Combat: The bane of roleplaying?

One thing I hear a lot goes something like this (not exact words): "We were roleplaying the scene when suddenly combat broke out. After we killed / drove off / defeated the enemy, we resumed our roleplaying of the scene."

I am always perplexed by this way of thinking. It's not universal but it's more frequent than we think. What does it even mean? People are roleplaying their PCs' interactions with NPCs and when combat starts, roleplaying ceases to be and it all becomes a tactical / mechanical game? Is combat mutually exclusive from roleplaying? In my opinion, no, and it's a fallacy to play any roleplaying game based on this false assumption. It's true that I see this more often in games like D&D and GURPS where the rules that govern combat are more complex and extensive, so there might be a reason why people stop thinking in terms of roleplaying during combat when they are forced to micromanage an endless rooster of mechanics. On the other hand, it's perfectly possible, and even preferable, to maintain a modicum of roleplaying during physical conflicts of any sort.

People who consider combat extraneous to roleplaying are splitting up what are essentially two complementary elements. Everything should flow naturally from one scene to the next, and roleplaying should be always on the forefront. After all, if roleplaying is acting like a character would in any situation, why would the character stop acting the way he does in combat? In the reality of the setting, does the character thinks in terms of turns, rounds, the mechanical bonuses of his sword or the level of the opponent to determine spell resistance? No, he thinks in terms of moments, of how sharp or strong his sword is or how tough or mind-resilient his opponent is. He would think in terms of the elements natural to the setting. The mechanics don't exist in the setting, though they exist in the game to define what is permissible in the setting.

This is why so many roleplaying games take the time to encourage the players to describe their actions in combat, to embellish what is happening. Otherwise, combat turns into an exercise of cold management of mechanics and bonus crunching. And this is why so many players complain that combat cease to be roleplaying and turns into a boring tactical conflict. There's nothing wrong with tactics. It's even encouraged in some systems. What I contend is that both can coexist.

Perhaps it would be more helpful to think in terms of social and physical conflicts. These terms do not preclude roleplaying, so they are not so restrictive in the mind of the players. In both types of conflicts, rules are called for and applied. I roll Persuasion to convince an NPC of something he does not believe in (Social) and I roll my Sword to attack an NPC who doesn't want to be hit (Conflict). In both cases, I'm acting against an NPC and that NPC is an obstacle to what I want to do. In both cases, I always consider what my character is doing or thinking before I act. And this includes speaking IN CHARACTER. The character shouts orders to his men in combat, he/she runs to a beloved friend to protect him from the orcs and he cries in anguish when an ally falls down.

To sum up: combat is not a game apart from the main game, where the act of roleplaying is diminished or even banned, not matter how tactical it gets. It should be an opportunity to highlight those traits that are not evident in more social occasions ("I hunger for the blood of fallen enemies"). It should be as heroic or as grim as the game allows and encourage roleplay in that sense. It should also be acting in character. Remove roleplaying from combat and you're just using mechanics and moving pieces like a chessboard. In this sense, it ceases to be a roleplaying game. You might as well be playing a boardgame.

What do you think?

New Year Resolution

It's true that as 2012 came to an end I began to really consider GURPS as a viable alternative to my previous gaming choices. It's also true that 2012 was not a good year in terms of gaming, not because I had any lack of player (if anything, I had too many players), but because, for one reason or another, every game fizzled. I won't go back to that subject. You can read all about it here.

I read GURPS 4th edition cover to cover. I enjoyed it but as I began preparing my space opera campaign, I realized I was wasting an ungodly amount of time wrestling with the mechanics. I could just sketch the beginning of a campaign and let the players loose with the rules to create anything they wanted within the premise of the game: a ragtag band of misfits wandering the galaxy, treading the fine line between law and crime. Not unlike Firefly or Traveller. However, I knew that none of my players had read the Player's Guide, so it would take God knows how much time to finish their characters by having them pick and choose from the hideously enormous list of advantages, disadvantages and skills. For the neophyte, it can be a daunting task. I set out to prepare templates of occupations instead, so I could pare down the list of available choices to only those I deemed appropriate to the genre. And the more I did this, the more I felt the need to do something else.

