The Sigil
Mr. 3000 (Words per post)
So, let's lighten up the discussion a bit, eh?
About four years ago, my oldest son (who knew I played D&D and wrote some self-published stuff in the early 3E days) asked me about D&D because some of his friends at school were interested in it and wanted to play it and possibly start an RPG club at their high school. Knowing that high school kids don't always have the most robust RPG budgets (especially in the area where we live), I purchased the PHB, DMG, and MM, told him it was a gift to the group/club, and bought a bunch of sets of dice so everyone in the group could have one. I then spent a couple of weekends running them through my own conversion of N4 - Treasure Hunt, and they started running their own adventures from there (until COVID hit, I guess).
Fast forward to last year as we were coming out of COVID - he's now graduated from high school and asked me to DM again for him and some of his friends. In our session 0, we discussed a few "house rules" - I told them I like to run games that are about resource depletion and my rule is that while you can get a "short rest" in enemy territory, a "long rest" can only happen in a "secure" area. I also told them I wasn't going to deliberately throw them into situations to try to kill them, but if I felt an encounter was fair, I was willing to let the dice fall where they may and wasn't going to try to save them because I didn't want them to feel like they were being handed stuff. And if they deliberately sought out a problem too big for them to chew on, I'd probably throw some warnings at them, but if they persisted marching into an ancient red dragon's lair at 2nd level, I had no problem making them into BBQ. We also agreed to implement permanent magic items that "grew with them" because I thought (and they agreed) it was more epic to slowly uncover an item's powers than to discard your +1 sword when you found a +2 sword, and it lets them become more attached to their magic items.
They agreed that they wanted some of that old-school feel, so I pulled out my copy of B1-9 (In Search of Adventure) and used it as a sandbox for them. They went through Elwyn's Sanctuary, the dungeons of Castle Caldwell, made a homebrewed overland journey and are now getting close to finishing Rahasia (yes, they're going slow, but this group is EXTREMELY risk-averse and tries to avoid encounters as much as possible; we might get through two encounters in the space of four hours - but they're having a good time and that's what matters... also, without spoilering things, it took them several runs through the upper temple to figure its gimmick out).
So, what it boils down to is that for the last year, I've been running BECMI adventures in the Mystara setting (which they are amazed by) under 5E rules with quite a bit of third-party stuff mixed in (Nord Games' Ultimate Bestiary: Revenge of the Horde has let me mix up the humanoid races much better than the MM does, I pulled the Lore for one of the swords the party found from the old 3E PDF "Swords of our Fathers" by the Game Mechanics), and mixed in some NPCs giving them the finer points of 1e/2e dungeon crawling (like teaching them to spike a door shut in a dungeon to enable them take a short rest). I've started looking to adapt some of 4E's fighter abilities or maybe Pathfinder 2e's to start varying the options that their close-combat paladin has so while they think they're looking mostly at 5E, what they're REALLY playing at is a mishmash of EVERY EDITION of D&D including 3rd party stuff from all over the place.
I am considering taking the group's temperature on Pathfinder 2e after I introduce some of the combat options there; partly because I would like a little more dynamic fighter-combat system than 5E has out of the box, though admittedly the latest OGL flap has soured me a little bit on WotC in general. (I DON'T want this to turn into another OGL discussion - we have plenty of those - I'm just trying to provide context on not only what I'm running now but what I would like to try in the future and why... maybe someone else has some suggestions for a system with some more combat class fighting options I'm not aware of?). I might also try to convince them to try Star Frontiers at some point (I own physical copies of everything TSR ever published for SF) if they want to try Sci-Fi instead of Fantasy.
What are YOU currently playing? And what are YOU interested in trying?
About four years ago, my oldest son (who knew I played D&D and wrote some self-published stuff in the early 3E days) asked me about D&D because some of his friends at school were interested in it and wanted to play it and possibly start an RPG club at their high school. Knowing that high school kids don't always have the most robust RPG budgets (especially in the area where we live), I purchased the PHB, DMG, and MM, told him it was a gift to the group/club, and bought a bunch of sets of dice so everyone in the group could have one. I then spent a couple of weekends running them through my own conversion of N4 - Treasure Hunt, and they started running their own adventures from there (until COVID hit, I guess).
Fast forward to last year as we were coming out of COVID - he's now graduated from high school and asked me to DM again for him and some of his friends. In our session 0, we discussed a few "house rules" - I told them I like to run games that are about resource depletion and my rule is that while you can get a "short rest" in enemy territory, a "long rest" can only happen in a "secure" area. I also told them I wasn't going to deliberately throw them into situations to try to kill them, but if I felt an encounter was fair, I was willing to let the dice fall where they may and wasn't going to try to save them because I didn't want them to feel like they were being handed stuff. And if they deliberately sought out a problem too big for them to chew on, I'd probably throw some warnings at them, but if they persisted marching into an ancient red dragon's lair at 2nd level, I had no problem making them into BBQ. We also agreed to implement permanent magic items that "grew with them" because I thought (and they agreed) it was more epic to slowly uncover an item's powers than to discard your +1 sword when you found a +2 sword, and it lets them become more attached to their magic items.
They agreed that they wanted some of that old-school feel, so I pulled out my copy of B1-9 (In Search of Adventure) and used it as a sandbox for them. They went through Elwyn's Sanctuary, the dungeons of Castle Caldwell, made a homebrewed overland journey and are now getting close to finishing Rahasia (yes, they're going slow, but this group is EXTREMELY risk-averse and tries to avoid encounters as much as possible; we might get through two encounters in the space of four hours - but they're having a good time and that's what matters... also, without spoilering things, it took them several runs through the upper temple to figure its gimmick out).
So, what it boils down to is that for the last year, I've been running BECMI adventures in the Mystara setting (which they are amazed by) under 5E rules with quite a bit of third-party stuff mixed in (Nord Games' Ultimate Bestiary: Revenge of the Horde has let me mix up the humanoid races much better than the MM does, I pulled the Lore for one of the swords the party found from the old 3E PDF "Swords of our Fathers" by the Game Mechanics), and mixed in some NPCs giving them the finer points of 1e/2e dungeon crawling (like teaching them to spike a door shut in a dungeon to enable them take a short rest). I've started looking to adapt some of 4E's fighter abilities or maybe Pathfinder 2e's to start varying the options that their close-combat paladin has so while they think they're looking mostly at 5E, what they're REALLY playing at is a mishmash of EVERY EDITION of D&D including 3rd party stuff from all over the place.
I am considering taking the group's temperature on Pathfinder 2e after I introduce some of the combat options there; partly because I would like a little more dynamic fighter-combat system than 5E has out of the box, though admittedly the latest OGL flap has soured me a little bit on WotC in general. (I DON'T want this to turn into another OGL discussion - we have plenty of those - I'm just trying to provide context on not only what I'm running now but what I would like to try in the future and why... maybe someone else has some suggestions for a system with some more combat class fighting options I'm not aware of?). I might also try to convince them to try Star Frontiers at some point (I own physical copies of everything TSR ever published for SF) if they want to try Sci-Fi instead of Fantasy.
What are YOU currently playing? And what are YOU interested in trying?
