Old School feel with 3x Rules

[jdrakeh]

I've been giving this some serious thought and, despite my desire to run a TFT campaign or an original Arduin Grimoire epic, I think that I have a better chance of getting people to play a D&D 3x game in my area. To that end, I think I'm going to pick up the three core books and a copy of Blackmoor after Christmas.

If I go this route, I want to capture that 'old school' feel, though - so some house rules will obviously be in order. First, I'm thinking about dumping AoO and any feats that reference them. Second, I'm thinking about ignoring the 'death's door' rule and re-instituting 'save or die' saving throws. Any other suggestions?

I don't want to get too nuts - just nuts enough that the things used to define actual play in older editions of the game make a reappearance at my table.

 

[Fieari]

Hm. The things I remember most about the old way of gaming was that there were so many holes in the rules, that the de-facto way of playing was to make half of them up on the spot... which led to a good amount of fun, but having a robust rule system is superior in so many ways. Easier to make things fair between all the players, for instance, as when we were making up the rules ourselves, the more charismatic PLAYERS (not characters with high CHA stats) got to manipulate the rules more in their favor, much like a game of Nomic.

That and the fact that when GMing, THAC0 could be such a pain to calculate that I'd basically just see what they rolled, and arbitrarily say if they hit or not depending on how I felt at the time. "Hm, I guess a 17 would be a hit on this creature for you..."

 

[jdrakeh]

Hm. The things I remember most about the old way of gaming was that there were so many holes in the rules, that the de-facto way of playing was to make half of them up on the spot... which led to a good amount of fun, but having a robust rule system is superior in so many ways. Easier to make things fair between all the players, for instance, as when we were making up the rules ourselves, the more charismatic PLAYERS (not characters with high CHA stats) got to manipulate the rules more in their favor, much like a game of Nomic.

That and the fact that when GMing, THAC0 could be such a pain to calculate that I'd basically just see what they rolled, and arbitrarily say if they hit or not depending on how I felt at the time. "Hm, I guess a 17 would be a hit on this creature for you..."

Now that you've bagged on previous editions of the game, would you care to answer my question?

 

[Pierce_Inverarity]

I've been thinking of trying to get an old school feel in my games too. Here's some of my ideas-

No sorcerers- Magic users memorize/prepare spell in advance. Period.
Racial restrictions on classes- e.g. No elf clerics. No Dwarf magic users.
Bard as prestige class (very 1st edition!)
Potion miscibility (or immiscibility depending on your view point)
Refer to sneak attacks as "back stabbing"

I like the no AoO idea. Back in the day, combat was quicker. Everyone wouldn't spend a ton of time placing and moving their figures. Heck, mostly we didn't even play with figures. No AoO makes this possible again, but when I suggested it to my players they unanimously agreed that AoO was one of the things that made 3rd edition so cool.