GURPS is a very fine system that does what it sets out to do. It just isn't for me. When I waste more time thinking about the mechanics and how to translate into numbers what my imagination creates, it isn't for me. Almost all roleplaying games have this element of conversion from imagination to mechanics in one way or the other, but I'd rather  spend more time conjuring  people, places and plots than defining what are the appropriate skills for a space academic. I even tried to switch to swords & sorcery with GURPS Conan as it's a genre close to my hear, but I felt that trying to pare down the list of skills to maintain the fast-paced tone of the stories was inglorious. I ended up cutting out almost half the list (do people really need business acumen in S&S?) and the more I cut, the more I wanted to cut. Savage Worlds does it so much better with only half a dozen skills.

Looking back to what I most enjoyed playing in 2012, AD&D 1st was at the top of the list. I only played about half a dozen sessions using the venerable Keep on the Borderlands, but they were immensely enjoyable. I never held the players hand or led them by the nose, they showed lots of creativity in dealing with the NPCs at the fort and the obstacles outside, the thief with 3 hp was having lots of fun just surviving combat, the ranger wanted to kick the bad cleric's ass and take the magic plate mail for himself and overall the level of excitement was high. We ended up cutting it short because of a rules lawyer and a whiner. I had to let these two go and, in retrospect, the whiner was whining because his expectations of what an AD&D 1e game ought to be were different from the group's. By the end of it all, much time had been wasted dealing with internal conflicts leeching most of the fun from the game.

We fumbled the rest of the year but nothing was as fun as those first months when the group adventured in and around the lonely keep on the borderlands. I kept the core group so I decided to make my New Year resolution: to play a campaign of AD&D 1e for as long as it was fun. Will I be able to do it? I am not averse to accepting new players but I have to be more picky. There's a huge disconnect between old school gaming and player's expectations nowadays so I have to be totally open when explaining the gaming style I want for my campaign. I will blog about my experiences as the campaign develops. What's your New Year resolution? Tell me what do you intend to accomplish this year in your hobby?

Trying a New System: GURPS

As I approach the end of the year, I review the last twelve months in game terms. The truth is I didn't play a whole lot. The first few months are a blur, then I started a Deadlands Reloaded campaign which didn't end well and then a short hiatus from September until now during which I ran a short Eclipse Phase one-shot. It was not a very productive year in terms of roleplaying games, which was worse than last year (at least, I completed a short Trail of Cthulhu campaign).

Between March 2011 and today I have played The Complete Masks of Nyarlathotep for Call of Cthulhu (which ended abruptly), Cthulhu Apocalypse for Trail of Cthulhu (successfully completed). Our group tried Primetime Adventures in a steampunk setting. The system didn't work for us. We also tried Strands of Fate and never made it past the first session. This year I returned to a more classic system with the aforementioned Deadlands Reloaded for Savage Worlds. We played around 6-7 sessions, before I pulled the plug.

Now, I find myself reading GURPS aka Generic Universal Roleplaying System. I think I've been trying too hard to find a game that suited my group's tastes. We never played more than a half a dozen sessions of a particular system, and I attribute that to the disconnect between us and the systems we have tested so far. It's not that my group is devoid of creativity and imagination. It's just that some systems are ill-suited to our playing style. The bottom line is: our group enjoys classic systems, you know, the ones where the game master really acts like a game master, by introducing scenes and directing the story (don't confuse this with railroading), and running the world with the players playing their characters and influencing the world through their actions.

Of all the systems we tried this past year and a half, only Savage Worlds and Call of Cthulhu fall into this category. And, in the former, I ended the campaign abruptly for reasons that have nothing to do with the system qualities and everything to do with the awful "railroadiness" of the published campaign we were playing (The Flood, if you must know) and, in the case of Call of Cthulhu, the campaign just fizzled when one of the players couldn't play anymore.

Instead of trying to find the perfect system to play (whatever that means), I tried to find the perfect system for us. And that system, ladies and gentlemen, is GURPS. Yes, the venerable and old generic system from Steve Jackson Games finally fell into my hands, I read it from cover to cover (actually, from covers to covers since the system is two books) and I really enjoyed it. In fact, I am running a fantasy one-shot called A Caravan to Ein Arris, which was included in 3rd edition, now made available for free in SJG site and the group is involved and having a lot of fun. I'm already planning a space opera campaign, a steampunk campaign stealing ideas from our PTA game and a cyberpunk campaign.

The main reason to use a generic system is one of practicality and convenience. Each time I want to play a new setting, I have to read a new system. Sometimes, this means reading a 300-page rulebook for a campaign that may or may not materialize. This way, even if we only play a one-shot or a small campaign, we can relax in knowing that the rules won't change and the players won't be forced to learn a new set of rules for our next campaign.

