"?" about "The D&D Rules Cyclopedia"

[Remathilis]

Perhaps the answer is just work around the RC limitations. For instance, thieves become an NPC henchman class, hired as the party's "burglar". Demihuman PCs who reach the limit retire, and the player then runs a new human PC of the appropriate level who has heard of the party's fame and exploits, and seeks to join them now there's a vacancy. By that level you're probably looking for a change, and for some reason the idea of demihumans retiring seems to "fit" (perhaps LotR is to blame for this impression).

Would that keep it from bothering you? It bothers me too, but the above workarounds seem to make the RC viable again. And as jdrakeh points out, you need the D&D RC branding to get players.

Oh, I could easily work around the issues in the RC if I wanted to (many of the problems are less egregious in RC than in 1e or 2e) esp with some optional rules found IN the RC (for removing demi-human level limits) and out (going with a more lenient version of thief skills, limiting magic that breaks the thief class).

Perhaps some time in the future I'd organize an old-school RC D&D game. Perhaps...

 

[Urbannen]

BD&D/RC are also my favorite version of D&D. However, I'm thinking of getting rid of all my gazetteers because frankly I don't think I will ever be able to play in that system because of lack of players. My impression is that BD&D is more attractive to European sensibilities; it seems like a lot of the people in the Mystara on-line community are European. (I live in Los Angeles, which isn't exactly the RPG mecca of the world.)

I ran a modified BD&D game for friends about ten years ago. I used spontaneous spellcasting, which worked very well. There were no thieves in the party, but the thief class is bad as written. My planned fix would be to have a system in which the thief skills functioned like non-weapon proficiencies, so that lower-level thieves would actually have a chance to be useful.