Thinking About OD&D
Ulrick
First Post
From the website...
Philotomy Jurament said:
Wow...this would throw a whole new perspective on the game. While in most cases the dice would average out, at times a character would have a really good day or a really bad day. Maybe a low hp total means that the character got sick or is depressed about something. A high hp total could mean a character is feeling really good ("I feel like I could take on the whole Empire...") or the character is extremely focused and clear-headed.
EDIT: Now that I've thought about it, having PCs roll their HD at the start of the day might cut down on the 15min adventuring day. After all, the players might want to conserve their resources, push on, because who knows how things will be the next day...
hmmm...
Last edited:
Excellent as always.
One thing that I think is important to recognize is that consistency between campaigns is not required. Consistency within a campaign is good, so that the players have a basis for making good decisions (you can't "challenge" the players if you merely pull the rug out from under them all the time). But between campaigns, I think consistency is neither necessary or even entirely desirable.
For example, in my EPT game I've gone what I consider a rather "soft" route on character survival. I actually let them survive into negative HPs if they get immediate healing; they can go down to "-X" where X equals their level. Although character death is a possibility and has been a reality, this group likes to put a fair amount into their backstories and crafting fairly entertaining interpesonal relationships. The current group size is also only 5 players and each is only running one character. So I've eased up on character death (though really only a little bit) because it helped tailor the game to their wants and expectations.
There's an interplay in tailoring a game - if you make it entirely fitting their expectations then they'll never be surprised or challenged. I've got a couple "modernists" in the group and although they knew going into the game that a megadungeon figured prominently, it's surely not the campaign that they would have written. Another is a grognard who is not used to the level of setting "texture" and has really taken to it. So most folks seem to get their horizons broadened a little bit, which I think is nice.
Just another reason why I like Old School rules. I can say to my group "Hey gang, let's run this rule thus" and the whole system doesn't fall apart and nothing becomes "broken". Likewise, the group can submit amendments to the rules without fear... they have submitted several so far, some of which I have rejected and some I have adopted.
It's nice when the rules are just so darn easy-going.
Jack Daniel
dice-universe.blogspot.com
Interesting thoughts as always, Phil.
Reading through some of your older musings, I'm struck by how much of my own OD&D games would probably be considered heretical by most of the grognard community. Just to give a few examples:
- I don't award XP for treasure, and instead, I quintuple all the XP awarded for defeating monsters. Treasure remains a goal and a reward of and in itself, but I find that PCs in my campagins tend to fling themselves at wandering monsters and risk more combats, even to the point where a heavily wounded party will rather barricade themselves in a dungeon room to sleep through night rather that retreat back to town. It changes the whole feel of the game from "we're neutral swords & sorcery plunderers seeking loot" to "we're lawful high-fantasy heroes trying to wipe out the monster scourge."
- Having tried D&D with and without skills, I can honestly say that I'd much rather have a skill system. I think that there needs to be some way to ennumerate the player characters' background knowlege. There also needs to be some simple game rule for adjudicating those situations where characters want to attempt to use skills that they don't neccessarily know, like when a fighter wants to try and Move Silently. (I am not of the opinion that this is a special superpower unique to thieves, or that it's different from "moving quietly.) In other words, I think the d20 System gets it right insofar as skills should be broadly defined, and broadly applicable to all characters, even untrained (quite unlike AD&D proficiencies). But to make my skill system feel appropriately OD&D, I use a six-sided die to check the skills, roughly analogous to the common OD&D rule that humans will find a trap or hear a noise with a 1 in 6 chance of success, and demihumans can generally do the same on 2 in 6. This has allowed me to build a complete, simple, and elegant skill system based entirely on six ranks of ability, plus special bonuses for demihumans, which meshes flawlessly with other OD&D rules.
- Unlike a lot of old-school purists on Dragonsfoot and whereever, I don't believe that it's mollycoddling badwrongfun to change the rules that govern character death. Rather than "dead is dead at 0," it kind of makes more sense to let characters "hover at death's door" for a while. This is because I have always interpreted hit points to mean "how long can your character dodge wounding blows?" High level characters don't need an inherent bonus to their AC, because the game already has a mechanic for experenced characters' improving ability to defend themselves: increasing hit points. But it's only the hit that drops you to 0 hp that actually connected enough to hurt you. At that point, I just have characters save or die, and the characters that save are wounded and helpless but still clinging to life. (It does tend to make high-level characters difficult to kill, but that's okay with me, because if a player has invested that much time in a character, I think that it should be that way.)
Needless to say, this requries a degree of reinterpreation, becuase it means that "damage" to characters usually does not mean "wounds." Characters who have lost 90% of their hit points are very tired, but they aren't bruised and bleeding. The clerical spell cure light wounds has to be treated more like cure light fatigue. Similarly, characters don't retreat back to town because they're on the cusp of bleeding to death; they exit the dungeon when they're simply too tired to go any further. It's another little change that tweaks the feel of the game, perhaps making the player characters a little bolder in the face of risks, but I much prefer to run a game where the players more brave than cautious. It makes things feel more heroic that way.