So, from now on, this blog won't be so focused on AD&D. You'll read a lot more about GURPS and my experiences with the system as I develop the campaign. But I also intend to cover many RPG topics as suit my tastes. Hopefully, our group will have fun once again playing and I can write here on a regular basis.

Strands of Fate and Other Things

The last entry of my blog was posted on May, 16th, more than a month ago. It was so little ago and so long ago. Much has changed since then. Life intruded for once, and the group changed for another. It is one of the vissicitudes of life. Nowadays, groups are less static than they were a few years ago, or at least mine is. The core group remains unchanged but others come and go. Either family, work or any other element forces a change. In other cases, I burn out of a particular game.

Let's face it, I was never a single-game player. I like to play things, I like to try out new things. Not everything suits me, but had I the time, and more money than I could shake a stick at so I wouldn't have to work, I would buy a lot more than I have gathering dust on my shelves. And I would play a lot more. Don't get me wrong. This is not a compulsive desire to have something that looses its appeal once I buy it. I genuinely enjoy reading new systems, to try out new things, to change genres, much like I never go see the same movie genre all the time.

Change is good, at least for me. It keeps me from burning out. And so, taking a break from out game of AD&D, we decided to try other things. I am a fan of wuxia (chinese martial arts fantasy), and I love the Chinese mythology and ancient culture. I have played Chinese-themed games in the past like Qin or Weapons of the Gods. One of my best campaigns was set in ancient china during the Warring States period, so when some of my players began pressuring me start a new wuxia campaign it was just a matter of finding out the best system to do it.

A few years ago, I became also a great fan of FATE, but none of the current iterations of the system were quite what I was looking for: Spirit of the Century is pulp in the 20s, Diaspora is hard sci-fi and the Dresden Files is urban fantasy. Only Legends of Anglerre with its fantasy tropes could fill the void, with enough changes and adaptation as it is more suited to any type of classic fantasy campaign. Then along came Strands of Fate, and I glimpsed immediately all sorts of potential genres that could be emulated by it. You see, Strands of Fate, or SoF for short, is FATE-based, highly changed generic system. I created several characters in several genres and I like the result. The players seemed curious enough to try it.

So, a new page turns. Gone are the days of warriors and wizards, of orcs and goblins, of fallen kingdoms and might realms, of worlds of dragons and dungeons. On a more specific note, I will expand the blog to talk about anything game related, not just AD&D. I love roleplaying games too much to limit myself to one specific topic. So, while I may be playing a particular game, in any given time, I will talk about anything that strikes my fancy. I also enjoy writing on this blog (more than I anticipated). That's one more reason to keep it going. I hope you continue enjoy reading it and enjoying it as much as I do writing it.

Burning Wheel - A New Beginning

In a rapid turn of events, but not completely out of my control, our Friday night Skype game was changed from AD&D to Burning Wheel. Yes, I know. It was not supposed to be but I came to the conclusion our group, as a whole, is more into games where they have a larger degree of narrative control and where story trumps random events.

This was barely noticeable in our first sessions, but as  time went by, I become more and more aware that they enjoyed the game while they were at the Keep on the Borderlands than when they were fighting monsters and looking for treasure. This is not to blame the game itself, but the group subconsciously gravitated towards situations they wanted to see in-game. Now, we all know AD&D has lots of interaction with NPCs, but at the same time, the exploration element, the mapping of the dungeon, the loot and all the little quirky rules contribute significantly to one's enjoyment of AD&D 1E.

However, the players tended to stay in the fort, talking to NPCs, finding more about the realm's religions and trying to weave their little tales of intrigue around the place. I dangled a few carrots in front of their noses, and for the most part went along, but there's a significant diffence between a highly motivated player and one that, while still enjoying the game, is merely following the gamemaster's hooks. So, after inquiring around, we came to realize that the players really wanted to weave their own tales, in their own setting, while still retaining a sense of fantastic adventure. For all that AD&D does well, it does not do what we really want out of a story. Some elements do not mesh well with our creative sensibility (alignments being one and the rigid classes being another). It's not a bad game, in fact I still enjoy it immensely, but it's not for my group.

Therefore, we decided to turn our attention to Burning Wheel, a game where the players and characters fight for their beliefs. What does this mean to this blog? Nothing much. I still continue reading the Dragon magazine, I still read retro-clones and AD&D 1E so I'll keep writing about that and whatever strikes my fancy. After all, The Paladin in the Bag isn't just about AD&D but also about roleplaying games in all forms.

