Over the course of my three decades of dungeon design the only recurring theme has been one of change. From the crude earliest efforts to the modular string-of-adventures format to the so-called classic dungeon to that first megadungeon effort to the archival style to the one-page idea and on to the present day, my history of dungeon making is marked by sweeping changes based on a wide range of ideas, examples and inspirations. Each step along the way adds to the overall collected know-how. It has been an evolution of design and a labor of love.
The dungeon trend, this path I have followed and at times forged, shows that changes will continue, of this there is no doubt. One of the stumbling blocks for crafting that true megadungeon is this very trend of change. Knowing that by the time level 12 is finished it won't look, feel or play like level 1 is bothersome. Something about my sensibilities finds fault with this fact. The preference being of course a continuity of the vibe established with the very first levels of such a place.
Much of it can also be attributed to gamer ADD, of course. By the time the heavy lifting begins a new approach, thought or philosophy gnaws away at the dungeon's foundations and sends the project into limbo.
Finally emerging from the planning stage after nearly two years of contemplation is the latest example of these megadungeon heart breakers, the Bleak Beyond. Before the first map was even drawn numerous theories and notions had been conceived and scrapped. Ideas such as “Lairs & Stairs”, the “Sub/Hub” style, “Room Clusters”, “Inside-Out” design and so forth; far too much thought was invested in these methods which may never see the light of day. Besides, excessive time was wasted on my part in trying to reinvent the wheel.
Now that a design approach has been settled on there is actual progress being made. Albeit at a snail's pace. The building blocks are still being placed and the project continues to garner all of my gamer interest. What design approach is that you might ask? The Bleak Beyond borrows heavily from my archival style and one-page philosophy. The archival style saw maps becoming more convoluted with less wasted space per page and it also embraced the notion of recycling. No longer was this a dungeon in the modular format of fire and forget. The one-page philosophy is embraced now as well, minus the sometimes cramping templates. “Without the template it's no longer one-page, though!” Yes, but the philosophy established with the one-page is the key for me. It's a heady mix of word economy, random tables and the Empty Room Principle.
So the Bleak Beyond is moving slowly forward with my latest design style, one driven by random tables, a unique bestiary and treasury, unusual conventions and an archival spirit. The plans for the cornerstones are drawn up, and right now it is potentially a signature worthy endeavor. I say potentially because I have already pegged this as my new megadungeon heart breaker. In the end at the very least I can share some of my efforts here as I have been doing lately. Readers can borrow, steal and alter as was done with the one-page design notes or some of my other meanderings. Nevertheless, wish me luck.
In parting I'll share a list of the planned levels for the Bleak Beyond.
Standard Levels (36):
Katskradle
Beneath the Fetid Fens
Down the Mol-Min Hole
Altar of the Gloom-Pit
The Tangled Tunnels
Hap's Woebegone
Pits of Unspecified Doom
Hornswoggle Hall
So and So's Fate
Awfulville
The Grand Brood Nidus
Webwarrens
A City Swallowed
Sewers of a City Swallowed
Chuckhole Hollow
The Writhing Sepulchre
Chapel of the Jilted Bride
Dens of Undesired Dream
Incomparable Brainy-Dome
Frankenlabs Cooperative
The Vexations of Vrimnas
Church of the Excommunicated
Crumblebums
Illojical Werks
Supreme Citadel of the Morkevagten
The Irradiated Level w/ No Name
Shrine of the Sleeping She-Paladin
Vadghiragh
Evil Dude's Domain
Palace of Ceaseless Extravagance
Temple of Glob, God of Green Slime
Feefestung
Sham's Furnace
Balmorphiact
Akt-Elemdor, the Vault of Night
Echoes of Darkness
Secret Bonus Levels (16):
The Abyss of Nada
Big Rock Candy Mountain
The Bloody Vintner
Central Teleport Terminal
Cubbyholes of Regret
The Donjon Illustrious
Ill Angels ONLY
Inn of the Bawdy Monkey
Ixmorin's Ill-fated (Mini-Levels 1-5)
Snow Globe
Super-Chute Control Chambers
Thimbledowns
So, yeah. This could take forever. Baby steps.
~Sham
Showing posts with label philosophy. Show all posts
Showing posts with label philosophy. Show all posts
Wednesday, April 20, 2011
Wednesday, April 6, 2011
Prime Swap
A house rule I am using now is the Prime Swap. Perhaps I can let Prodder and Scrunt explain this approach:
Prime Swap: After rolling (3d6 or 4d6-L) six times and recording the results In Order, the player can swap the character's Prime Ability with any other ability score. So FM can swap for STR, M-U can swap for INT, C can swap for WIS. Dwarves can choose STR or CON. Elves can choose STR or INT. Hobbits can choose STR or DEX. Option: Characters generated without the Prime Swap [start at 2nd level/start with maximum hits] insert your own bonus here.
This solution allows the player to generate the class he or she desires while maintaining most of the randomness realized with an In Order approach. I am not considering the optional point-buy system presented in OD&D because I adhere to the “for purposes of gaining experience only” caveat.
~Sham
Prime Swap: After rolling (3d6 or 4d6-L) six times and recording the results In Order, the player can swap the character's Prime Ability with any other ability score. So FM can swap for STR, M-U can swap for INT, C can swap for WIS. Dwarves can choose STR or CON. Elves can choose STR or INT. Hobbits can choose STR or DEX. Option: Characters generated without the Prime Swap [start at 2nd level/start with maximum hits] insert your own bonus here.
This solution allows the player to generate the class he or she desires while maintaining most of the randomness realized with an In Order approach. I am not considering the optional point-buy system presented in OD&D because I adhere to the “for purposes of gaining experience only” caveat.
~Sham
Tuesday, April 5, 2011
Seven Observations and Equations
Seven Observations and Equations presented for your dissection.
1. Game-play possibilities diminish when the term Dungeon Master is not synonymous with the term Referee.
2. The longer it takes a player to create a character the longer the player expects that character to survive.
3. Character survivability decreases as the amount of dice-rolling behind the screen increases.
4. The importance of character statistics corresponds to the amount of character generation variables.
5. The level of player meta-gaming increases or decreases at a rate equal to a game's level of complexity.
6. The more detailed the campaign world the less the characters will accomplish with each session.
7. The frequency of interruptions in play is proportionate to the significance of Alignment in a campaign.
~Sham
1. Game-play possibilities diminish when the term Dungeon Master is not synonymous with the term Referee.
2. The longer it takes a player to create a character the longer the player expects that character to survive.
3. Character survivability decreases as the amount of dice-rolling behind the screen increases.
4. The importance of character statistics corresponds to the amount of character generation variables.
5. The level of player meta-gaming increases or decreases at a rate equal to a game's level of complexity.
6. The more detailed the campaign world the less the characters will accomplish with each session.
7. The frequency of interruptions in play is proportionate to the significance of Alignment in a campaign.
~Sham
Friday, April 1, 2011
Restore to Factory Settings
Isn't the reason we appreciate old-timey D&D due to the irresistible tool-kit nature of the darned hobby? Why not scrap everything you've bolted on to your games through the years and start over for a change? Expunge every house rule, borrowed rule or later-edition rule that might be ingrained in your current games. Disregard assumptions and disavow accepted theorems; solve problems on your own. This might sound illogical. Why ignore such hard-earned knowledge and know-how? To me the question is really “Why the Hell not?”.
Open your mind by beginning a new campaign with a clean slate. Dispense with the same old, same old. The idea is to reboot the way you currently play by using the Little Brown Books (or whichever particular rule set you prefer) as the only tools at your disposal. Even better use nothing more than Volume I, Men & Magic for your game. Indeed it can be difficult to complete such a mental shift, but the exercise may be both enlightening and gratifying. Some of you are doing this exact activity now, or have rebooted in the recent past. Through play and design you have likely explored new possibilities and realized much greater innovative potential.
The suggestion to restore to factory settings is in fact contrary to the very spirit of our OSR blogosphere and vast light-speed, information sharing network. It invites you to encapsulate yourself and not rely on the experiences of others, to segregate your creativity from outside influences. It's all about challenging yourself “How many brain cells am I willing to commit in order to make this pay-off?”. It might be high time for you to “Turn On, Tune In and Drop Out”. Did Sham just ask me to go away? No, not at all. You should definitely continue to visit this particular blog for more transcendent existentialism from time to time.
~Sham
Open your mind by beginning a new campaign with a clean slate. Dispense with the same old, same old. The idea is to reboot the way you currently play by using the Little Brown Books (or whichever particular rule set you prefer) as the only tools at your disposal. Even better use nothing more than Volume I, Men & Magic for your game. Indeed it can be difficult to complete such a mental shift, but the exercise may be both enlightening and gratifying. Some of you are doing this exact activity now, or have rebooted in the recent past. Through play and design you have likely explored new possibilities and realized much greater innovative potential.
The suggestion to restore to factory settings is in fact contrary to the very spirit of our OSR blogosphere and vast light-speed, information sharing network. It invites you to encapsulate yourself and not rely on the experiences of others, to segregate your creativity from outside influences. It's all about challenging yourself “How many brain cells am I willing to commit in order to make this pay-off?”. It might be high time for you to “Turn On, Tune In and Drop Out”. Did Sham just ask me to go away? No, not at all. You should definitely continue to visit this particular blog for more transcendent existentialism from time to time.
~Sham
Friday, January 22, 2010
Gold: Lifeblood of the Underworld
Why Adventurers seek it, Dragons hoard it and Goblins idolize it.
Gold is woven into the very fabric of the fantasy role-playing campaign, often being the catalyst for adventure. Characters pursue gold because it is a means to an end for their goals, providing experience and wealth in order to realize greater power within the framework of the campaign world. Gold is, after all, power.
Adventuring characters gain experience through the wealth they extract from the underworld. As detailed in The First Fantasy Campaign by Dave Arneson, adventurers in the initial version of what was to become D&D were required to spend their plundered gold pursuing certain motivations in order to gain experience from it.
Gold allows experienced adventurers to bring order to the wilderness on the surface through the construction of strongholds. The forces of Law desire the plundering of gold from the clutches of Chaos in the underworld that they might spread the will of man across the land.
To further their own cause and maintain their grasp in the fantasy campaign, Chaos must oppose these efforts. He who has the gold makes the rules in a manner of speaking.
