I just played my first Rules Cyclopedia based game

[Philotomy Jurament]

LOL. Wow, is that funny.

Sadly, I can't claim that one. I stole it from elsewhere (PapersAndPaychecks, maybe?).

- I would say do not go for an "announce intent before initiative" rule. At this point I'm sold that that's one of the key "bad game design" mistakes...(In AD&D I require announcing actions only for people casting spells.)

The main argument for announcing is because of spell casters. If you don't announce prior to the roll, spell-casters have a too-clear picture of their chances of being interrupted. That is, announcing prior to the roll is a sort of check on spellcasters; they don't know if it's "safe" to cast a spell or not. I like having that uncertainty and check on spell-casting (tangentially, I think many of the additions in the AD&D initiative rules were made with the purpose of making spell casting more difficult, because at higher levels, the group with initiative tends to take out the enemy with high-level spells immediately unless there are some checks in place).

(There are other approaches, too. Personally, I use a phased combat sequence derived from Chainmail and Swords & Spells, which has its own way of providing checks on spellcasting. (Lately, I've also been using the simpler version proposed by T. Foster, but using it with the details of the full sequence in mind.)

I would also not give hp boosts. That radically warps the game as written. And it makes accounting afterwards a pain.

Full agreement. A "kicker" warps the game, and makes it into something subtly different.

 

[FriarRosing]

Thanks everyone for responding. It's cool how much individual support there is for the game. It seems like the people who play it are a little more... I don't know. It seems more like a love of the game thing than fans of the newer editions have. Less of just having fun with whatever is new, and more of a real enjoyment and love of the old system. That's how it seems to me, anyway. It's pretty awesome. I think players of the older editions are more passionate than a lot of a players dedicated to the new editions. That could be either good or bad, I suppose. But I think it's generally good.

I'm going to run B2 and depending on how it goes buy the other ones people recommended (b1, b3 and b5 seem pretty popular). I ordered X1, so hopefully it'll show up soon. Actually, I got the Basic and Expert boxed sets off of eBay. That may have been stupid, since I have Rules Cyclopedia, but I don't care. I wanted them to have them. I guess it's a collector type of thing. Also it'll be good to have multiple copies of the character creation and classes and such for my players when we start out. Right? I may get the b1-9 "In Search of Adventure" compilation on Amazon. It's expensive, but less so than if I tracked down all of the modules individually.

I'm excited to play the game again. I'm going to warn the players to, as many suggested, try to be more creative and problem solving than they are in 4e. They can't just rush into battle and be fine anymore. Healing surges don't exist.

I'm going to try and play the game by the book and not really do any house rules or anything. If things get too ridiculous I may do the unconscious at 0, dead at -10. I still like the huge death risk, though. I imagine it makes actually finding interesting solutions to problems and ways of defeating the monsters that much more rewarding.

I also feel like I should add this little detail about the adventure we played that I left out: to sneak the barkeeper out of the village and past the guards, the thief threw him hogtied over the town wall, and when he ran out to get him he found the poor guy getting mauled by seven wolves. The thief managed to scare the wolves off, though. That poor bartender...

 

[Tewligan]

I also feel like I should add this little detail about the adventure we played that I left out: to sneak the barkeeper out of the village and past the guards, the thief threw him hogtied over the town wall, and when he ran out to get him he found the poor guy getting mauled by seven wolves. The thief managed to scare the wolves off, though. That poor bartender...

Ha, that reminds me of an incident in my campaign several months ago. The party was trekking through a swamp with a cultist prisoner, but he was a bit of a liability to their travel. They ended up tying him to a log and leaving him, with plans to come back for him as they left the dungeon. Imagine their dismay when they came back only to find the prisoner missing, and only splinters and small chunks of wood remaining where something BIG had come along and found a handy snack. Oh, they hightailed it out of the swamp after that!

But I digress - glad you had a great game, and welcome to the old school fold!

 

[Jack Daniel]

Classic D&D is my edition of choice now. It was the first version of the game that I'd ever played (though I quickly switched to AD&D 2e back then), and I lately switched back to Classic (about a year before 4e was announced). I, too, am a member of the video game generation. I never would have played D&D if I hadn't had friends first hook me on Final Fantasy and Shining Force. Prior to my first exposure to console RPGs, I was a dedicated fan of arcade, platform, and fighting games. My gaming life began and ended with Pac-Man, Mario, and Mortal Kombat. Now it spends most of its time in the Rules Cyclopedia.

CD&D is great mainly because it's complete. You can sit down and play a whole campaign with one or two slender rulebooks, the stats are always easy to read at a glance (especially monster stats, O Deus mi, what a difference!), and it's really, really easy to run a game on the fly. The rules lend themselves well to a good balance between player-driven and DM-driven campaigns, and between talky roleplaying and wargamey action.