The Randomness of NPC Reactions

This was a point of contention last night as we played our 4th session of our Greyhawk campaign. Eventually, I'll write a more detailed post about it, but the specific situation was as follows: the group stumbled upon a group of lizard-like humanoid creatures living in a swamp. Their first reaction was to parlay, having won the initiative. The ranger was the only one who could speak fluently their language. I decided that he was translating what the lizard folk were saying, so everyone could speak normally instead of having the player unnecessarily repeat the other said. It was just a minor fudge in order the keep things flowing. What initially appeared as a peaceful encounter turned into a vicious confrontation when the creatures attacked.

One of the players didn't take this too well. In his opinion, a "roleplaying encounter" should be fully verbal, with the players speaking in character, and never let random dice rolls dictate the outcome. He wasn't very happy when the creatures attacked out of the blue after a few trinket exchanges. He also died during the encounter so I believe his opinion was more of a knee-jerk reaction to a very sudden and unexpected death than a rational one.

This notion encounters with other creatures should be fully "roleplayed" and never dictacted by dice rolls is totally alien to me. It presupposes three factors that are flawed to begin with:

First, it implies that roleplaying and dice rolling are somewhat mutually exclusive. Either you are roleplaying or you are dice rolling. This could be not be farther from the truth. You can roleplay and still decide things with dice rolls. In fact, roleplaying provides a clear rational why the dice are being rolled and why the random results are what they are. They justify, in our minds, the randomness of the game. In this case, the creatures attacked because they were offended when one of the characters refused to reliquish a sword the creatures wanted.

Second, this notion assumes that when one initiates an encounter by roleplaying, this aspect alone is sufficient to propel things. In my opinion, this disregards one important factor: Charisma. The truth is that, with very rare exceptions, the character's Charisma IS NOT the player's Charisma. The player can be highly conversant and rich in vocabulary, and have an appealing personality, but the character can be a rude lout who grunts and snarls his way around, or vice-versa. The roleplaying must be filtered through the Charisma attribute much like one's combat ability in real life isn't a direct equivalent of a character's combat ability. And how else to decide if a player with a low real life Charisma but has a good game Charisma impresses the NPCs? Using reaction rolls, of course.

Third, this notion assumes that most of the races understand each other and can reach a mutually agreeable compromise. The truth is, most the creatures' norms of behavior and conduct are partially, if no completely, different from humans' and demi-humans' norms. Even if we can trace similarities between orc and kobold societies with human ones, it is much more difficult to roleplay a lizard man or gelatinous cube. Of course, it's easier to parlay with lizard men than with a gelatinous cube, which is a completely impossible proposition, but even lizard men are far too removed from the human society standards to let things be decided by roleplaying alone. And once we enter the "GM fiat" territory, it can be a slipery slope if not handled correctly.

I could play the "DM is the final authority" but I feel the need to explain such things so as to make the player understand my play style. Dice are not the be all and end all of roleplaying games but neither is roleplay. Both are different faces of the same coin and both much be balanced to create a reasonable doubt in each situation. A small degree of randomness not only keeps the players guessing and situations tense but it also guarantees a certain degree of impartiality, much like a failed attack roll in AD&D can spell the difference between life and death.

Rules By the Book

I am a by the book DM. This implies that I apply the rules as written with little deviation from their original form. This also implies a certain degree of impartiality and a lack of DM fiat to override the result of a certain dice roll in order to keep the story flowing, in other others, not to kill the characters too prematurely in order to end the story. Many will abhor the idea of letting the rules decide what happens, but to me this is an important part of DMing an AD&D game, as I see it. Is it the only true way of playing AD&D? Certainly, not. It's my way of playing AD&D. But there are certain preconceptions attached to this sort of thinking.

The first one is that I don't house rule very often. As it is, I tend to choose systems which perfectly suit my gaming style in a certain genre. It's not a blind choice. I usually read a few systems before settling with the one that I like most. This is a choice part intuitive, part based on the rules. Therefore, when I start playing with a specific system, I already know that I like it, although there are other elements that impact on whether a campaign using that system will fly or burn, not least of which is player acceptance of that system. In my 20 years of playing, I must have house rules once or twice, which speaks well about the way I approach the systems I use.