The underworld itself relies on gold, its presence attracts and emboldens monsters while luring adventurers into the unexplored reaches below. The absence of gold can lead to a dungeon's dormancy or perhaps eventual abandonment. Gold is the lifeblood of the underworld.
With the assumption that gold is more then mere currency, allow certain monsters in the fantasy campaign to become more powerful based on the amount of gold they are able to amass or otherwise keep hidden within the underworld. The underworld will often reward their efforts much in the manner that adventurers are rewarded for capturing and spending gold.
Goblin Hordes: Keeping the Lifeblood flowing
At the far end of the gold/underworld spectrum are the lowly Goblins. Being an abomination of fae-blood and spawned from the very Chaos of the underworld, Goblins find themselves attuned to gold in a manner not shared by most beings. It is their duty to keep this lifeblood of the underworld flowing, and they do so in a number of ways. Goblins place gold above all other motivations because it is one of the surest means of survival in the dark pits they call home.
Nocturnal surface raids, kidnappings and general Goblin mayhem assure that gold is always entering their world from the surface, robbing the forces of Law even if in but a small manner. Following this flow of gold are adventurers who seek to reclaim that which the Goblins have absconded with from above. The forces below value the activities of the Goblins in luring over-dwellers to their demise, and appreciate the fealty often paid to them by these dungeon underlings.
Goblins garner the benefits of gold as a collective, not individually. A typical Goblin community, or tribe for lack of a better word, consists of 40-400 Goblins as well as a King with 5-30 Guards. The King and Guards form the unit which gains a rudimentary type of experience, while the standard Goblins enjoy greater numbers and more powerful leadership.
Goblins do not earn any benefits from simply hoarding gold; removing it from circulation is how they are able to benefit from gold. Here are some possible methods through which Goblins may gain experience from plundered gold:
Goblin Gold Disposal Methods
Bury/Hide: The intent was to use it later but it is forgotten. Map optional.
Sacrifice: In pagan worship, dropped into a mindless monstrosity's lair or deep hole.
Recast: Typically into pagan idols, sometimes into nose-cleaners and the like.
Distribute: As long as the gold goes deeper into the dungeon, either as fealty, payment or tribute, and falls into the clutches of something more capable of guarding it.
Goblin tribes do not begin to gain experience until they have established a lair, with King and Guards, and subsequently disposed of 8,000 gold. At that time the King and Guards will continue to accrue experience. Individual Goblin Kings and Guards will be replaced if they perish, with no penalty, but if the entire royal court is slain the tribe loses all of its accumulated experience.
Goblin Hordes increase in membership while the King and Guards become more powerful based upon an accumulation of experience earned through gold disposal. These scores are tracked in increments called Goblin Horde Ranks, detailed below.
Goblin Horde Ranks
I – 8K: +25 Goblins, +1 Guard, K&G: AC 5, HD 1+1, SA: Max hits.
II – 16K: +50 Goblins, +2 Guard, K&G: AC 5, HD 2, SA: RT Saves.
III – 32K: +75 Goblins, +3 Guards, K&G: AC 4, HD 2+1, SA: RT To Hit.
IV – 64K: +100 Goblins, +4 Guards, K&G: AC 4, HD 3, SA: RT Damage.
V – 128K: +125 Goblins, +5 Guards, K&G: AC 3, HD 3+1, SA: Lucky.
VI – 256K+: +150 Goblins, +6 Guards, K&G: AC 3, HD 4, SA: Two Lives.
K&G: Stats for the King and Guards. King and Guards all possess Move 9 and +1 Morale, regardless of Rank. The Special Ability (SA) is only learned by the King himself, and all six are cumulative.
King Special Abilities: RT (Roll Twice, using the higher result), Lucky (King can Save vs Death to avoid a killing blow), Two Lives (King will spring from the dead once, fully healed).
Gains in tribe members are cumulative across the periods of growth. For example, a tribe at Horde Size IV would have gained 250 Goblins and 10 Guards, its King and Guards would fight with an increased level of expertise (AC 4 and HD 3).
Keep in mind that the King and Guards will often make use of any magic items found or captured if at all possible. Optionally, if gold disposal is focused in the methods of Sacrifice and Recasting into pagan idols a tribe might also realize members with shamanistic or anti-cleric abilities. These Shamans can replace Guards, or complement them.
Dragon Hoards: Establishing Hearts of Adventure
While Goblins keep the Lifeblood flowing, Dragons and potentially other powerful underworld denizens benefit from the hoards of gold they are able to establish and protect. These hoards create hubs of power, or hearts of adventure. Fed by the flow of gold above and around them, these hearts increase in size through a steady influx of wealth.
Dragons long ago learned the importance of gold, the mythical element. By hoarding wealth Dragons were able to realize greater power while preventing the growth of Law. While Dragons may take a stance of Chaos or Neutrality, and even Law in the case of Gold Dragons, they are normally opposed to the spread of civilized man as his influence sweeps across their ancestral lands. Given the ferocity and cunning of many dragons it is only natural that they are often able to collect vast amounts of gold. This then is the motivation for Dragons, by hoarding gold they gain a limited form of experience which impacts their existence in the fantasy campaign.
Dragons establish a proper Hoard much in the way characters build a stronghold; by gaining experience and using wealth. In the case of the Dragon, experience of this sort is a measure of surviving to the very old age of 100 years. The Dragon may have been accumulating wealth in its younger days, but the proper establishment of a Hoard requires a suitable lair, boasting 70,000 gold or more, and the aforementioned age requirement. Once the proper Hoard is established and cultivated the Dragon will begin to acquire greater power while attracting followers.
Dragon Hoard Ranks use a total gold equivalent value which includes copper, silver, gold, gems and jewels. The collection and massing of this wealth is measured in the increments detailed below:
Dragon Hoard Ranks
I – 70K: Followers: 30 HD. Growth: Maximum HD if not already very large.
II - 140K: Followers: 60 HD. Toughness: 7 hp/HD.
III - 210K: Followers: 120 HD. Prowess: Bite deals double damage.
IV - 280K: Followers: 180 HD. Resilience: +2 on all saves.
V - 350K: Followers: 240 HD. Fearsome Breath: penalizes saves by 3.
VI - 420K+: Followers: 300 HD. Long-winded: able to breathe 4 times per day.
Dragons surviving the loss of their Hoard will not lose their special abilities immediately but may stand a chance to watch their followers abandon them. Hoard-less Dragons so pilfered of their wealth will do everything within their power to reclaim their gold and riches. Such Hoard-less Dragons will begin to watch their experience-earned power wane over time. Subdued Dragons on the other hand will lose their special abilities once their wealth is captured and they are removed from the underworld.
The above Horde and Hoard benefits are just basic ideas; there's certainly much more that can be dreamed up to flesh out this concept of the gold/underworld system and the advantages earned by the monsters propagating it.
Just a little something I've been bashing about and I thought I'd share for your enjoyment on a rainy Friday.
~Sham, Quixotic Referee
Gold is woven into the very fabric of the fantasy role-playing campaign, often being the catalyst for adventure. Characters pursue gold because it is a means to an end for their goals, providing experience and wealth in order to realize greater power within the framework of the campaign world. Gold is, after all, power.
Adventuring characters gain experience through the wealth they extract from the underworld. As detailed in The First Fantasy Campaign by Dave Arneson, adventurers in the initial version of what was to become D&D were required to spend their plundered gold pursuing certain motivations in order to gain experience from it.
Gold allows experienced adventurers to bring order to the wilderness on the surface through the construction of strongholds. The forces of Law desire the plundering of gold from the clutches of Chaos in the underworld that they might spread the will of man across the land.
To further their own cause and maintain their grasp in the fantasy campaign, Chaos must oppose these efforts. He who has the gold makes the rules in a manner of speaking.
The underworld itself relies on gold, its presence attracts and emboldens monsters while luring adventurers into the unexplored reaches below. The absence of gold can lead to a dungeon's dormancy or perhaps eventual abandonment. Gold is the lifeblood of the underworld.
With the assumption that gold is more then mere currency, allow certain monsters in the fantasy campaign to become more powerful based on the amount of gold they are able to amass or otherwise keep hidden within the underworld. The underworld will often reward their efforts much in the manner that adventurers are rewarded for capturing and spending gold.
Goblin Hordes: Keeping the Lifeblood flowing
At the far end of the gold/underworld spectrum are the lowly Goblins. Being an abomination of fae-blood and spawned from the very Chaos of the underworld, Goblins find themselves attuned to gold in a manner not shared by most beings. It is their duty to keep this lifeblood of the underworld flowing, and they do so in a number of ways. Goblins place gold above all other motivations because it is one of the surest means of survival in the dark pits they call home.
Nocturnal surface raids, kidnappings and general Goblin mayhem assure that gold is always entering their world from the surface, robbing the forces of Law even if in but a small manner. Following this flow of gold are adventurers who seek to reclaim that which the Goblins have absconded with from above. The forces below value the activities of the Goblins in luring over-dwellers to their demise, and appreciate the fealty often paid to them by these dungeon underlings.
Goblins garner the benefits of gold as a collective, not individually. A typical Goblin community, or tribe for lack of a better word, consists of 40-400 Goblins as well as a King with 5-30 Guards. The King and Guards form the unit which gains a rudimentary type of experience, while the standard Goblins enjoy greater numbers and more powerful leadership.
Goblins do not earn any benefits from simply hoarding gold; removing it from circulation is how they are able to benefit from gold. Here are some possible methods through which Goblins may gain experience from plundered gold:
Goblin Gold Disposal Methods
Bury/Hide: The intent was to use it later but it is forgotten. Map optional.
Sacrifice: In pagan worship, dropped into a mindless monstrosity's lair or deep hole.
Recast: Typically into pagan idols, sometimes into nose-cleaners and the like.
Distribute: As long as the gold goes deeper into the dungeon, either as fealty, payment or tribute, and falls into the clutches of something more capable of guarding it.
Goblin tribes do not begin to gain experience until they have established a lair, with King and Guards, and subsequently disposed of 8,000 gold. At that time the King and Guards will continue to accrue experience. Individual Goblin Kings and Guards will be replaced if they perish, with no penalty, but if the entire royal court is slain the tribe loses all of its accumulated experience.
