Shadowdark Finally Played Shadowdark

[Retreater]

A shame you have not corrected their misconceptions based on plainly horrible DMs who didnt have a clue.

With the exception of my wife, I don't game with the others regularly.
I also doubt my ability to run it well.

I will say however based on your various post campaign threads, any OSR game is a bad match for your wife.

Maybe, but she at least had hope that SD would be different by listening to interviews with Kelsey Dionne and watching a very fun live play at Origins '24 that she ran.
She claims to want only something light-hearted, fun, and empowering. She's a "butt kicker" to use the old appeal term. That seems difficult to do in the OSR.

 

[Retreater]

I was entertaining some homebrew ideas on how to fix that, but then in actual play it didn't ever impact my group (though it definitely made me question their unusual die rolling luck).

Right. I would give first casting for free. That way you could count on "critical" utility castings at least one time.
Other than that, I dunno, maybe the system would play okay for my tastes, provided the group got in the right mindset and you ran or prepped a good adventure for the system.

 

[Scribe]

She claims to want only something light-hearted, fun, and empowering. She's a "butt kicker" to use the old appeal term. That seems difficult to do in the OSR.

Yeah, light hearted and fun, certainly. Empowering? I think not lol

 

[EthanSental]

Enjoying the back and forth of this post versus the same type posts for 5e. I wrestle with my 2e nostalgia days and what I enjoy now as well. Even got the 2e redo For Gold and Glory and enjoyed reading through it, just hard to talk the group into it even with 2 of the 4 being from our original 2e group in the 90s.

Another group I try to play in that “loves” OSR falls apart after about 4th level in 5 straight campaigns using OSE, advanced OSE, labyrinth lord, advanced lab lord, etc. almost like a comic book reboot, energy is high at the start and just falls off and then flat pretty quickly…hiatus..new campaign…..hiatus….new campaign for 6 years straight. It never hits the feels we think we had from the late 80s or 90s D&D campaigns.

 

[Retreater]

It never hits the feels we think we had from the late 80s or 90s D&D campaigns.

My most nostalgic period included a consistent group of my best friends. We were in college, so no real jobs or responsibilities. We could stay up late, eat junk food. We hung out all the time, even outside the game. We talked motivations, campaign worlds.
Tragically, we lost one of our friends during that time. The campaign became a memorial to him and a way to explore our grief through symbolism, mythology, and roleplaying - examining religion, thoughts on the afterlife, our places in the world.
No game I'll ever run will match that. And I'm sure if we'd been playing Rifts or Cyberpunk at that time, I'd be here complaining that I couldn't "get back" to that perfect game.
And that's not the fault of Shadowdark, my goofy players on Sunday nights, the WotC controversies, or anything else I've been griping about on here for the past decade.

 

[Mannahnin]

She claims to want only something light-hearted, fun, and empowering. She's a "butt kicker" to use the old appeal term. That seems difficult to do in the OSR.

I don't think it's impossible, though. One of my players in my three year campaign, who played the main fighter, is rather like this (though he gets into some intensive RP as well). He definitely got a bit frustrated and complained at times in particularly difficult encounters and/or when the dice gave them an uphill climb.

But he rolled a character with a reasonably high Str and Con (and therefore HP, plus he made one character advancement decision which gave him some bonus HP), and he kicked a lot of ass. The flip side to character fragility in OSR games is that the monsters are also more fragile. They have lower HP, do less damage than in modern editions, and often die to a single spell (sometimes with no save, as with Sleep, or with a roll to cast game like 5TD or SD). And if you actually use Morale rules they even run away sometimes.

I remember you talking in another thread about your wife enjoying big damage numbers. One thing OSR games usually do is reduce the numbers overall, but when the average Orc has 5 HP, a d8+2 damage Fighter (normal sword and 16 Str in B/X, or 13 Str with a +1 sword) is getting one-shot kills on 75% of their hits. The Fighter needs to roll an 11 or better to hit, so one shot kills against them are only 37.5% of his attacks, but compare to a 5E 1st level Fighter and Orc- most likely d8+5 (assuming 16 Str and dueling style) vs 15 HP (only ever one-shot killing on a particularly good critical). The 5E Fighter has a better attack bonus (+5 vs AC 13) so only needs to roll an 8 or better to hit, but you can see how the B/X Fighter at the baseline is more deadly.