One thing that I've discovered in my CD&D games: don't dedicate yourself to using or not using minis and a battlemat. When the players are slogging through a dungeon, and the biggest rooms they run into are 30' x 30', yes, then it kind of makes sense to ignore minis for the sake of brevity. But even well into the Rules Cyclopeda, some of those wargame conventions from Chainmail and original D&D remain, and the Classic D&D rules are very well-suited to minis (better even than 1e and 2e, IMO). It really ehances the fun of the game to play out all of the big battles just like you would with any 3e or 4e battle.

And with a dungeon like the Keep on the Borderlands's "Caves of Chaos," sometimes you can just map out one entire section and play the whole thing as if it were a single battle encounter! That makes for a really memorable dungeon crawl, believe you me.

 

[ExploderWizard]

I'm going to run B2 and depending on how it goes buy the other ones people recommended (b1, b3 and b5 seem pretty popular). I ordered X1, so hopefully it'll show up soon. Actually, I got the Basic and Expert boxed sets off of eBay. That may have been stupid, since I have Rules Cyclopedia, but I don't care. I wanted them to have them. I guess it's a collector type of thing. Also it'll be good to have multiple copies of the character creation and classes and such for my players when we start out. Right?

Which basic/expert set did you get? My favorite is the Moldvay, Cook/Marsh sets but the Mentzer set is a great read/play through for newcomers. In either case it wasn't a stupid purchase.

Even though character death is more common, the ease of creating a new one and getting back into things helps with that. It helps to not think of a character dying as "losing". You can't really lose an open game without a defined end.

.......that poor bartender. It just wasn't his day

 

[FriarRosing]

Which basic/expert set did you get? My favorite is the Moldvay, Cook/Marsh sets but the Mentzer set is a great read/play through for newcomers. In either case it wasn't a stupid purchase.

I'm pretty sure I got the Mentzer one. It's one of the later printings with the art by Larry Elmore (I think).

 

[ExploderWizard]

I'm pretty sure I got the Mentzer one. It's one of the later printings with the art by Larry Elmore (I think).

Cool. You will join the thousands who mourn Aleena and wish for the death of Bargle. I hope you get him!!

 

[T. Foster]

I may get the b1-9 "In Search of Adventure" compilation on Amazon. It's expensive, but less so than if I tracked down all of the modules individually.

Caveat emptor. I never owned this, but from what I understand several of the adventures have been pretty heavily edited (B1 is missing completely except for the map, The Keep on the Borderlands is missing the keep, The Lost City is missing the lost city, Horror on the Hill is missing the hill) and those modules that are closest to being complete are generally the worst-regarded ones (green-version B3, B6, B8, B9). I'd say you're likely better off buying hardcopies of B1, B4, B5, and downloading the free pdf of the original (orange) version of B3 from the WotC website (because buying a hardcopy of that will set you back a couple hundred $).

 

[FriarRosing]

I, too, am a member of the video game generation. I never would have played D&D if I hadn't had friends first hook me on Final Fantasy and Shining Force. Prior to my first exposure to console RPGs, I was a dedicated fan of arcade, platform, and fighting games. My gaming life began and ended with Pac-Man, Mario, and Mortal Kombat. Now it spends most of its time in the Rules Cyclopedia.

I mainly got started with Starcraft and Descent back in the day. My first exposer to D&D was on TV. I remember there was an episode of Dexter's Laboratory where he and his friends are playing a game this is obviously supposed to be representative of D&D. The whole episode is about them and their adventures in the game. I remember my mind being blown, and thinking that was the coolest game I could possibly imagine. I even attempted to emulate what they were doing by making my own game with the same kind of schtick. It didn't work very well. It was years later before I realized that's what D&D. Before that I just thought it was some board game with dragons.

Also I guess my first RPG type experience was with the first Baldur's Gate. The AD&D logo at the top was one of the reasons I bought it. I wanted to play the game, but had no idea where I could buy the stuff and didn't know anyone who would want to play. That's what I thought, at least.

I digress. I apologize.

 

[Philotomy Jurament]

Actually, I got the Basic and Expert boxed sets off of eBay. That may have been stupid, since I have Rules Cyclopedia, but I don't care.

No, it wasn't stupid. The RC is great to have, but it's good to have the boxed sets, too, for clarification and comparison.

I may get the b1-9 "In Search of Adventure" compilation on Amazon. It's expensive, but less so than if I tracked down all of the modules individually.

You're better off getting the individual modules. I was disappointed with B1-9; many of the adventures are condensed (in one case you only get the map!), and some of the stuff they excised is great and worth having.