginning of RttToH in old school module fashion though, as I mastered the art of cribbing from published adventures).

I haven't bought adventures in 10 years though, all before 3e, so I can't say how the 3e adventure paths compare to older adventures.

 

[S'mon]

One minute trying to nail a groupie, the next running for their lives from a demon.

Do they get XP for nailing the groupie? If all they get is VD, the thrill of random sex is likely to get old fast.

Edit: I can't recall any swords & sorcery hero who ever got VD (maybe because syphilis seems to have been unknown prior to 1500?). Gray Mouser did get sexually tortured by the Goddess of Pain, though... I'd think that the occasional groupie turning out to be a vampire/succubus/werewolf/demon-witch* would work better - the fantastical analogues of VD - unless you're running an exceptionally grim'n'gritty game.

*You remember that scene from ConanTB, right?