Goblin Hordes increase in membership while the King and Guards become more powerful based upon an accumulation of experience earned through gold disposal. These scores are tracked in increments called Goblin Horde Ranks, detailed below.
Goblin Horde Ranks
I – 8K: +25 Goblins, +1 Guard, K&G: AC 5, HD 1+1, SA: Max hits.
II – 16K: +50 Goblins, +2 Guard, K&G: AC 5, HD 2, SA: RT Saves.
III – 32K: +75 Goblins, +3 Guards, K&G: AC 4, HD 2+1, SA: RT To Hit.
IV – 64K: +100 Goblins, +4 Guards, K&G: AC 4, HD 3, SA: RT Damage.
V – 128K: +125 Goblins, +5 Guards, K&G: AC 3, HD 3+1, SA: Lucky.
VI – 256K+: +150 Goblins, +6 Guards, K&G: AC 3, HD 4, SA: Two Lives.
K&G: Stats for the King and Guards. King and Guards all possess Move 9 and +1 Morale, regardless of Rank. The Special Ability (SA) is only learned by the King himself, and all six are cumulative.
King Special Abilities: RT (Roll Twice, using the higher result), Lucky (King can Save vs Death to avoid a killing blow), Two Lives (King will spring from the dead once, fully healed).
Gains in tribe members are cumulative across the periods of growth. For example, a tribe at Horde Size IV would have gained 250 Goblins and 10 Guards, its King and Guards would fight with an increased level of expertise (AC 4 and HD 3).
Keep in mind that the King and Guards will often make use of any magic items found or captured if at all possible. Optionally, if gold disposal is focused in the methods of Sacrifice and Recasting into pagan idols a tribe might also realize members with shamanistic or anti-cleric abilities. These Shamans can replace Guards, or complement them.
Dragon Hoards: Establishing Hearts of Adventure
While Goblins keep the Lifeblood flowing, Dragons and potentially other powerful underworld denizens benefit from the hoards of gold they are able to establish and protect. These hoards create hubs of power, or hearts of adventure. Fed by the flow of gold above and around them, these hearts increase in size through a steady influx of wealth.
Dragons long ago learned the importance of gold, the mythical element. By hoarding wealth Dragons were able to realize greater power while preventing the growth of Law. While Dragons may take a stance of Chaos or Neutrality, and even Law in the case of Gold Dragons, they are normally opposed to the spread of civilized man as his influence sweeps across their ancestral lands. Given the ferocity and cunning of many dragons it is only natural that they are often able to collect vast amounts of gold. This then is the motivation for Dragons, by hoarding gold they gain a limited form of experience which impacts their existence in the fantasy campaign.
Dragons establish a proper Hoard much in the way characters build a stronghold; by gaining experience and using wealth. In the case of the Dragon, experience of this sort is a measure of surviving to the very old age of 100 years. The Dragon may have been accumulating wealth in its younger days, but the proper establishment of a Hoard requires a suitable lair, boasting 70,000 gold or more, and the aforementioned age requirement. Once the proper Hoard is established and cultivated the Dragon will begin to acquire greater power while attracting followers.
Dragon Hoard Ranks use a total gold equivalent value which includes copper, silver, gold, gems and jewels. The collection and massing of this wealth is measured in the increments detailed below:
Dragon Hoard Ranks
I – 70K: Followers: 30 HD. Growth: Maximum HD if not already very large.
II - 140K: Followers: 60 HD. Toughness: 7 hp/HD.
III - 210K: Followers: 120 HD. Prowess: Bite deals double damage.
IV - 280K: Followers: 180 HD. Resilience: +2 on all saves.
V - 350K: Followers: 240 HD. Fearsome Breath: penalizes saves by 3.
VI - 420K+: Followers: 300 HD. Long-winded: able to breathe 4 times per day.
Dragons surviving the loss of their Hoard will not lose their special abilities immediately but may stand a chance to watch their followers abandon them. Hoard-less Dragons so pilfered of their wealth will do everything within their power to reclaim their gold and riches. Such Hoard-less Dragons will begin to watch their experience-earned power wane over time. Subdued Dragons on the other hand will lose their special abilities once their wealth is captured and they are removed from the underworld.
* * *
The above Horde and Hoard benefits are just basic ideas; there's certainly much more that can be dreamed up to flesh out this concept of the gold/underworld system and the advantages earned by the monsters propagating it.
Just a little something I've been bashing about and I thought I'd share for your enjoyment on a rainy Friday.
~Sham, Quixotic Referee
Sunday, August 9, 2009
Much Ado 'bout Ol' Schoo' part 3
9. The Great Unknown and The Great Unwashed: One of the early lessons I learned with D&D is, I think, still true to this day. There is a correlation between how good the game is, and how much unpleasantness one can stand. A pleasant, inviting and friendly DM might run a crappy game of D&D, but one will play in it week after week because of friendship, respect or just the social aspect and the rest of the players with which to mingle. At the other end of the spectrum is the altogether weird, antisocial mess of a DM who runs the most enthralling game of D&D ever. Games move back and forth between these two extremes, sometimes meeting at that sweet spot where you find a DM you might actually hang out with outside of the game who also happens to run the best games of D&D you've ever played in. Once that sweet spot is found, you'll probably have a gaming crew for many, many years. You might even chase off newcomers that you find seated at your table in order to protect the traditional balance of the group. In order to find the right balance, though, you need to experience as many different DM's styles and approaches as you can. Even if it means politely finishing a game when you would rather stick your pencil through your eye.
10. Writ by the Finger of God: I'm not sure this is true any longer, but at one time, early on, the entire collection of various groups I mingled with waited with baited breath for anything new offered by TSR. The Dragon was our regular fix, and the modules were our irregular binges of gaming goodness. By the time Monster Manual 2 came out, this feeling was waning. Before then, however, it felt like we were a wild-eyed, crazed pack of Gygax-addicted junkies. We'd arrive at the after-school club hoping we were the first ones to have this vital new information. Man was it cool to be the first to show up with Dragon 83 and tell the players that today they would be entering Roger Moore's The Dancing Hut. Yep, I did that. It was new, it was from TSR, and I had to limit the number of participants for fear that they might steamroll the adventure. At the time it seemed like it was impossible for TSR or anyone else to publish too much material. We were ripping through all of it and asking for more.
11. The Radiant Egg: By the time we graduated in 1984, things had turned quickly from TSR-worship to Gygax-bashing. I suppose we had devoured everything we could, and found ourselves wanting. There were some new, interesting non-D&D titles on the shelves that took the Gygax & Arneson concept, and offered fresh new themes and settings. Perhaps it was a time for change. I do think the TSR marketing at the time had a lot to do with this. D&D ads were in comic books, and there was a Saturday morning D&D cartoon that made us cringe. Only a year later Gary was actually gone from TSR. We turned upon TSR and ridiculed Gary and Greyhawk. We stopped accepting and playing everything from TSR. We started homebrewing a lot as we had done in the earliest days. I created an alien planet in my campaign called the Radiant Egg; a parody of Elves, Dwarves, Hobbits and the high fantasy of Gary's efforts, all ruled under the iron fist of a ruthless tyrant. We all had a good laugh for a number of years and settled in to a customized/kitchen sink hybrid one would loosely call D&D now. The years passed and people stopped talking about Gary. AD&D 2E was out, but by then we didn't even pay attention. Our regular games weren't quite as frequent. We had sealed ourselves off from the industry. To this day I look back and realize that the Radiant Egg was some sort of misguided pent up frustration stemming from our own reliance on TSR. Along the way we had learned enough about D&D and its concept to continue playing in perpetuity without any outside source of gaming material. In just six years we had seen it all, and come full circle back to taking pencil and paper and making the game our own. I miss Gary, I miss the old TSR, and the Radiant Egg will never be a part of any of my games in the future.
12. Winter of our Discontent: Not long after the heady days of twice a week play, after college saw many of us scatter and eventually reform, we found ourselves in something of a transformed state. Interestingly enough, our state of mind also coincided somewhat with the state of affairs at TSR. The great 80's fad of D&D was on a major downswing. Gary Gygax himself had been ousted from the company. None of us gave a damn about AD&D 2E. The guys were settling down; some engaged, others already entering the careers which they would still be in nearly 20 years later. I'm not sure if it was the gang getting older and facing real responsibilities, a loss of teenage gusto, or the game not being as fresh to us at is once was. I think it was a combination of all of these factors. We had separated and reunited after some very formative and influential years. Sure we gamed a lot during college as well, but it was never like the marathon Saturday games of the early 80's. Something happened, though. The games became more serious, more realistic, more grounded, more mundane. We had entered the long winter of our discontent, and slowly over the course of the following years the group drifted apart. Again, was this families, careers and kids, or a lack of interest in this more mature version of the game? Whatever the case may be, I have shed such unnecessary and burdensome concerns and returned to my roots; what matters now is the concept which once united us, best enjoyed in its undiluted form.
So what is old school? I'm just a Proto-New School Neo-Grognard, why the hell are you asking me? I know for a fact, based on the divergent styles I experienced in the first six years, that many readers who played during that era will offer entirely different memories and observations from the period of 1979-1985. The fact is that D&D exploded onto the scene in those years, and very soon after nearly went bankrupt. From the penthouse to the outhouse, as they say.
If hard pressed my only answer is that old school embodies the free form approach of the first decade of D&D. The one unifying element at the time was that there was no right or wrong way to play, and that everyone did so differently.
Thanks for reading, even if you only skimmed the initial summary in part one.
~Sham, Quixotic Referee
10. Writ by the Finger of God: I'm not sure this is true any longer, but at one time, early on, the entire collection of various groups I mingled with waited with baited breath for anything new offered by TSR. The Dragon was our regular fix, and the modules were our irregular binges of gaming goodness. By the time Monster Manual 2 came out, this feeling was waning. Before then, however, it felt like we were a wild-eyed, crazed pack of Gygax-addicted junkies. We'd arrive at the after-school club hoping we were the first ones to have this vital new information. Man was it cool to be the first to show up with Dragon 83 and tell the players that today they would be entering Roger Moore's The Dancing Hut. Yep, I did that. It was new, it was from TSR, and I had to limit the number of participants for fear that they might steamroll the adventure. At the time it seemed like it was impossible for TSR or anyone else to publish too much material. We were ripping through all of it and asking for more.
