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  1. Jack Daniel

    D&D General Comparing editions: What is Strength?

    I prefer to use all of the stats after the fashion of Str, Int, and Wis in LBB OD&D — they're mainly there just to give small adjustments to earned XP based on your chosen class, so that after you roll stats, you're gently nudged in the direction of picking a class that matches your abilities...
  2. Jack Daniel

    D&D 5E (2024) Is the 5E player base going to split?

    I have to say, it is mighty nice to be off the treadmill. I find the solid ground to be quite pleasant, especially where there's grass. I know. And so do you, and so does everyone else. There is no conceivable world where WotC abandons the PHB/DMG/MM model. It's tradition, it's nostalgia, it's...
  3. Jack Daniel

    OSR Interested in dipping my toe into OSR but don’t know where to start. Any recommendations?

    If there's a game that should be regarded as the universal entry-point into the OSR, it's Basic Fantasy RPG, a B/X clone with a handful of key tweaks (ascending AC, no alignment, no race-classes, no level limits, and an XP system that isn't so stingy with awards that come from sources other than...
  4. Jack Daniel

    Managing My Expectations? (+)

    It may not work for everybody, but I can attest that managing my expectations worked wonders for me. Finally coming around to the notion that D&D campaigns don't need to be save-the-world fantasy epics and players don't need to be "always on" improv actors staved off a crisis for me and kept me...
  5. Jack Daniel

    Space Adventure RPGs

    Level 1 medieval fantasy RPGs are easy to DM. It's easy to handle players who have to scrape through mud before they can afford plate armor, and to handle wizards who can occasionally plink someone with a magic missile but can't hurl fireballs yet. Level 20 medieval fantasy RPGs are rather...
  6. Jack Daniel

    D&D General The Rubber Band Effect

    I enjoy running TSR D&D. I do not enjoy running WotC D&D. I have a few hypotheses for why this is so, but this isn't the time or the place to get into them. Suffice it to say, "nostalgia" does not make the list. The TSR editions are good games in their own right. They're just aimed at a...
  7. Jack Daniel

    D&D 5E (2014) D&D and who it's aimed at

    Is "disneyfication" seriously a controversy here? Like, seriously? Sweet zombie Jesus on a pogo stick, that's sad. I'll take some lighthearted whimsy over the "ouch, I almost cut myself on all that edge!" gritty grim darkness that dominates the artpunk wing of the OSR these days. The only...
  8. Jack Daniel

    What’s your favorite boxed set?

    Ravenloft: Masque of the Red Death, hands down.
  9. Jack Daniel

    What did you study in college?

    Majored in English and physics, minored in anthropology and mathematics. Got my MA in English (focused on Old and Middle English), and I have some grad-level coursework in medical physics (but no degree beyond the BS).
  10. Jack Daniel

    D&D General What are you prepping for your next D&D session? (+)

    I already had spell cards made up for all of the 1st level magic-user, cleric, and druid spells in BECMI. But now that two new players both rolled up artificers, I need device and gadget cards for my artificer class.
  11. Jack Daniel

    D&D 5E (2014) What rules for older editions have DMs imported to their own 5e games?

    One rule I back-port from 3rd to 1st is casters being allowed to memorize lower-level spells in higher level slots. It just makes sense.
  12. Jack Daniel

    D&D General How do players feel about DM fudging?

    I don't fudge now because when I first started playing D&D, my first DM was an enthusiastic fudger and pantser, and frankly, it sucked not feeling like anything I did in the game actually mattered.
  13. Jack Daniel

    D&D General My Old School

    Fifteen years of OSR blogs… honestly, I haven't bothered keeping track of most of it. This article on freeform fighting maneuvers is a particular favorite though. Excellent house rule for any old-school game.
  14. Jack Daniel

    D&D General My Old School

    A solid, thorough list. I don't agree with every single point, but it does a good job big-picture of summing up how most grognards and retro-gamers describe the old-school and OSR play-styles. I'd personally draw the "old-school vs. modern" cutoff line much earlier than 2000 — the trad...
  15. Jack Daniel

    AD&D 2E 2e Multiclassing Play Balance without Level Limits

    Well sure, but let's not forget that this is a piece of game-design put together by a wargamer who probably thought that 3 demihumans out of 5 player characters was 2½ demihumans too many (and who believed that everybody would want to play Conan because wanting to play Gandalf was weird and...
  16. Jack Daniel

    AD&D 2E 2e Multiclassing Play Balance without Level Limits

    The demihuman level limits are there to enforce AD&D's human-centric genre of sword & sorcery fantasy. AD&D assumes lots of self-interested adventurers running around the fantasy world, the most successful of whom will eventually become the region's local lords, patriarchs, wizards, and other...
  17. Jack Daniel

    Anyone else have a hard time adjusting to Str, Dex, Con

    I started playing with Classic D&D (which still used the SIWDCΧ order) and AD&D 2e (where the SDCIWΧ order originated), and I always liked the latter better. It made sense to block the stats into three physical and three mental, and I didn't really understand at the outset where the Classic...
  18. Jack Daniel

    A random question about HeroQuest, Chaos, and Dread

    Ooh, Hope. That's really good. I like that. I had been thinking either "Valor" or "Freedom", but "Hope" is just as much of an ideal as "Dread" is a… well, whatever the demotivational opposite of an ideal is. Excellent suggestion!
  19. Jack Daniel

    A random question about HeroQuest, Chaos, and Dread

    In the new version of the HeroQuest game recently released by Hasbro, "Chaos Warriors" and other similar enemies were renamed "Dread Warriors" and the like, probably to avoid getting entangled with any GW IP. But now I have to ask… let's imagine that one were going to play a full-on RPG set in a...
  20. Jack Daniel

    D&D General Why do you prefer DMing over Playing?

    Ah, the zeal of the converted in combination with the rebellious feeling of countering the mainstream. It makes for a heady brew that compels us to preach the Good Word. The indie RPG movement has its pet issues ("the mainstream is GM authority and combat-focused sim, but distributed authority...
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