The "I Didn't Comment in Another Thread" Thread

[Ryujin]

Five player groups? Why, in my day the DM didn't start turning people away from the open beginner's game until there were at least a dozen seats around the table! If you got killed and anyone was still waiting to play you had to give up your chair and join the queue while you rolled a new character, so you had people dropping in and out all night.

I won't even get in to how the DM added new "reinforcement" PCs during a dungeon run. Suffice to say some of the techniques were worthy of a Warner Brothers cartoon.

Funny how the OSR stuff never seems to resemble my actual childhood memories of gameplay very much...

I think that part of that is our original poor understanding of the rules created effective house rules for each and every individual gaming group. Imagine trying to play using just the 1e Players Handbook, because the Dungeon Masters Guide hadn't come out yet. We did.

 

[Thomas Shey]

They finally shut up about it, why would you do that!?!

As someone who may very well be the "they" in this sentence, because they arrived late and responded to a post before I concluded further discussion was pointless, I'd guess.

 

[Thomas Shey]

I think that part of that is our original poor understanding of the rules created effective house rules for each and every individual gaming group. Imagine trying to play using just the 1e Players Handbook, because the Dungeon Masters Guide hadn't come out yet. We did.

Or OD&D at all. People might not have called what they did there house rules, but they were still endemic in OD&D groups because the system was so schematic.

 

[Wofano Wotanto]

I think that part of that is our original poor understanding of the rules created effective house rules for each and every individual gaming group.

Heck, yeah. We were learning to play from people that didn't actually know how to play, and homebrew was everywhere and largely unstated. There really wasn't an established "normal" for D&D in the 70s IME, and it was still pretty wild and wooly even well into the 80s.

 

[CleverNickName]

Or OD&D at all. People might not have called what they did there house rules, but they were still endemic in OD&D groups because the system was so schematic.

One of the first rules in every DMG has always been some variation of "make your own rules." In that regard, there's no such thing as a house rule in D&D. If you use a house rule, you're following the rules-as-written.

 

[Cadence]

Five player groups? Why, in my day the DM didn't start turning people away from the open beginner's game until there were at least a dozen seats around the table! If you got killed and anyone was still waiting to play you had to give up your chair and join the queue while you rolled a new character, so you had people dropping in and out all night.

I won't even get in to how the DM added new "reinforcement" PCs during a dungeon run. Suffice to say some of the techniques were worthy of a Warner Brothers cartoon.

Funny how the OSR stuff never seems to resemble my actual childhood memories of gameplay very much...

The one at the local comic shop when I was in middle school was typically 8 to nearly 20. I don't know if our brand new DM is quite ready for that!

 

[Wofano Wotanto]

The one at the local comic shop when I was in middle school was typically 8 to nearly 20. I don't know if our brand new DM is quite ready for that!

Probably not, no. Better to start small. My actual first game was with two fellow newbies from school, one of whom bravely volunteered to DM his own dungeon. I distinctly remember the climactic battle had our two fighters facing off against a pair of dragons. They died in about three hits each (because MAGIC!) but they could also only be killed by one or the other of us because Ed wanted to be sure we each got to kill a dragon of our own.

I suspect there may have been some fudging going on.

Stupidly big groups weren't all that uncommon back in the day (the club's main RQ table usually had almost a dozen) but to this day the largest campaign (and it was a campaign, the thing lasted three years) I've ever been in was a WoD game that started off as Vampire and added new stuff as fast as the books came out. Ran overnight in the back room of the FLGS, and the average session saw 16 people at the table waiting for a chance to do something...anything. We peaked at 22 a couple of times, so he was trying to run a TTRPG with numbers that would have made a respectable LARP.

Simultaneously the best and worst thing ever, but people still talk about it around these parts today.

 

[Aeson]

One of the first rules in every DMG has always been some variation of "make your own rules." In that regard, there's no such thing as a house rule in D&D. If you use a house rule, you're following the rules-as-written.

Was Gary Gygax a sovereign citizen?

 

[Wofano Wotanto]

Was Gary Gygax a sovereign citizen?

"You can't give me a traffic ticket! I'm Gygax Dragonlord! I have my counter and character card from the Swords & Sorcery board game to prove it!"

I love the idea of Gary laminating one of those and using it as ID. If SPI homaged me on a character card I'd certainly do so.

 

[Ryujin]

One of the first rules in every DMG has always been some variation of "make your own rules." In that regard, there's no such thing as a house rule in D&D. If you use a house rule, you're following the rules-as-written.

Have you ever taken a good solid look at the weapon speed and length rules in 1e? We tried using them, for a very short time. I made up a character that had a high strength and dex, and was based on the use of dual daggers. Worked really well against halberd and two-handed sword users. The longer weapon got the first strike and then my character became a moulinex. Multiple attacks, with both hands, because of the weapon speed factor being less than half. Something like +5 damage from strength. Another +3 damage for being an expert in dagger.