11. The Radiant Egg: By the time we graduated in 1984, things had turned quickly from TSR-worship to Gygax-bashing. I suppose we had devoured everything we could, and found ourselves wanting. There were some new, interesting non-D&D titles on the shelves that took the Gygax & Arneson concept, and offered fresh new themes and settings. Perhaps it was a time for change. I do think the TSR marketing at the time had a lot to do with this. D&D ads were in comic books, and there was a Saturday morning D&D cartoon that made us cringe. Only a year later Gary was actually gone from TSR. We turned upon TSR and ridiculed Gary and Greyhawk. We stopped accepting and playing everything from TSR. We started homebrewing a lot as we had done in the earliest days. I created an alien planet in my campaign called the Radiant Egg; a parody of Elves, Dwarves, Hobbits and the high fantasy of Gary's efforts, all ruled under the iron fist of a ruthless tyrant. We all had a good laugh for a number of years and settled in to a customized/kitchen sink hybrid one would loosely call D&D now. The years passed and people stopped talking about Gary. AD&D 2E was out, but by then we didn't even pay attention. Our regular games weren't quite as frequent. We had sealed ourselves off from the industry. To this day I look back and realize that the Radiant Egg was some sort of misguided pent up frustration stemming from our own reliance on TSR. Along the way we had learned enough about D&D and its concept to continue playing in perpetuity without any outside source of gaming material. In just six years we had seen it all, and come full circle back to taking pencil and paper and making the game our own. I miss Gary, I miss the old TSR, and the Radiant Egg will never be a part of any of my games in the future.
12. Winter of our Discontent: Not long after the heady days of twice a week play, after college saw many of us scatter and eventually reform, we found ourselves in something of a transformed state. Interestingly enough, our state of mind also coincided somewhat with the state of affairs at TSR. The great 80's fad of D&D was on a major downswing. Gary Gygax himself had been ousted from the company. None of us gave a damn about AD&D 2E. The guys were settling down; some engaged, others already entering the careers which they would still be in nearly 20 years later. I'm not sure if it was the gang getting older and facing real responsibilities, a loss of teenage gusto, or the game not being as fresh to us at is once was. I think it was a combination of all of these factors. We had separated and reunited after some very formative and influential years. Sure we gamed a lot during college as well, but it was never like the marathon Saturday games of the early 80's. Something happened, though. The games became more serious, more realistic, more grounded, more mundane. We had entered the long winter of our discontent, and slowly over the course of the following years the group drifted apart. Again, was this families, careers and kids, or a lack of interest in this more mature version of the game? Whatever the case may be, I have shed such unnecessary and burdensome concerns and returned to my roots; what matters now is the concept which once united us, best enjoyed in its undiluted form.
So what is old school? I'm just a Proto-New School Neo-Grognard, why the hell are you asking me? I know for a fact, based on the divergent styles I experienced in the first six years, that many readers who played during that era will offer entirely different memories and observations from the period of 1979-1985. The fact is that D&D exploded onto the scene in those years, and very soon after nearly went bankrupt. From the penthouse to the outhouse, as they say.
If hard pressed my only answer is that old school embodies the free form approach of the first decade of D&D. The one unifying element at the time was that there was no right or wrong way to play, and that everyone did so differently.
Thanks for reading, even if you only skimmed the initial summary in part one.
~Sham, Quixotic Referee
Saturday, August 8, 2009
Much Ado 'bout Ol' Schoo' part 2
3. Wet Behind the Ears: Additionally there were already, in these early days, various divisions in the fan base. Not only did I experience the normal school boy underclassmen – upperclassmen prejudices, but there were D&D prejudices at every turn. These opinions had little to do with whether one was playing original, basic or advanced D&D. In fact, pretty much everyone was, by that time, playing AD&D. The Dungeon Master's Guide was the latest addition to AD&D, and by then it was basically old news. I owned all three volumes shortly after I joined the D&D Club. Few of the groups I played in, in retrospect, played the game in the manner envisioned by Gygax and TSR, but your street cred was established by using the AD&D books. Only a silly Freshman, like me, would show up with the basic D&D box. Most of the time us underclassmen had to make our own games, and they were, shall we say, probably what you might expect from a bunch of 14 and 15 year olds. I suppose you could say we were the Proto-New School of the time, and our games were somewhat unconventional. The only defining aspect of our Proto-New School was that we definitely ad-libbed and made rulings on the fly much more often than the older players, and we were all just fine with that.
4. A Spork in the Road: It wasn't long before us Proto-New Schoolers were the upperclassmen of the club. By then I had developed something of a reputation as one of the go-to DM's, and my regular group was expanding quickly. Soon it grew to include weekly gatherings on Saturdays at the Rec Center. So I was averaging 12 to 14 hours playing twice a week by then. I watched as the hobby grew. I witnessed the various media stories, and how preconceived notions of the game spun out of control. We were undaunted, and luckily our parents, with a few exceptions, had open minds. Especially my own, as I was consumed with the hobby. DM'ing that many hours a week meant I was spending a lot of free time in game prep. I watched as the non wargamers came onto the scene. Thesbians, Ren Fair folks, comic book guys, burn outs, the occasional jock or two, and the curious older siblings. None of which had any idea what they were getting into, and had never rolled dice except to move past Go and collect $200.00. The game was changing; the second revision of basic D&D was out. It was the first time that I felt uncomfortable with the way I saw the game being played, and was probably when I began running into Rules Lawyers more than ever before. Suddenly I was being told I was doing it wrong. The AD&D 1E Rules Lawyers caused us to become insular and selective, and from there we departed down a narrow path that would eventually seal us into an early 80's time capsule.
5. Because It's There: One of the things that many of us took great pleasure in accomplishing was a result of what was in print at the time. If Experience Tables went out to Level 29, so did we. Grandfather of Assassins? Check. Grand Master of Flowers? Check. Sword of Kas? Check. And so forth. I even recall one game that actually rubbed me the wrong way; I had a Dwarf who discovered all the pieces of the Rod of Seven Parts in the first game session. Now that's a really bad example of what I mean, the point is that we explored all the aspects of AD&D, including taking on various gods from the Deities & Demi-Gods hardcover. I mean come on, they had Hit Points. We had god-like PC's. Who says we shouldn't or couldn't? We did. And we talked about it for years afterwards. While my own campaigns ended up being of an extremely high power scale, the side effect was that I was forced to home brew a lot in order to keep things challenging. My players were crafty and shrewd. They were, and still are, meta-gamers. The game is a challenge, and they use every tool in their arsenal to persevere. After all, we were wargamers and we approach D&D with the same mentality; winning was more important than role-playing for us. If you print it we conquer it because it is there. Gamers will be Gamers.
6. Nebulous Stirrings: Obscure inspirations and unconventional themes always scored plenty of style points back in the day. At the time it was much easier to impress players than it is now, of course. There is very little new under the RPG Sun nearly 30 years later. Now we are often left with theorizing, philosophizing and waxing poetically about the old days. The concept is what was being explored. Mechanics and rules were secondary. Things worked, players understood the game, and the creative energy was spent on coming up with these unusual challenges or settings. Back then there was only one dungeon with aliens, mutants and robots. Yeah, that was old hat. You had to be much more original than that. The thing is that while the boundaries of the game were being pushed as far as themes and weird settings, no one, not a soul, even had the time nor inclination to worry about the rules themselves. The days of nebulous stirrings are long gone, and now it seems that mechanics and style are keeping everyone occupied. It was much more interesting when good ideas and interesting themes weren't simply rehashed ideas, and when the technical side took a backseat to the creative side.
7. Fire Burn and Cauldron Bubble: The mindset of the average D&D enthusiast during that ascent to TSR's peak was one which was likely forged by the fellows at Lake Geneva themselves. AD&D 1E had been foisted upon the masses in what was a stroke of marketing genius. First of all it was “advanced”, and second of all those hardcover books were, for their time, glorious and overflowing with Gygax's gushing descriptions. We ate it up. The thing is, we had been trained, by TSR no less, to essentially pick and choose the bits we liked, and change or ignore the rest. This of course left plenty of room for throwing the veritable kitchen sink into our games. Not only did we have OD&D and its supplements, Holmes D&D, AD&D and The Dragon magazine, we also had tons of Judges Guild material, and oddball “unofficial” publications galore. You never knew what to expect from one DM to the next. The mechanics themselves were nearly always the same across the board, but the options were never limited to AD&D. If you pulled out the Critical Hit table from the Arduin Grimoire, nobody blinked twice. If you used some strange monsters from the White Dwarf magazine, you were outwitting the players. That was part and parcel in the wild and woolly games of the day; the cauldron was bubbling over with material from a seemingly unlimited amount of resources. Even if you never once took up pen and paper and designed custom monsters or magic items, the scene was bloated with offerings in print from countless sources; and they were never out of place in anyone's campaign.
8. Under the Big Top: While this may have been more or less a reflection of the scene at the time, I have never since witnessed it again. In both our D&D Club and our Rec Center games one would find players who arrived at the game table with one or more “traveling PC's”. I've shared a story of one such famous Paladin in our club who met his demise in the then infamous Tomb of Horrors. Traveling PC's were almost expected. Very rarely did someone simply create a high level PC in order to join into a game. In such a case the DM awarded the new player with an exisiting NPC, who for one or more sessions went from Henchman to Hero, or the new guy rolled up a 1st level character and hoped that the other players would have mercy on him and keep him safe until he could contribute. Short of those options the player would show the DM his traveling character, and after possible alterations said character would be introduced to the party. I had some fun with this too many times, to the point that my players would essentially tie up and interrogate all newcomers. I had hardened them through the long campaigns. What I took from this over the years was that there was a unique sense of community amongst all of us; we were sharing in this hobby and marveling at one another's accomplishments at the same time. Even if said traveling PC's bit the dust in one of my dungeons.