The second preconception is that if I am going to use the system I should use the most of it. If I start house ruling everything, I am deviating from the original system. If I am deviating from the original system, why am I using it? If I'm not playing AD&D anymore, why am I using the rulebooks and not my own system or any other system? Therefore, I choose carefully the system that I'm going to use before deciding on what is best for me.

I could never quite understand people who even start changing the rules BEFORE they actually sit down and play the game. No matter how well you understand a system, certain rule interactions are only made apparent at the table with real people using the rules in unforeseen ways. I've seen this time and over again: DMs who start changing numbers, values, difficulties, whatever, even before the very first session. If you have to house rule something, at least see how it works in play.

Now, is running a game by the book the antithesis of creativity? Again, to my mind, certainly not. No system is complete. No system can ever hope to cover all the situations possible in game. The players will always think of something that they want to do that is not covered by the rules. That's when the DM needs to be creative and improvise, to strike a balance between what's in the rules and what is not. To follow the rules by the book and yet to be able to see and judge beyond those rules is truly an art. Most DMs either choose to follow the rules to the exclusion of all else - even ignoring the players' whims if no rules exist for - or they choose to ignore most of the rules for the sake of history and fluidity, only in this case they are not playing the same game anymore. As for my, I walk between the two. When running AD&D I will strive use the rules as written. What about you? Are you a "by the book" DM, change the rules a lot or somewhere between the two?

The Dragon Magazine - Realism in D&D

A very small article in Dragon #8 (1977), penned by Brian Blume, titled Realism in D&D, caught my attention for two reasons: the first is related to the always constant demand of certain players for realism in fantasy; the second because I've seen people do what the article proposes to do albeit in a different manner. The article describes a new system to generate attributes to replace rolling the dice. Here are the two most funny examples:

"WISDOM
To determine your wisdom, calculate the average number of hours you spend playing D&D or working on your D&D Campaign in an average week. Subtract the resulting number from twenty and this is your wisdom."

Some DMs already complain that much time is spent generating stat blocks for high-level NPCs, let alone preparing scenarios. If we take their word for it, then many of us would have very low wisdom scores.

"CHARISMA
To determine charisma, count up the number of times you have appeared on TV or have had your picture printed in the newspaper. Multiply this number by two, and the result is your charisma rating."

Again, I suspect many of us would have very low charisma, particularly in the single digits. I don't spend as much time preparing the adventures, either because I'm lazy or for lack of time, so my Wisdom would be high, around 17 or 18, but my Charism would be very low, like 0 or 1 low.

I don't pretend this article to be anything other than a harmless stab at those who seek realism in their games, especially OUR own world or personal concept of realism. On the other hand, I have seen players trying to play themselves in AD&D with amusing, albeit unintentional, results, so perhaps this article will be of any use to them. Let's not hope anyone out there took this article seriously.

What do you think your wisdom and charisma attributes are? Please comment.

The Dungeon Is Not Railroad

When I returned to the roots of our hobby, I made a conscious decision to focus on the dungeon as main environment of the game. This doesn't mean focusing entirely on the dungeon but it will play a bigger part than wilderness and city adventures. In fact, in the early days the dungeon was the basis of all adventures from Gygax's mythical Greyhawk Castle to Descent into the Depths of the Earth and all the modules in between. Books like TSR's T1 - Village of Hommlet or Judge Guild's City of the Invincible Overlord were exceptions. But I digress.

As I conceived my campaign, I came to understand the dungeon as one of the least railroading environments to game with. It's also a highly controlled environment, which can give the DM considerable freedom within its artificial boundaries. Some of the most ardent opponents of the dungeon as an adventure centerpiece will say that the dungeon will be, by its very nature of narrow corridors and rooms, highly railroading but they could not be farther from the truth. However, before I go any further, let me tell you that the following only applies to well-designed dungeons, which provide multiple choices to the players, not the random, "one way in, one way inside, and one way out" dungeons. The kind most of the players consider bad dungeons when they say "I don't play dungeons because we kick the door, kill everything inside, go into the next room, kill everything inside, and so on."

Why is then a well-designed dungeon one of the least railroading environments ever conceived? Consider this: railroading, by its very definition, forces the players to follow a path the DM created. Whatever the players try to do, it won't have any impact on the story or environment because the DM already predetermined what the outcome is. One of the best examples of this style is the Dragonlance series (DL1, DL2, etc.). Not only the players were forced to live a predetermined story, they were also forces to play the pre-generated characters provided and no matter what they rolled, certain events were already set in stone. Whatever qualities these adventures have, it's not what I want for my game. I want my players to impact the story; I want their choices to affect NPCs, events and even the dungeon.