I like to give my B/X Fighters the "sweep" rule to multi-attack low HD foes too. Other folks like the Cleave house rule (extra attack whenever you drop an enemy). Either one can turn an OSR Fighter into a cuisinart against low level baddies.

I feel like DCC is also intended to support butt-kickers, with all the sweet stuff Warriors can do with Mighty Deeds, and the nutty critical hit charts. But the player does have to be able to roll with the punches of random fumbles, too.

 

[Mannahnin]

On reflection, I had a couple of good butt-kickers in online OD&D and B/X campaigns during the pandemic. An OD&D Fighter and an OSE Advanced Half Elf. It DID help that they had good ability scores, especially high Strength. And I had to modify my play style and be a bit less aggressive with the Half Elf when I got a couple of bad HP rolls in a row (at 1st and 2nd level I had been pretty lucky, both the rolls and in pushing my luck and not getting killed) and trail the other front-liners significantly.

In the most recent OSE game I've played in online I rolled much more mediocre stats, and I've been playing a very cautious MU and Thief instead.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

She claims to want only something light-hearted, fun, and empowering. She's a "butt kicker" to use the old appeal term. That seems difficult to do in the OSR.

I haven't run it, but that sounds a lot like Troika, which includes all sorts of fun adventures. As someone who grew up with Shel Silverstein, I've always pondered picking up Bridgetown.

 

[Retreater]

I don't think it's impossible, though.

We had a one-shot game of high-level Swords & Wizardry for an online convention. The writer of the adventure (who's generally speaking a good designer and very cool guy) ran it with some of the most outlandish pregens I've ever played in a con game.
I specifically remember a warrior-type who had a magic helm that could shoot magic missiles.
She had a great time with that one. It focused on the weirdness and gonzo nature of retro play without feeling like you're inching through a dungeon, avoiding every challenge and terrified to interact with anything interesting - which is how the OSR can feel to many players.
For me, most OSR forsakes big adventure, epic battles, glorious treasure and exchanges it for "slimy mule bones."

 

[Mannahnin]

We had a one-shot game of high-level Swords & Wizardry for an online convention. The writer of the adventure (who's generally speaking a good designer and very cool guy) ran it with some of the most outlandish pregens I've ever played in a con game.
I specifically remember a warrior-type who had a magic helm that could shoot magic missiles.
She had a great time with that one. It focused on the weirdness and gonzo nature of retro play without feeling like you're inching through a dungeon, avoiding every challenge and terrified to interact with anything interesting - which is how the OSR can feel to many players.
For me, most OSR forsakes big adventure, epic battles, glorious treasure and exchanges it for "slimy mule bones."

In my experience the early levels of old school games mostly require cautious play, but you can pick your spots to be a little more aggressive. And once you have a 2-3 levels under your belt you're usually not in danger of being dropped by a single round of hits by most opponents, so you can play a bit more bold.

Once you get into the mid levels you can often do a lot of butt-kicking, but the occasional incidence of level drain, save or die poison, or dragons breath keep you from getting too complacent. As a DM I find the art with those dangers is telegraphing and signposting them. But it's good to make Neutralize Poison/antivenom available too.

I think my games usually include "big adventure, epic battles, glorious treasure". But qualitative adjectives are in the eye of the beholder (or on the tongue of the applier).

The final encounter of the last OSE convention game I ran involved the party of 5 PCs interrupting a ceremony by three evil priests and a higher level witch/M-U trying to summon/awaken a fallen angel, meatshielded by about twenty cultists. The PCs were 4th level and managed to defeat all the enemies, with some judicious play and a bit of luck. I DID give the fighter-types the Sweep rule, so they were throwing 4 attacks per round against the cultists. The Thief with Ring of Invisibility and Pouch of Summoning Skeletons (which he had pickpocketed off the witch earlier in the adventure) was a key player.