~Sham Quixotic Referee
4. A Spork in the Road: It wasn't long before us Proto-New Schoolers were the upperclassmen of the club. By then I had developed something of a reputation as one of the go-to DM's, and my regular group was expanding quickly. Soon it grew to include weekly gatherings on Saturdays at the Rec Center. So I was averaging 12 to 14 hours playing twice a week by then. I watched as the hobby grew. I witnessed the various media stories, and how preconceived notions of the game spun out of control. We were undaunted, and luckily our parents, with a few exceptions, had open minds. Especially my own, as I was consumed with the hobby. DM'ing that many hours a week meant I was spending a lot of free time in game prep. I watched as the non wargamers came onto the scene. Thesbians, Ren Fair folks, comic book guys, burn outs, the occasional jock or two, and the curious older siblings. None of which had any idea what they were getting into, and had never rolled dice except to move past Go and collect $200.00. The game was changing; the second revision of basic D&D was out. It was the first time that I felt uncomfortable with the way I saw the game being played, and was probably when I began running into Rules Lawyers more than ever before. Suddenly I was being told I was doing it wrong. The AD&D 1E Rules Lawyers caused us to become insular and selective, and from there we departed down a narrow path that would eventually seal us into an early 80's time capsule.
5. Because It's There: One of the things that many of us took great pleasure in accomplishing was a result of what was in print at the time. If Experience Tables went out to Level 29, so did we. Grandfather of Assassins? Check. Grand Master of Flowers? Check. Sword of Kas? Check. And so forth. I even recall one game that actually rubbed me the wrong way; I had a Dwarf who discovered all the pieces of the Rod of Seven Parts in the first game session. Now that's a really bad example of what I mean, the point is that we explored all the aspects of AD&D, including taking on various gods from the Deities & Demi-Gods hardcover. I mean come on, they had Hit Points. We had god-like PC's. Who says we shouldn't or couldn't? We did. And we talked about it for years afterwards. While my own campaigns ended up being of an extremely high power scale, the side effect was that I was forced to home brew a lot in order to keep things challenging. My players were crafty and shrewd. They were, and still are, meta-gamers. The game is a challenge, and they use every tool in their arsenal to persevere. After all, we were wargamers and we approach D&D with the same mentality; winning was more important than role-playing for us. If you print it we conquer it because it is there. Gamers will be Gamers.
6. Nebulous Stirrings: Obscure inspirations and unconventional themes always scored plenty of style points back in the day. At the time it was much easier to impress players than it is now, of course. There is very little new under the RPG Sun nearly 30 years later. Now we are often left with theorizing, philosophizing and waxing poetically about the old days. The concept is what was being explored. Mechanics and rules were secondary. Things worked, players understood the game, and the creative energy was spent on coming up with these unusual challenges or settings. Back then there was only one dungeon with aliens, mutants and robots. Yeah, that was old hat. You had to be much more original than that. The thing is that while the boundaries of the game were being pushed as far as themes and weird settings, no one, not a soul, even had the time nor inclination to worry about the rules themselves. The days of nebulous stirrings are long gone, and now it seems that mechanics and style are keeping everyone occupied. It was much more interesting when good ideas and interesting themes weren't simply rehashed ideas, and when the technical side took a backseat to the creative side.
7. Fire Burn and Cauldron Bubble: The mindset of the average D&D enthusiast during that ascent to TSR's peak was one which was likely forged by the fellows at Lake Geneva themselves. AD&D 1E had been foisted upon the masses in what was a stroke of marketing genius. First of all it was “advanced”, and second of all those hardcover books were, for their time, glorious and overflowing with Gygax's gushing descriptions. We ate it up. The thing is, we had been trained, by TSR no less, to essentially pick and choose the bits we liked, and change or ignore the rest. This of course left plenty of room for throwing the veritable kitchen sink into our games. Not only did we have OD&D and its supplements, Holmes D&D, AD&D and The Dragon magazine, we also had tons of Judges Guild material, and oddball “unofficial” publications galore. You never knew what to expect from one DM to the next. The mechanics themselves were nearly always the same across the board, but the options were never limited to AD&D. If you pulled out the Critical Hit table from the Arduin Grimoire, nobody blinked twice. If you used some strange monsters from the White Dwarf magazine, you were outwitting the players. That was part and parcel in the wild and woolly games of the day; the cauldron was bubbling over with material from a seemingly unlimited amount of resources. Even if you never once took up pen and paper and designed custom monsters or magic items, the scene was bloated with offerings in print from countless sources; and they were never out of place in anyone's campaign.
8. Under the Big Top: While this may have been more or less a reflection of the scene at the time, I have never since witnessed it again. In both our D&D Club and our Rec Center games one would find players who arrived at the game table with one or more “traveling PC's”. I've shared a story of one such famous Paladin in our club who met his demise in the then infamous Tomb of Horrors. Traveling PC's were almost expected. Very rarely did someone simply create a high level PC in order to join into a game. In such a case the DM awarded the new player with an exisiting NPC, who for one or more sessions went from Henchman to Hero, or the new guy rolled up a 1st level character and hoped that the other players would have mercy on him and keep him safe until he could contribute. Short of those options the player would show the DM his traveling character, and after possible alterations said character would be introduced to the party. I had some fun with this too many times, to the point that my players would essentially tie up and interrogate all newcomers. I had hardened them through the long campaigns. What I took from this over the years was that there was a unique sense of community amongst all of us; we were sharing in this hobby and marveling at one another's accomplishments at the same time. Even if said traveling PC's bit the dust in one of my dungeons.
~Sham Quixotic Referee
Friday, August 7, 2009
Much Ado 'bout Ol' Schoo' part I
A dozen observations from the front lines by a Proto-New School, Neo-Grognardian Dungeonista.
What follows is a collection of thoughts and observations that I recall from my own experiences in what many now call the old school era. Ranging from 1979 to 1985, these were my peak D&D playing years. All 6 of them, yet it feels like a landmark event in retrospect. Very little changed in fact after 1985; that is until 2007 when I embraced OD&D. But that is not the topic at hand.
My motivation for sitting down and collecting these memories is to tackle the oft asked question, what is old school? I'm part of something dubbed the Old School Renaissance. I'm not sure what the rest of the members of the OSR think old school is, or what they believe the OSR represents, so I cannot speak for anyone else other than to say that I support the OSR because I'm a fan of TSR era D&D. Plain and simple.
I was unaware until recently that many believe the OSR has a doctrine, or some unifying philosophy. As far as I'm concerned we're a collection of vastly different fans of D&D. In that regard I do not think anything has changed since 1985, when Gary Gygax left TSR.
In the effort of keeping this easy to digest, I have broken the post into three parts, and will offer up a summary that was initially going to be included at the end.
So what are the salient points for those not wishing to dredge through the sordid details of a 40-something's recollections? I will attempt to highlight them below and hope that they form some sort of understanding and not just the realization that I'm a crusty old stick-in-the-mud.
1. A wargames background that helped us form a game simulation approach to D&D, as opposed to some desire for or notion of realism.
2. There is no right or wrong way to play D&D, and each DM did it his or her way.
3. The only defining aspect of our Proto-New School was that we definitely ad-libbed and made rulings on the fly much more often than the older players.
4. The AD&D 1E Rules Lawyers caused us to become insular and selective, and from there we departed down a narrow path that would eventually seal us into an early 80's time capsule.
5. Winning was more important than role-playing for us. If you print it we conquer it because it is there.
6. It was much more interesting when good ideas and interesting themes weren't simply rehashed ideas, and when the technical side took a backseat to the creative side.
7. The scene was bloated with offerings in print from countless sources, and they were never out of place in anyone's campaign.
8. There was a unique sense of community amongst all of us; we were sharing in this hobby and marveling at one another's accomplishments at the same time.
9. In order to find the right balance you need to experience as many different DM's styles and approaches as you can.
10. At the time it seemed like it was impossible for TSR or anyone else to publish too much material. We were ripping through all of it and asking for more.
11. In just six years we had seen it all, and come full circle back to taking pencil and paper and making the game our own.
12. What matters now is the concept which once united us, best enjoyed in its undiluted form.
1. Gamers will be Gamers: I discovered D&D on my own in 1979. No one told me about it, nor taught me how to play. The thing was, though, back then, thanks to an older brother, I had already played numerous Avalon Hill and SPI table-top wargames. My older brother didn't like D&D, but he never gave it a chance. I suppose it was because his little brother had “discovered” it. None of his die-hard Diplomacy buddies knew anything about it. I grew tired of Diplomacy; it had swept away the other wargames I enjoyed before then, like Panzerblitz and Afrika Korps. I eventually discovered other D&D players. Like me, every one of them was also a fan of wargaming. Table top wargaming to be precise, miniature wargaming was still as foreign to them as it was to me at the time. We were arriving at D&D from a wargames background that helped us form a game simulation approach to D&D, as opposed to some desire for or notion of realism.
2. Unbridled Ambition: As my circle of fellow D&D enthusiasts grew beyond the first meager gatherings, I realized that this thing was bigger than I had ever imagined. By the time I was plunged into the Wargaming Club and the D&D Club in High School, there was a palpable feeling of excitement in the air. D&D was still expanding in popularity, and would continue to do so for years afterwards. Although we didn't know it, we were riding the waves of enthusiasm that were to herald in a new era in gaming and popular culture. I arrived on this scene thinking I knew all about both wargames and D&D. I was dead wrong. It was in this atmosphere that I discovered the many different approaches and playstyles popular amongst the various groups there. The gamers were exploring many different possibilities, not simply the Tolkienesque games I had experienced prior to High School. What I learned first and something I have never forgotten since; there is no right or wrong way to play D&D, and each DM did it his way.
~Sham, Quixotic Referee
What follows is a collection of thoughts and observations that I recall from my own experiences in what many now call the old school era. Ranging from 1979 to 1985, these were my peak D&D playing years. All 6 of them, yet it feels like a landmark event in retrospect. Very little changed in fact after 1985; that is until 2007 when I embraced OD&D. But that is not the topic at hand.
My motivation for sitting down and collecting these memories is to tackle the oft asked question, what is old school? I'm part of something dubbed the Old School Renaissance. I'm not sure what the rest of the members of the OSR think old school is, or what they believe the OSR represents, so I cannot speak for anyone else other than to say that I support the OSR because I'm a fan of TSR era D&D. Plain and simple.
I was unaware until recently that many believe the OSR has a doctrine, or some unifying philosophy. As far as I'm concerned we're a collection of vastly different fans of D&D. In that regard I do not think anything has changed since 1985, when Gary Gygax left TSR.
In the effort of keeping this easy to digest, I have broken the post into three parts, and will offer up a summary that was initially going to be included at the end.