The structure of a dungeon should provide plenty possibilities of multiple choice. The players should not feel they are forced to follow any given path. Consider a more story-oriented game. It is divided into scenes. In each scene, the players have multiple choices and those choices lead to other scenes. Their choices impacts on the scenes' outcome and how they interact with scenes further down the storyline. To give a more concrete example, let's assume that, in the first scene, the group is investigating the death of a city magistrate. They are in his house. At this point they have any number of choices: they could interview the staff, look for clues, examine the body, check the neighborhood, talk to the authorities, etc. Each of these options will, likewise, develop into a full scene and influence the story. If they find the magistrate was poisoned, they could trace the poison to a death cult which leads to another scene. Interviewing the staff reveals the magistrate was seeing a prostitute in a brothel, which leads to another scene. And so on.

If we apply this logic to the dungeon, we can consider each room a scene linked to other scenes by corridors, secret passages, doors, ramps, etc. Each room should have two or more different exits that lead to other rooms or places of interest. If we develop a fully fledged dungeon with this in mind, then the group is faced with multiple choices on where to go. Check any well-designed dungeon and you'll see that this is the logic applied toit. Each choice is not the correct or wrong one, but a choice like any other.

And what happens in each room (scene) should definitely impact later scenes. If in room A there's a bunch of goblins, and there's a fight and one of the goblins escapes, then later goblins should already be alerted to the presence of intruders and even actively hunting for them. If the players go to room B (on the left) and fight a carrion crawler, and lose weapons, hit points and spells then, when they return to room C (the one to the right of A) whatever they face there, they are already under the constraint of having lost some of their resources. The same will happen if they go the other way around: first to room C and then to room B. The structure will be more complex if each room has multiple ways, and some of them even take the players back to where they started. There is no constraint to explore the rooms (scenes) in any given order, which keeps the DM fully focused on everything that happens, and gives the group the maximum freedom.

Some of the best dungeons even provide several entrances to different areas. The players can choose to tackle the dungeon from any angle and even leave and take another entrance, if they choose to. Is there more freedom of choice? On top of this, each dungeon should provide any set of interesting places so the players interest won't flag ("Oh no, another 30x30 room with goblins"). That's why I think puzzles and traps play a big part on this, but that's material for another discussion.

Last, but not least, the dungeon is a highly controlled environment. The group moves within its artificial constrains. Unlike an open world, where the players are free to go wherever they want, inside the dungeon they are free to move wherever they want but cannot go outside the boundaries of the dungeons, unless they choose to leave. For all that it's worth, the dungeon is also a very demanding style of play that force the DM to create an almost complete environment prior to play, but within that environment the players are free to move wherever they go, at the pace they want, tacking the many rooms of the dungeon in any order they want. And that, ultimately, is the anthitesis of railroading.

A Thin Volume

I quite recently noticed a trivial detail but which I'd like to share with you. The book is thin even for an AD&D book. Compare it to any latter edition and it's only 130 pages long versus 256 pages on the 2nd edition and similar number in the 3rd and 4th editions. If you don't count the list of spells, which I believe are not compulsory reading (even though it doesn't hurt to skim the spells especially if you're a class that can cast spells), and the apprendix that contain mostly optional rules (psionic powers, the bard class, and so on), each player only has to read 40 pages of stuff. This is on par with most of the so-called lite rules systems. Even the Moldvay edition of D&D is almost equivalent in the number of pages. Notice that I'm not comparing rules complexity, only rules quantity.

This is mostly due to the fact that the majority of rules one considers important to players, such as combat, attack charts, etc. are relegated to the DMG pages. Let's not forget that it was explicitly stated that none of the players could ever, ever touch the DMG on pain of being obliterated by a blue bolt from the sky (not quite the same words, but the intent of the DMG foreword is the same). I believe this may actually help the players be more creative and flexible in their decisions when facing the situations the DM throws at them. The only rules the characters ever need to know are actually in the PHB: what each races is, what each class does in terms of special abilities, equipment lists (minus encumbrance which is, you guessed it, in the DMG), and some very nice suggestions about how to go exploring dungeons.

