Dragons At Dawn rpg, Old School Dave Arneson Style

[darjr]

First heard about this clone of D&D before there was a D&D at Havards Blackmoor Blog: Dragons at Dawn RPG released!, anybody here have it? I want to check it out.



I do see Harvard posted some reviews, Havards Blackmoor Blog: Dragons at Dawn Reviews!, I'm very interested in this for a few reasons.

First it sounds like a great game.
Second I'm very curious about the history of the game.
Third I wonder at how close it is to OD&D.

I wonder if those original games before even Arneson's D&D would make for decent RPG's. Especially the one that took place in a banana republic undergoing a revolution where the 'winning' player escaped in a helicopter throwing pamphlets of propaganda out the window.

 

[Aus_Snow]

I don't think I've been quite to overcome with curiosity about a RPG for. . . well, it seems like a loooong time, anyway.

Pre-D&D D&D. Huh. Dave Arneson's game. Wow. I need to pick up a copy, methnks.

 

[Doug McCrae]

Now *that's* what I call old school. Makes OD&D 1974 look new school.

 

[Piratecat]

Coooool.

 

[WSmith]

I would love to check that out.

 

[Tav_Behemoth]

This is the system we used for my Blackmoor Dungeons event at the Arneson Gameday in NYC. I'd been following Daniel's archaeology of the rules from the early days of Arneson's campaign at the OD&D boards with great interest, and was psyched to get to play a pre-release version!

Bottom line was that Dragons at Dawn was as much fun to play as to read (and to read about their re-creation). A more detailed description of the shenanigans we got up to using these rules is at The Mule Abides.

I will also be using a house-ruled mishmash of DaD and OD&D for the Blackmoor Dungeons events I'll be running at Gen Con, if you were one of the dozen people who got into those despite the server crashes (or if you want to PM me in hopes of organizing another run off the grid).

 

[Tav_Behemoth]

I wonder if those original games before even Arneson's D&D would make for decent RPG's. Especially the one that took place in a banana republic undergoing a revolution where the 'winning' player escaped in a helicopter throwing pamphlets of propaganda out the window.

That's Braunstein you're thinking of. I missed a chance to play it with creator Dave Wesely at Gen Con 2005, but he's still around and could be coaxed to do so again; in the meantime you can get a good handle on it here and here.

Yes, it's satisfying to be like "1974 D&D is soo new-school." Wesely is king here; he and Arneson were playing wargame rules from 1880 in the early '70s! Being retro means realizing you'll never be as retro as those dudes.

 

[WSmith]

Very interesting, Tav.