So what are the salient points for those not wishing to dredge through the sordid details of a 40-something's recollections? I will attempt to highlight them below and hope that they form some sort of understanding and not just the realization that I'm a crusty old stick-in-the-mud.
1. A wargames background that helped us form a game simulation approach to D&D, as opposed to some desire for or notion of realism.
2. There is no right or wrong way to play D&D, and each DM did it his or her way.
3. The only defining aspect of our Proto-New School was that we definitely ad-libbed and made rulings on the fly much more often than the older players.
4. The AD&D 1E Rules Lawyers caused us to become insular and selective, and from there we departed down a narrow path that would eventually seal us into an early 80's time capsule.
5. Winning was more important than role-playing for us. If you print it we conquer it because it is there.
6. It was much more interesting when good ideas and interesting themes weren't simply rehashed ideas, and when the technical side took a backseat to the creative side.
7. The scene was bloated with offerings in print from countless sources, and they were never out of place in anyone's campaign.
8. There was a unique sense of community amongst all of us; we were sharing in this hobby and marveling at one another's accomplishments at the same time.
9. In order to find the right balance you need to experience as many different DM's styles and approaches as you can.
10. At the time it seemed like it was impossible for TSR or anyone else to publish too much material. We were ripping through all of it and asking for more.
11. In just six years we had seen it all, and come full circle back to taking pencil and paper and making the game our own.
12. What matters now is the concept which once united us, best enjoyed in its undiluted form.
1. Gamers will be Gamers: I discovered D&D on my own in 1979. No one told me about it, nor taught me how to play. The thing was, though, back then, thanks to an older brother, I had already played numerous Avalon Hill and SPI table-top wargames. My older brother didn't like D&D, but he never gave it a chance. I suppose it was because his little brother had “discovered” it. None of his die-hard Diplomacy buddies knew anything about it. I grew tired of Diplomacy; it had swept away the other wargames I enjoyed before then, like Panzerblitz and Afrika Korps. I eventually discovered other D&D players. Like me, every one of them was also a fan of wargaming. Table top wargaming to be precise, miniature wargaming was still as foreign to them as it was to me at the time. We were arriving at D&D from a wargames background that helped us form a game simulation approach to D&D, as opposed to some desire for or notion of realism.
2. Unbridled Ambition: As my circle of fellow D&D enthusiasts grew beyond the first meager gatherings, I realized that this thing was bigger than I had ever imagined. By the time I was plunged into the Wargaming Club and the D&D Club in High School, there was a palpable feeling of excitement in the air. D&D was still expanding in popularity, and would continue to do so for years afterwards. Although we didn't know it, we were riding the waves of enthusiasm that were to herald in a new era in gaming and popular culture. I arrived on this scene thinking I knew all about both wargames and D&D. I was dead wrong. It was in this atmosphere that I discovered the many different approaches and playstyles popular amongst the various groups there. The gamers were exploring many different possibilities, not simply the Tolkienesque games I had experienced prior to High School. What I learned first and something I have never forgotten since; there is no right or wrong way to play D&D, and each DM did it his way.
~Sham, Quixotic Referee
Thursday, June 4, 2009
Quotable Arneson
During my recent research into Blackmoor, I saved a number of tidbits which I found interesting along the way. Of particular note are quotes from a few different interviews with Blackmoor's creator, Dave Arneson, dating from 1981, 1999 and 2004.
Dave Arneson Quotes
On Blackmoor's origins:
We established in our historical campaigns the principal of having a Judge who everyone listened to and who set up the battle or campaign. That’s where we were coming from, traditional wargaming.
On Blackmoor's best feature:
To me, what made it unique and different was that a lot of what made up Blackmoor was input from the players and the way they were seeing the world, and what they were doing in it. I just kept notes. I built the framework, and would occasionally throw in a few storylines, but it was the players getting involved in filling in a lot of the gaps that made a difference.
On TSR:
I was doing a lot of work for them but they weren’t doing anything with it. I got tired of waiting a year and a half to get something published so we parted.
On Homebrew:
We ask people to use their imaginations and when you do that, they tend to have their own ideas of how things should be done. Any group that sets up a dungeon will eventually have their own rules.
On Role-Playing:
When I do my games, I give roleplaying points for people staying within their character. If they want to go out and kill things, that's easy to do, and a lot of referees that's all they do, but there's more to it. The richness is not in just rolling dice, the richness is in the characters and becoming part of this fantasy world.
On Player involvement:
...when a character gets killed, I let the player run the monsters that the party encounters. This way he or she stays involved, rather than becoming a spectator or leaving. When the party encounters intelligent monsters, I brief them on what that monster’s life goals are (usually "Guard this room, don’t let anyone in"). Then if the party wants to negotiate, they negotiate with him rather than me. That system also takes a little pressure off of me as a Judge.
On 25 years of RPGs:
Sitting down and reading boxed dialog, going through seven or eight volumes of rules, is a long way from the scribbled notes I started off with...It just got very, very complicated and, in the efforts to simplify things, they just lost whatever creativity was left...I think what you lost there was the spontaneity of the whole operation...Too many of them try to do everything, or they follow the official line of "You can't change anything or you'll destroy the rules."...That's not the way things started, that's not the way things should be. If something doesn't work, get rid of it. If something works in another set of rules and you want to put it in your game, go for it. The [rules'] job is to make the referee's life easier, so he can referee, not harder.
The above copyright Judges Guild, 1981 and 1999.
On Blackmoor Castle, the first Dungeon:
Well, dungeon crawls were, I think, the easiest things to set up because all you had to do was draw a grid map and didn't have to worry about the great outdoors and setting up trees and stuff. People also couldn't go wandering off where you didn't have a map because it was solid rock.
On Rules:
Most of the rules are only between my ears and they're constantly changing.
The above, including image, copyright IGN Entertainment, 2004.
~Sham, Quixotic Referee
Friday, May 15, 2009
One Page Dungeons
When I first put together the concept of the One Page Dungeon, I was pursuing a few different angles. First and foremost I wanted to pursue an economy of words in my adventure writing. I am prone to verbosity and triviality when I allow myself to sit behind the keyboard and plunk away without a care. Such an approach might produce a dungeon which is more interesting for the reader, full of colorful descriptions and answers to various what-ifs which might arise during play. That which is interesting to the Referee does not necessarily add to the adventure nor to the enjoyment of the players involved.
I’ve found after decades of writing that my adventures were becoming more and more bloated, to the point that reading a room description in the middle of a game session was interrupting the natural flow of play. If the passage was for a room I had recently devised, the details were still fresh in my memory, so I didn’t need to actually stop and quietly read what I had written. Given the sheer amount of rooms in many of my dungeons, I found that my memory was failing me when the players entered an area that I had written months or sometimes years before. It was during these moments that I didn’t need all of the extraneous information. I needed the important bits, and I needed them quickly. With this consideration in mind, I began to frown on flavorful entries and the ramifications of possible actions which the players might not even consider. I wanted to stop writing to myself, which is what I realized I often did when I was in my creative mode. Essentially I was looking for nothing more than the facts, distilled down to their most concise form. I needed to cut off the fat and get to the meat.
I assumed that if I forcibly limited the amount of text I would allow myself for a given area of a dungeon, I could devise an interesting exercise in economy of words. Somewhere along the way I read a thread over at the OD&D Discussion forums in which Dwayanu mentioned that he likes to draw maps in a 30x30 square area of the graph paper, thus leaving room for a key. This idea helped me formulate the One Page Dungeon concept. I realized that if I attempted to fill a 30x30 section in my normal mapping method, I’d end up with 20-25 numbered areas, and that restricting myself to that single page, I’d force myself to keep to nothing more than the essentials. Furthermore, the end result would be something which anyone could pick up and run with virtually no preparation time.
Now this opened up other notions. In an effort to create a drop dead simple dungeon format, I’d want to include a few tables on the page as well. Tables which would be at the Referee’s fingertips in order to keep play moving quickly, dispensing with the need to leaf through notes or books. Thus I added Wandering Monsters, Restocking, Random Treasure, and a Legend for the map itself.
The one-page layout I designed originally is found in this thread, and is the exact blueprint which Chgowiz was kind enough to duplicate and turn into a user friendly document for me to continue my project. Were it not for Chgowiz, I doubt I would’ve continued with the concept because my first Word experiments proved to be more trouble than they were worth.
I was surprised by the amount of feedback I got in regard to what I considered to be a simple concept. A concept that in fact, unbeknownst to me at the time, has been done before in slightly different forms by other gamers, including this one by Alex Schroeder. In retrospect, I think what made my concept work was the modular format, the inclusion of tables, and of course Chgowiz’s easy to use version of my template.
One of the best D&D web log authors to enter the fray in the past year, Amityville Mike, took to the concept almost immediately. Mike’s Stonehell, shared through his excellent blog The Society of the Torch, Pole and Rope, is the finest example of the concept to be found on the internet, the Dismal Depths included. Granted, Mike realized the limitations of the One Page right away when he began using the concept for his megadungeon. Stonehell is One Page in spirit, and Mike found that allowing for both sides of the page afforded him the space to describe his rooms and ideas with a bit more clarity, and to include even more tables. Nonetheless, Stonehell is still a One Page Dungeon, even though it uses front and back. The design theory is embraced and Mike has made the most of the template I envisioned.
There is good and bad with the concept. The One Page Dungeon approach challenges the author to convey the essentials while still creating an interesting, viable adventure. The very economy of words, the main driving force behind the concept, is also it’s most limiting factor. This is, as I mentioned in my Dismal Depths Guide, an intentional feature of the approach, not a flaw. The adventure is not going to take the Referee by the hand and guide him or her through the dungeon. There are no suggestions or explanations. There is no boxed text to be read aloud to the players. Trappings and mundane features are kept to a minimum. Theme, plot, back story, hooks, rumors and the why of it all are left to the Referee’s own imagination. The area descriptions themselves intentionally allow for creative input on behalf of the Referee. Nay, they demand it. This is what I refer to when I say the concept is not for the timid, nor the inexperienced. This is not Dungeons for Dummies. The challenge is not merely limited to drawing up a One Page Dungeon. The end result must translate into good gaming, and the Referee must be able to bring this out during play while working with limited resources.
