D&D 5E making 5E more "old school" (updated)

[Arilyn]

A significant amount of that "old school" stuff is garbage that we all used to ignore in AD&D anyway. Racial level caps is a great example--I don't know anyone who actually took that seriously.

Back in the "old school" days of D&D, almost no two games were run the same, because just about every DM understood the need to take the basic framework, use what you liked and worked for your group and style, and make up what you needed to fill in the gaps. Perhaps the biggest difference between "old school" D&D and the current game is the idea that the "Rules as Written" have some kind of cosmic importance. We never used to get hung up on figuring out the technical nuances of exactly what Gary wrote, we just worried about figuring out the way we thought it ought to work, which became The Rule. We could always go back and change it if it caused problems.

Which is what the OP is doing with 5e, but asking for input. Which is a big reason to have forums.
I'm no fan of old school play, and my initial reaction was, "go play an osr game", but this is an obvious answer, which means that's not what Frankie 1969 is looking for.

 

[jaelis]

Perhaps the biggest difference between "old school" D&D and the current game is the idea that the "Rules as Written" have some kind of cosmic importance. We never used to get hung up on figuring out the technical nuances of exactly what Gary wrote, we just worried about figuring out the way we thought it ought to work, which became The Rule. We could always go back and change it if it caused problems.

Funny I would not have said 5e was characterized by any particular reverence for rules as written. The designers pretty explicitly say not to worry about it, and popular streaming games don't make much fuss about it.

Of course, people talking about the rules online do fuss about it, but that's the nature of the medium. Or just, the conversation. If you are talking about rules, people are going to talk about the rules as written. I doubt that was any different back in the day. They didn't have forums back then, but I bet 99.99% of dnd players now don't get online to talk about the rules either.

 

[Monayuris]

I share the feeling of making 5E more 'old school', but I would try to approach this by keeping the rules mostly as is and just run the game with an old school approach. You don't need to rewrite the entire 5E system to get an old school feel.

What I would do to make D&D 5E more old school:

1. Stick to the Basic Rules PDF only. If you are going for a more old school feel, you don't need special classes and mechanics to express every possible character option. Barbarians are just fighters... it is a role-playing decision to have your fighter character come from 'uncivilized lands'. The Wizard class covers mages, warlocks, sorcerers all the same. (I would maybe open wizard and cleric classes to the other subclass options in the PHB... why have a druid class when you have a nature cleric)

2. Throw out skills and tool proficiencies. Make a concerted effort to reduce the number of ability / skill checks that you call for. Player input and choices and description matter more than a roll of the die. Only request an ability check if there is no other clear means of adjudicating an action. Instead of skills, grant proficiency bonus based on class / race / background.

3. Gold for XP. Take XP for monsters and trash it (or reduce by 1/4 or so). Grant 1 XP per GP recovered. It should work out fine... this blog did the math: http://blogofholding.com/?p=6760

4. Simplify initiative... just do side initiative (its in the DMG). Go one step further and do side initiative every round.

5. Remove damage dealing cantrips.

6. Look at the DMG options for healing and resting. Look at healer's kit dependency, slow natural healing, gritty realism options. Honestly though, the short/long rest recovery is a boon in disguise... these options just allow the party to have more exploration stamina and, ultimately, you want your players to be able to experience more of the cool stuff you created for them.

7. Design dungeons and encounters holistically, don't fret about maintaining proper CR and XP budgets. Put 20 goblins in a lair and let the players figure out how to deal with it. When designing traps and such, don't think in terms of DC's needed to disarm, instead think in terms of what possible actions the players can take to overcome it.

 

[Frankie1969]

I just dug out my box of old books and put them on my gaming supplies shelf. If my group wants to try actual 1E, it'll be glorious and terrible at the same time. Hell yes we're calculating speed factor.

 

[Tony Vargas]

One part of the feel of 1e was the extreme vulnerability of those w/o armor in melee, the very high value of said armor at low level when 'level-appropraite' 1-HD-and-less humanoids could barely hit you in splint/banded & shield, and the danger of casting in melee, and the profound lack of spell resources at very low level...

• the actual mechanics of casting in melee were cumbersome and contradictory, but bringing back AoOs for casting in melee would work easily given 5e's d20 genetics.
• you could drop the cap on AC bonuses from DEX for medium and heavy armor, and just boost the prices of the latter a bit, and restore hard restrictions on armor (only the classes that get proficiency at level 1 can use it, at all, period). Or you could just boost medium & heavy armors by an AC point or two...
• obviously get rid of unlimited cantrips, use a trade-in formula, like 1 1st-level spell = 4 cantrips, or make cantrips spells that you cast at the begininig of the day that give you the cantrip all day. Damage could thus scale with slot instead of character level.
• expand concentration to include the act of casting (so when you're hit while casting make that check or lose the slot), and restore 1e restrictions/requirements to cast.
• start with 1 spell/day.
• reduce proficiency bonuses with weapons for the non-combatant classes, like wizard - half proficiency, say.
• oh, and, scale saves with level across the board - in 1e, everyone's saves got better as they leveled, all six of them - the fighters' got better /faster/ as well.