Reading through some of your older musings, I'm struck by how much of my own OD&D games would probably be considered heretical by most of the grognard community. Just to give a few examples:
- I don't award XP for treasure, and instead, I quintuple all the XP awarded for defeating monsters. Treasure remains a goal and a reward of and in itself, but I find that PCs in my campagins tend to fling themselves at wandering monsters and risk more combats, even to the point where a heavily wounded party will rather barricade themselves in a dungeon room to sleep through night rather that retreat back to town. It changes the whole feel of the game from "we're neutral swords & sorcery plunderers seeking loot" to "we're lawful high-fantasy heroes trying to wipe out the monster scourge."
- Having tried D&D with and without skills, I can honestly say that I'd much rather have a skill system. I think that there needs to be some way to ennumerate the player characters' background knowlege. There also needs to be some simple game rule for adjudicating those situations where characters want to attempt to use skills that they don't neccessarily know, like when a fighter wants to try and Move Silently. (I am not of the opinion that this is a special superpower unique to thieves, or that it's different from "moving quietly.) In other words, I think the d20 System gets it right insofar as skills should be broadly defined, and broadly applicable to all characters, even untrained (quite unlike AD&D proficiencies). But to make my skill system feel appropriately OD&D, I use a six-sided die to check the skills, roughly analogous to the common OD&D rule that humans will find a trap or hear a noise with a 1 in 6 chance of success, and demihumans can generally do the same on 2 in 6. This has allowed me to build a complete, simple, and elegant skill system based entirely on six ranks of ability, plus special bonuses for demihumans, which meshes flawlessly with other OD&D rules.
- Unlike a lot of old-school purists on Dragonsfoot and whereever, I don't believe that it's mollycoddling badwrongfun to change the rules that govern character death. Rather than "dead is dead at 0," it kind of makes more sense to let characters "hover at death's door" for a while. This is because I have always interpreted hit points to mean "how long can your character dodge wounding blows?" High level characters don't need an inherent bonus to their AC, because the game already has a mechanic for experenced characters' improving ability to defend themselves: increasing hit points. But it's only the hit that drops you to 0 hp that actually connected enough to hurt you. At that point, I just have characters save or die, and the characters that save are wounded and helpless but still clinging to life. (It does tend to make high-level characters difficult to kill, but that's okay with me, because if a player has invested that much time in a character, I think that it should be that way.)
Needless to say, this requries a degree of reinterpreation, becuase it means that "damage" to characters usually does not mean "wounds." Characters who have lost 90% of their hit points are very tired, but they aren't bruised and bleeding. The clerical spell cure light wounds has to be treated more like cure light fatigue. Similarly, characters don't retreat back to town because they're on the cusp of bleeding to death; they exit the dungeon when they're simply too tired to go any further. It's another little change that tweaks the feel of the game, perhaps making the player characters a little bolder in the face of risks, but I much prefer to run a game where the players more brave than cautious. It makes things feel more heroic that way.
Philotomy Jurament
First Post
Eh, I don't know about that. There might be a few out there that would look on it that way, but I think the OD&D community is pretty accepting of house rules. Everyone has their own opinion (often strongly held and strongly expressed), but the nature of the system encourages different house rules and different approaches, so there's not really much "this is the one true right way to play OD&D" out there.
I move around on this question. I've done dead at zero. I've done the AD&D way. I've done "can survive to -(PC level)." I've done a saving throw (make it, you're just down and out, miss it, you're dead).
Currently, I'm using a table from Fight On! that you roll on when you're reduced to 0 or less.
Philotomy Jurament
First Post
Deuce Traveler
Adventurer
I'm using the idea where the characters only get XP for each gold they spend. I'm running the BECMI campaign here, in fact, with the Judges Guild products. The trick, I find, is making sure the characters have a reason to blow or lose their money as fast as they attain it.
Philotomy Jurament
First Post
Do you have a copy of JG First Fantasy Campaign? Arneson had a system for awarding XP based on gold and treasure spent in seven areas of interest: wine, women, song, wealth hoarded (xp lost if stolen/spent), fame, religion/spiritualism, and hobby. Each PC could have one or more areas of interest, and spending treasure on a category would result in a % of the total value, depending on the category's relative importance to the PC.
Aus_Snow
First Post
Thanks for keeping everyone (here) updated, PJ. I'm still planning to run some OD&D. Hasn't happened yet, though I've made a couple of other forays back into old school territory over the last two or so years.
Your observations and explorations of its various aspects have been quite enlightening, and I'm evidently not the only one for whom that holds true.
Cheers.
Your observations and explorations of its various aspects have been quite enlightening, and I'm evidently not the only one for whom that holds true.
Cheers.
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