Amongst all of my projects since identifying the Empty Room Principle I have found that this One Page Dungeon concept exemplifies it the best. It is one thing to preach, but another to practice what I preach. One of the greatest strengths of the design theory, one which might be lost upon some, is the minimalistic nature therein, this Empty Room Principal. Much like the original D&D rules I've grown to appreciate more and more, the One Page Dungeon engages the Referee's imagination and offers limitless opportunities for personal input. The descriptions are not restrictive, they do not force your hand, and they do not tell you there is only one way to do things. The text is restricted to a few lines for each area, which should be just enough to encourage and inspire.
Although circumstances have delayed much of the design effort I planned to undertake with the megadungeon which kicked this entire theme off, the Dismal Depths, I have been forming ideas and inventing novelties for that project. I hope to able to return to it seriously in the near future. I’m happy with what I’ve created for it thus far, including the Dismal Depths Bestiary and the Dismal Depths Trap Tables. I’d ask that those who have been looking for new Dismal Depths information keep the faith. There is more to come, have no fear. I don’t want to force anything as the dungeon needs to write itself, otherwise it might lose some luster.
Perhaps this article is something I should have written prior to the One Page Dungeon Contest hosted by Chatty DM and Chgowiz. The contest ended last night, and I have printed all 70 entries. If I had been in charge of submissions, I might have placed more limitations on the design theory. I may have had some notion of “This is my idea, and this is how you do it.” For this reason it is probably best that I had nothing to do with setting up and running the contest. I may have enforced certain criteria or insisted upon inclusion of features important to me. In looking over these entries, I can see that restricting anyone’s creativity is a bad thing, and would’ve been contradictory to the very spirit of the concept. The simplest notion is what made this a good contest. Write an actual, usable adventure on a single page, with a map, and be creative. That was all that was needed to design a good entry.
I’m proud that this innocent little concept has been embraced by those beyond the limited reach of my blog here, just as I am satisfied that the idea is not restricted by my personal design theories. It’s quite clear that many of the contestants had a lot of fun with the idea. Some of the One Page Dungeons don’t look anything like the rudimentary lay out I drew up, for that matter, some don’t look like anything I’ve ever seen before. I am left wondering if one of the entries is trying to get a Punk Rock vote from this judge, but I don’t want to leak any more information just yet.
Suffice to say that I am going to be up to my eyeballs in One Page Dungeons for the foreseeable future as I work toward judging these 70 entries. It’s particularly satisfying to see all of these versions of the concept from people who have probably never even heard of me nor read any of my ramblings here.
With that said, I’m signing off for a while for back to back out of town trips in which I’ll be reading and considering these dungeons during downtimes. I should be back to foist more drivel upon the unsuspecting after Memorial Day.
~Sham, Quixotic Referee
EDIT: Due to unexpected circumstances, the contest has been extended! Word is that we are up to 90 entries now! Quote from an update by Chgowiz:
"To that effect, we are re-instating all entries that we've rejected in the last 30 hours and will accept new entries until May 21st at 8h00 AM."
So, if you thought you missed the deadline, you haven't! Get to work and make your own One Page Dungeon. Just remember to ignore most of what I wrote above and create your own vision of the ODP format!
I’ve found after decades of writing that my adventures were becoming more and more bloated, to the point that reading a room description in the middle of a game session was interrupting the natural flow of play. If the passage was for a room I had recently devised, the details were still fresh in my memory, so I didn’t need to actually stop and quietly read what I had written. Given the sheer amount of rooms in many of my dungeons, I found that my memory was failing me when the players entered an area that I had written months or sometimes years before. It was during these moments that I didn’t need all of the extraneous information. I needed the important bits, and I needed them quickly. With this consideration in mind, I began to frown on flavorful entries and the ramifications of possible actions which the players might not even consider. I wanted to stop writing to myself, which is what I realized I often did when I was in my creative mode. Essentially I was looking for nothing more than the facts, distilled down to their most concise form. I needed to cut off the fat and get to the meat.
I assumed that if I forcibly limited the amount of text I would allow myself for a given area of a dungeon, I could devise an interesting exercise in economy of words. Somewhere along the way I read a thread over at the OD&D Discussion forums in which Dwayanu mentioned that he likes to draw maps in a 30x30 square area of the graph paper, thus leaving room for a key. This idea helped me formulate the One Page Dungeon concept. I realized that if I attempted to fill a 30x30 section in my normal mapping method, I’d end up with 20-25 numbered areas, and that restricting myself to that single page, I’d force myself to keep to nothing more than the essentials. Furthermore, the end result would be something which anyone could pick up and run with virtually no preparation time.
Now this opened up other notions. In an effort to create a drop dead simple dungeon format, I’d want to include a few tables on the page as well. Tables which would be at the Referee’s fingertips in order to keep play moving quickly, dispensing with the need to leaf through notes or books. Thus I added Wandering Monsters, Restocking, Random Treasure, and a Legend for the map itself.
The one-page layout I designed originally is found in this thread, and is the exact blueprint which Chgowiz was kind enough to duplicate and turn into a user friendly document for me to continue my project. Were it not for Chgowiz, I doubt I would’ve continued with the concept because my first Word experiments proved to be more trouble than they were worth.
I was surprised by the amount of feedback I got in regard to what I considered to be a simple concept. A concept that in fact, unbeknownst to me at the time, has been done before in slightly different forms by other gamers, including this one by Alex Schroeder. In retrospect, I think what made my concept work was the modular format, the inclusion of tables, and of course Chgowiz’s easy to use version of my template.
One of the best D&D web log authors to enter the fray in the past year, Amityville Mike, took to the concept almost immediately. Mike’s Stonehell, shared through his excellent blog The Society of the Torch, Pole and Rope, is the finest example of the concept to be found on the internet, the Dismal Depths included. Granted, Mike realized the limitations of the One Page right away when he began using the concept for his megadungeon. Stonehell is One Page in spirit, and Mike found that allowing for both sides of the page afforded him the space to describe his rooms and ideas with a bit more clarity, and to include even more tables. Nonetheless, Stonehell is still a One Page Dungeon, even though it uses front and back. The design theory is embraced and Mike has made the most of the template I envisioned.
There is good and bad with the concept. The One Page Dungeon approach challenges the author to convey the essentials while still creating an interesting, viable adventure. The very economy of words, the main driving force behind the concept, is also it’s most limiting factor. This is, as I mentioned in my Dismal Depths Guide, an intentional feature of the approach, not a flaw. The adventure is not going to take the Referee by the hand and guide him or her through the dungeon. There are no suggestions or explanations. There is no boxed text to be read aloud to the players. Trappings and mundane features are kept to a minimum. Theme, plot, back story, hooks, rumors and the why of it all are left to the Referee’s own imagination. The area descriptions themselves intentionally allow for creative input on behalf of the Referee. Nay, they demand it. This is what I refer to when I say the concept is not for the timid, nor the inexperienced. This is not Dungeons for Dummies. The challenge is not merely limited to drawing up a One Page Dungeon. The end result must translate into good gaming, and the Referee must be able to bring this out during play while working with limited resources.
Amongst all of my projects since identifying the Empty Room Principle I have found that this One Page Dungeon concept exemplifies it the best. It is one thing to preach, but another to practice what I preach. One of the greatest strengths of the design theory, one which might be lost upon some, is the minimalistic nature therein, this Empty Room Principal. Much like the original D&D rules I've grown to appreciate more and more, the One Page Dungeon engages the Referee's imagination and offers limitless opportunities for personal input. The descriptions are not restrictive, they do not force your hand, and they do not tell you there is only one way to do things. The text is restricted to a few lines for each area, which should be just enough to encourage and inspire.
Although circumstances have delayed much of the design effort I planned to undertake with the megadungeon which kicked this entire theme off, the Dismal Depths, I have been forming ideas and inventing novelties for that project. I hope to able to return to it seriously in the near future. I’m happy with what I’ve created for it thus far, including the Dismal Depths Bestiary and the Dismal Depths Trap Tables. I’d ask that those who have been looking for new Dismal Depths information keep the faith. There is more to come, have no fear. I don’t want to force anything as the dungeon needs to write itself, otherwise it might lose some luster.
Perhaps this article is something I should have written prior to the One Page Dungeon Contest hosted by Chatty DM and Chgowiz. The contest ended last night, and I have printed all 70 entries. If I had been in charge of submissions, I might have placed more limitations on the design theory. I may have had some notion of “This is my idea, and this is how you do it.” For this reason it is probably best that I had nothing to do with setting up and running the contest. I may have enforced certain criteria or insisted upon inclusion of features important to me. In looking over these entries, I can see that restricting anyone’s creativity is a bad thing, and would’ve been contradictory to the very spirit of the concept. The simplest notion is what made this a good contest. Write an actual, usable adventure on a single page, with a map, and be creative. That was all that was needed to design a good entry.
I’m proud that this innocent little concept has been embraced by those beyond the limited reach of my blog here, just as I am satisfied that the idea is not restricted by my personal design theories. It’s quite clear that many of the contestants had a lot of fun with the idea. Some of the One Page Dungeons don’t look anything like the rudimentary lay out I drew up, for that matter, some don’t look like anything I’ve ever seen before. I am left wondering if one of the entries is trying to get a Punk Rock vote from this judge, but I don’t want to leak any more information just yet.
Suffice to say that I am going to be up to my eyeballs in One Page Dungeons for the foreseeable future as I work toward judging these 70 entries. It’s particularly satisfying to see all of these versions of the concept from people who have probably never even heard of me nor read any of my ramblings here.
With that said, I’m signing off for a while for back to back out of town trips in which I’ll be reading and considering these dungeons during downtimes. I should be back to foist more drivel upon the unsuspecting after Memorial Day.
~Sham, Quixotic Referee
EDIT: Due to unexpected circumstances, the contest has been extended! Word is that we are up to 90 entries now! Quote from an update by Chgowiz:
"To that effect, we are re-instating all entries that we've rejected in the last 30 hours and will accept new entries until May 21st at 8h00 AM."
So, if you thought you missed the deadline, you haven't! Get to work and make your own One Page Dungeon. Just remember to ignore most of what I wrote above and create your own vision of the ODP format!