I don't pretend to know the editorial decisions behind this. Perhaps someone can shed some light. However, no one can complain about reading a whole lot of rules just to play the get. It remains highly accessible from a player-point of view. Certainly more accessible than latter editions. What I firmly believe is that it frees the players to approach the game creatively instead of a more simulationist mindset. With no rules to memorize, the players can describe their actions freely, which the DM must adjudicate using the DMG as guideline. No more "what maneuvers do I need to know" or "wait while I check this and that to see if it's a viable action". It's comparable to a computer game where the player just decides his actions and the computer does the rest. The downside is that the DM is burdened with a lot more rules than players are accustomed to, but then again most players don't read the rules anyway.

Politically Incorrect

Reading carefully the AD&D rulebook (1st edition), I could not fail to notice that Gygax imposes a maximum limit to Strength for female characters. It's a quirky little rule, politically incorrect nowadays (God forbid should we decide to limit attributes based in gender), but I think it speaks well of Gygax's influences in writing the game. Mind you, this is only my interpretation and, as such, it should be taken with a grain of salt.

The only attribute where this male/female distinction is applied is Strength as reproduced in the table below:

Taking this into consideration, this means that most males will have a higher probability of hitting and do more damage than their female counterparts. Even in the case of dwarfs and half-elves, where it is only a 1-point difference, it means that, even though females will have the same bonus to hit (+1), they will do, in average, one less point of damage (+1) than males of the same species (+2). In the case of gnomes and halflings, this difference is even more pronounced, with females not having any type of bonuses. Another consideration is that, females are precluded from ever reaching the mythical range of 18 in Strength which gives access to the higher ranks of strength (18/01-50 and so on).

So far as I know, this is the only edition that limits characters based on gender. And my interpretation is that it reveals much about the genre which influenced AD&D from the get-go: Swords & Sorcery. Women were always weaker than men, a thing of beauty and frailty to be protected and coveted, and also a source of temptation and villainy in the form of evil sorceresses. Only rarely do women assume a more warlike stance (Bêlit, from Queen of the Black Coast, being one) and stand shoulder to shoulder with the male protagonist. Another side effect is that it may push female characters into roles other than Fighter, since not many players like to being imposed limits and current sensibilities tend toward a more balanced approach from the gender point of view. Ironically, this limit only applies to demi-humans. Human females can be as strong as human males, which contradicts the swords & sorcery view, or may be not. Perhaps someone else can provide some insight.

Multiclassing in AD&D

One of the things that tends to happen as times goes by and new editions of the same game are published is that we forget quirky, older rules and how they actually worked. One of those rules is multiclassing. In D&D 3.0 and later editions, multiclassing was possible every time a character leveled up. At that point, he could choose whether to remain in his current class or change to a new class. Furthermore, there were no impositions on which classes he could change to, except the favored class rule which was as arbitrary as any other rule I have seen, forcing an experience point penalty if none of the characters were your favored. Not so in older editions and here I'm strictly speaking of AD&D 1st and 2nd editions.

In those games, multiclassing had to be a demi-human and choose to be multiclass during character creation. He could not start with just one class and choose to multiclass later. The list describing which classes could be combined was limited, too. For instance, an elf could only multiclass as Fighter/Mage; Fighter/Thief; Mage/Thief and Fighter/Mage/Thief. Humans, on the other hand, could be dual class but the limitations imposed were even higher, with certain minimum attribute values of the class he wanted to change to. An additional factor was that all experience gained was equally divided by the number of classes the character had, which meant his progress was slower than other characters.

As I continue my journey of discovery (or rediscovery in the case of AD&D 2nd edition), I constantly run into these quirky little rules that I had completely forgotten. And they work really well in the context of gaming. One of my players was always ecstactic when we played Dark Sun and he could be an elf mage/fighter/cleric/psionicist, which was a special combination only available in Athas. This would impose a greater burden on him since he had to effectively level four classes at the same time, spreading experience by four, but it was great fun as he began playing four different classes with four different sets of powers. And this, more than anything else, more than made up for any disadvantages that multiclassing could bring to the table. In the long run, an elf could reach level 12 as a mage and level 15 as a fighter (if multiclassing Mage/Fighter) whereas a D&D 3.0 could only reach level 10 in both classes.

On a more personal note, I love these tidbits. Though, according to current standards, a player may be forced "to work" harder to level his character. Then again, with each succeeding edition, there is a tendency to apply changes in the name of fun and playability. In AD&D 2nd edition, which was the one I played most, I can't think of a single moment when the rules got in the way of fun.