 

[jasper]

Con saves for ageing. Max ages. Con Saves for coming back from the dead. You are dead at 0, -10, or your con score.
Reduce hit point dice by 1 step. Hello 1d4 wizards.

 

[extralead]

Things I'm still thinking about: henchmen, retainers & followers. They were a big deal at some tables.

Was just thinking about the topic and found this thread. Loyalty is covered in Tomb of Annihilation and in the 5e Dungeon Master's Guide, but nowhere to the degree it is covered in the 1e AD&D DMG.

I was initially thinking of keeping the 5e system, but using all of the factors in 1e Loyalty to affect the numbers in 5e (translating the 1e percentage system to the x-to 20 5e system). Seems too-simple. I am definitely interested what others have to say on the matter.

What I long for most: the 1e AD&D Bard. The intricate Non-lethal and Weaponless Combat Procedures. The Construction and Siege system and how everything in the 1e AD&D economy logically fit.

What I like about 5e: Subclasses and Feats, especially how they integrate to the underlying Ability Score system. There is a ground truth in 5e that 1e could never muster. Well, except the economy funny enough. There is an ontologically-creative supersystem in 5e that makes a Tiefling Druid, an Aasimar Sorcerer, and a Drow Bard in reach -- approachable. There is an immediate, nodding affirmative response to the Gnome Paladin, the Dwarf Wizard, and the Halfling Warlock. It's elevated.

What I love about 5e: Combat is fast. I've been stuck in 1e AD&D combats that last hundreds of rounds. Funny again is the action economy in 5e. It creates a flow that moves things forward while keeping it interesting the whole time. If the dumb Evil Wizard keeps spamming an Abjurer Wizard with Fire Bolt, the Abjurer can counter-strike (Reaction) with Absorb Elements (reducing the fire damage, raising the hit points of the Abjurer's ward, and returning the fire damage along with a quarterstaff, dagger, dart, light crossbow, or sling -- unless of course the Evil Wizard uses Reaction for Shield!). There is an overall capability to preempt, disrupt, deny, degrade, and make short work of adversarial combat effects. A party generally knows when they are outclassed and they don't die figuring that out -- or, at the very-least, there are more outs.

What I like/love about 1e: That classic feeling -- something beyond just nostalgia. The feeling of adventure from the point of view of children riding their dirt bikes into unknown, uncharted territory. The Goonies Effect. There's a reason that Speilberg and D&D are making a comeback and it's not just nostalgia: it's the Great Unknown. 5e doesn't capture that and it never will -- it's just resold dreams.

Not to end this on a terrible note, I think that 5e can be improved in this way using the Crossroads model, not just by leveraging old rules. Maybe mine is a more-strategic and less-operational way of thinking, but here are my first thoughts -- sorry for the stream-of consciousness writing style.

 

[ad_hoc]

Ability Scores: roll 4d6k3, max of 18 at 1st level (including racial modifiers).

You lost me.

 

[Immoralkickass]

When I saw 'Old School', I was expecting Elf as a class!

 

[JonnyP71]

I will laud any approach to make modern systems feel more like those from days of yore which make me feel all warm, fuzzy and nostalgiac.

But for me, to make 5E (or any game from the last 25 years!) feel how games did in the early 80s you would have to erase the existence of MMORPGs from history, along with Final Fantasy, any Manga influence on the West. A stake must be driven through the heart of the Forgotten Realms, along with all the kits and supplements that changed the feel of 2E onwards.

Because the difference seems mainly to lie in the perceptions of those who play the game, and their expectations of the fantasy genre. At my tables in the 1980s we were teenagers who had mostly read the Hobbit, a few hardy souls had managed the Lord of the Rings, and one kid kept banging on about Fritz Leiber but the rest of us were not interested. We knew bits of Arthurian mythology and some Greek Mythology, and that was cool. Very few of the American 'Pulp' authors had made any impact on Britain. But being Brits, going to British schools, we'd learned a lot about British history - The Tudors, the Wars of the Roses, the Anarchy, the Princes in the Tower, the Battle of Hastings, Vikings, etc

And that's what flavoured our games.

Nobody cared about balance, terms such as DPS and AoO did not exist, ASIs too. We all got excited when the DM had saved up enough money to buy a new adventure module! It was about the thrill of killing the fabled beasts in those new modules, taking their treasure and finding a shiny new sword. We barely ever discussed game mechanics, or game ethics. The game world was dark, brutal and oppressive. Religious/sexual freedom was non-existent. Racial tension was always at boiling point.

That was old school gaming.

We loved it.

I still do.