To Retro-Clone or Not Retro-Clone

One of the major stumbling blocks to playing D&D online using the old books is that they are all out of print and, therefore, not everyone has access to them. I have because I am a collector at heart and don't mind scouring Ebay and other sites, looking for another piece of memorabilia to add to my collection. However, I cannot demand the same from my players in order to play the game. Playing face to face is easier in that we would only need one copy of the books to pass them along, but online it's another story. I also cannot encourage my players to seek out scans or pdf files of these books and download them. This would be tantamount to piracy. However, another solution presents itself: the retro-clones.

Retro-clones are rule systems that try to emulate the feeling and play style of the old school D&D and AD&D. They were made possible when WotC published their Open Gaming License (OGL), which allowed many third-party publishers to modify, copy and redistribute many of the original rules. This led to the creation of several retro-clone systems from 2000 to this day. I have checked a few and some are even available online for free from their respective publishers. This post is not about all the retro-clones that exist but only the ones that caught my eye.

Using a retro-clone system would effectively allow us to continue playing our game as before even if not everyone has access to out of print material. That's why the retro-clones exist: so that current gamers can experience old school play style, not being forced to pay sometimes exhorbitant prices for the old books. I have come to appreciate Labyrinth Lord from Goblinoid Games. Already there are two books published for this line: the first emulates the B/X sets and the second allows to play AD&D 1st ed. style. I've checked them, they're quite good and 100% compatible with the old modules with no conversions required. Another option is OSRIC which is a considerably larger book, also available for free, that emulares AD&D 1st ed.

At this point, I think this is the way to go. As I said, I could not demand from my players the same willingness to go out and buy the old books when something free is available online that allows the same play experience. This is the next best thing. I'll continue to expand my collection which already includes the likes of Keep on the Borderlands and Temple of Elemental Evil so we have no shortage of adventures to play in the near future.

I Speak... Kobold

Sometimes you have to read between the lines, sometimes you don't. Many classic D&D detractors claim that game too often succumbs to the "kick down the door, kill 'em and take their stuff" routine. At first glance, the dungeon element seems to support this claim. However, it is often the case that, when focusing on the whole, the reader will often ignore the details. I believe this to be unintentional, in most cases anyway. But is classic D&D such a game? Let's take a look at the following from the Moldvay basic edition:

When a character has 9-12 in Intelligence, he knows how to speak Common and his alignment language. When a character has 13-15 in Intelligence, he knows how to speak the two aforementioned languages plus one of his choice. With Intelligence of 16-17, he knows two additional languages. And with Intelligence of 18, he knows three additional languages. Alright, it seems fair. A human with high intelligence would know how to speak common and, say, Lawful and elvish and dwarvish. But wait! The list of languages from which the player can choose includes such oddities as kobold, hobgoblin, dragon, harpy, ogre or pixie. Say what? Do I really need to know how to speak kobold when happily hacking away at the little buggers? Perhaps, I'm the kind of guy who enjoys insulting their mothers in koboldish while cutting of their heads. Then again, you never know when you need to know kobold to read a kobold magic book. But that's what Read Magic is for. At first glance, this rule would seem at odds with the whole hack & slash concept of the game. Or is it?

A few pages ahead, the rules state: "Experience points are also given for monsters killed or overcome by magic, fighting or wits." I emphasized the last words. Yes, apparently you can earn experience not by just killing things and taking their stuff, but by actually pitting your wits against the monsters. This suggests a number of things which are implicit, rather than explicit: First, the word monsters is a misnomer which tends to devaluate the intelligence of the opposition. We consider monsters things with no rational thought, things to be killed. Second, the phrasing of the sentence implies that monsters can be, and often are, intelligent, or else overcoming a challenge of wits wouldn't be a challenge at all and, therefore, not worth experience points. Third, there are options other than fighting our way around a dungeon. Most creatures react purely on instinct (such as gelatinous cubes or giant spiders, or do they?) but others have a rather organized society even if only implied. Orcs know how to use armour and wield weapons; they can fight in an organized manner, as do kobolds, hobgoblins, etc.

Considering what I wrote in my last paragraph, a character benefits with high intelligence. Surely, when running into a dragon, the character who knows how to speak the creature's language is given the opportunity to shine. The encounter need not end with a total party kill. Dragons are vain and egotistic. They can cajoled and tricked with smooth words as Bilbo did in The Hobbit. It is up to the DM to provide the necessary challenges. The dungeon then becomes more of a puzzle with situations where roleplay is as important as combat skills.