Sunday, May 10, 2009
Of Wombats and Zipper Arms
Three decades after the fact, I find myself often looking back with dismay at some of the…shall we say “gonzo”…stuff that I devised for my (A)D&D games of yore. Sure many of us used the AD&D hard covers, but the electricity in the air was still the anything goes feel of the original three volumes. In hindsight it might have been Dave Hargrave’s Arduin that kept that link alive during the long night of AD&D for my particular gaming generation. We were often a house divided; Gygaxian devotees and guys who appreciated Hargrave and such other non-TSR things as the supplements by Fantasy Art Enterprises (Erol Otus and friends). I suppose you could simply say the Realists and the Dreamers. I never began playing this game in an effort to pursue realism. In those days, D&D was a way for me to explore the fantastic, not to quibble about such perceived non sequiturs as Dungeon Ecology. As I’ve written in other forums, the notion of ecology in a multi-level subterranean construction is akin to explaining exactly how Bugs could’ve possibly taken a wrong turn in Albuquerque; to fret about such details is entirely missing the point. It’s Fantasy. The free play of creative imagination, so extreme as to challenge belief.
It was many gaming sessions later that one of my players asked that fateful question, “What do these Monsters eat down here?”. The simple answer was obvious, “Why, YOU, of course!”, but I understood the line of thinking. It was a subject I had already encountered in an issue of The Dragon, a notion which at the time I found to be the antithesis of what I had come to expect from D&D. This is not to say that my dungeons at the time were simply an endless series of rooms with random monsters waiting patiently for the adventurers to open their locked or stuck doors, no. I don’t rightly think I ever designed such a dungeon, even in the earliest days. Nonetheless, the concept of Dungeon Ecology to this day rubs me the wrong way. It’s like Jumbo Shrimp.
All of this said, I did indeed fall into the Dungeon Ecology trap as my games and campaigns progressed through the years. Careful consideration was given to such things as food, air and light. Worst of all, the dreaded notion of Reason was beginning to guide my hand. During this long period, most of the more outlandish things I had hand written and gleefully unleashed upon my players in prior years began to gather dust in my gaming closet. Things were becoming, dare I say, decidedly sensible. I was still able to be imaginative and push the envelope in limitless directions, but in the end I think my adventures became less inspired and more restricted by the laws of logic. Reason was taking root, and diminishing the free flow of boundless creativity.
2008 was the year I folded up my tent and returned to the Dreamers camp, that of Unreason. Now, for whatever reasons, I remember why 30 years ago I never liked that Let There Be a Method to your Madness article in The Dragon. Logic, Reason and Dungeon Ecology had elbowed their way into my games, bringing perhaps a bit too much realism to the fantastic. I suppose you could say I’ve evolved, as do all old hands at Dungeon Mastering. These days I restrict the truly fantastic to the Underworld, while things in the Light of Day on the surface remain somewhat logical. The Wilderness is that grey area betwixt the Underworld and the Light of Day where little bits of Night’s Chaos might still be encountered without warning. So here I find myself now, having come nearly full cycle in my gaming sensibilities.
But what of those aforementioned teenage creations I had written so fervently all those years ago, the ones which I slowly expunged from my later games? I’ve already shared quite a bit in regard to what I did with Hargrave’s Whimsey idea. I still shudder when I read most of that. Would such things entertain my gaming group as it now stands? A few nostalgic laughs at best, methinks. I speak of the other off the wall creations that are slowly fading alongside those Whimsey Tables in my gaming closet. Things like Wombats as a playable race, and the infamous Zipper Arm that each and every player was willing to risk his character’s life for. Here’s a smattering of the possible classes which a character could pursue in those campaigns:
Celestial Crusader
Knight of Liberty
Mystic Knight
Beastmaster
Kilnsmen
Death Dealer
Dimension Dancer
Engineer
Corzan Warrior
Nesdeon Mage
Knight of Radiant Glory
Dies Iraen Gladiaor
Mar-Vexian Mage
Mar-Vexian Super Soldier
Witch Doctor
Justiciar
Rhythm Walker
Pit Fighter
Stonebinder
Cabalist
Inmatarou
Chirurgeon
Zealot
Hexmaster
That’s two dozen, and there were more. Someone, at sometime, played each and every class I devised along the way. Some were created from suggestions by players. I embraced the entire notion that in D&D, the players can be whatever they want to be. One such player wanted to run a multi-classed Phraint Ninja/Engineer which we subsequently dubbed the Ninjaneer. As ludicrous as it might seem now, these are some of the idiosyncrasies which I remember best. Being the nebbish that I was, I was compelled to write up a full description for each such class. There are stories of older D&D games from other DM's in which players were allowed to run anything, but these are mostly in regard to controlling a Monster. We never did that, except with a few notable exceptions in which participants attempted to thwart the other players while incognito, normally as part of the unfolding campaign flow. The above is a list of 24 examples of how I let the players play whatever they wanted to in my early games. I read these homemade classes in the same way I now read my Whimsey Tables; with what I’m afraid might be a jaded eye.
Whatever I think of these reams of notes NOW they certainly worked back THEN. I’m just not sure if what worked was the creations, the way I ran my games, or the chemistry of the assembled gaming crew and our anything goes mentality. No one told us how to play, only showed us possibilities. We were determined to explore the concept to its fullest extent.
One of these days I’ll tell you about Floid the Mongoloyd, Kaledron Kaleidoscope, and the now infamous Zipper Arms; a story which involves the Dark Side of the Moon, Hans the Uber Nazi, an army of Daemon Ducks, and the Seven Lords of Time. Gonzo nothing. More like Double Live Gonzo.
~Sham, Quixotic Referee
It was many gaming sessions later that one of my players asked that fateful question, “What do these Monsters eat down here?”. The simple answer was obvious, “Why, YOU, of course!”, but I understood the line of thinking. It was a subject I had already encountered in an issue of The Dragon, a notion which at the time I found to be the antithesis of what I had come to expect from D&D. This is not to say that my dungeons at the time were simply an endless series of rooms with random monsters waiting patiently for the adventurers to open their locked or stuck doors, no. I don’t rightly think I ever designed such a dungeon, even in the earliest days. Nonetheless, the concept of Dungeon Ecology to this day rubs me the wrong way. It’s like Jumbo Shrimp.
All of this said, I did indeed fall into the Dungeon Ecology trap as my games and campaigns progressed through the years. Careful consideration was given to such things as food, air and light. Worst of all, the dreaded notion of Reason was beginning to guide my hand. During this long period, most of the more outlandish things I had hand written and gleefully unleashed upon my players in prior years began to gather dust in my gaming closet. Things were becoming, dare I say, decidedly sensible. I was still able to be imaginative and push the envelope in limitless directions, but in the end I think my adventures became less inspired and more restricted by the laws of logic. Reason was taking root, and diminishing the free flow of boundless creativity.
2008 was the year I folded up my tent and returned to the Dreamers camp, that of Unreason. Now, for whatever reasons, I remember why 30 years ago I never liked that Let There Be a Method to your Madness article in The Dragon. Logic, Reason and Dungeon Ecology had elbowed their way into my games, bringing perhaps a bit too much realism to the fantastic. I suppose you could say I’ve evolved, as do all old hands at Dungeon Mastering. These days I restrict the truly fantastic to the Underworld, while things in the Light of Day on the surface remain somewhat logical. The Wilderness is that grey area betwixt the Underworld and the Light of Day where little bits of Night’s Chaos might still be encountered without warning. So here I find myself now, having come nearly full cycle in my gaming sensibilities.
But what of those aforementioned teenage creations I had written so fervently all those years ago, the ones which I slowly expunged from my later games? I’ve already shared quite a bit in regard to what I did with Hargrave’s Whimsey idea. I still shudder when I read most of that. Would such things entertain my gaming group as it now stands? A few nostalgic laughs at best, methinks. I speak of the other off the wall creations that are slowly fading alongside those Whimsey Tables in my gaming closet. Things like Wombats as a playable race, and the infamous Zipper Arm that each and every player was willing to risk his character’s life for. Here’s a smattering of the possible classes which a character could pursue in those campaigns:
Celestial Crusader
Knight of Liberty
Mystic Knight
Beastmaster
Kilnsmen
Death Dealer
Dimension Dancer
Engineer
Corzan Warrior
Nesdeon Mage
Knight of Radiant Glory
Dies Iraen Gladiaor
Mar-Vexian Mage
Mar-Vexian Super Soldier
Witch Doctor
Justiciar
Rhythm Walker
Pit Fighter
Stonebinder
Cabalist
Inmatarou
Chirurgeon
Zealot
Hexmaster
That’s two dozen, and there were more. Someone, at sometime, played each and every class I devised along the way. Some were created from suggestions by players. I embraced the entire notion that in D&D, the players can be whatever they want to be. One such player wanted to run a multi-classed Phraint Ninja/Engineer which we subsequently dubbed the Ninjaneer. As ludicrous as it might seem now, these are some of the idiosyncrasies which I remember best. Being the nebbish that I was, I was compelled to write up a full description for each such class. There are stories of older D&D games from other DM's in which players were allowed to run anything, but these are mostly in regard to controlling a Monster. We never did that, except with a few notable exceptions in which participants attempted to thwart the other players while incognito, normally as part of the unfolding campaign flow. The above is a list of 24 examples of how I let the players play whatever they wanted to in my early games. I read these homemade classes in the same way I now read my Whimsey Tables; with what I’m afraid might be a jaded eye.
Whatever I think of these reams of notes NOW they certainly worked back THEN. I’m just not sure if what worked was the creations, the way I ran my games, or the chemistry of the assembled gaming crew and our anything goes mentality. No one told us how to play, only showed us possibilities. We were determined to explore the concept to its fullest extent.
One of these days I’ll tell you about Floid the Mongoloyd, Kaledron Kaleidoscope, and the now infamous Zipper Arms; a story which involves the Dark Side of the Moon, Hans the Uber Nazi, an army of Daemon Ducks, and the Seven Lords of Time. Gonzo nothing. More like Double Live Gonzo.
~Sham, Quixotic Referee
Monday, April 20, 2009
D&D Essentials and Concepts
As a follow up to yesterday’s post discussing Truths and Expectations, I wanted to discuss briefly that other list I threw together during my exploration of D&D concepts and categories.
Sham’s Essentials of D&D
1. Characters (Race/Class)
2. Ability Scores
3. Hit Points
4. Experience/Levels
5. Mechanics/Randomization
6. Adventuring Groups
7. Exploration
8. Hazards/Challenges (Monsters/Traps/Tricks, etc)
9. Treasure (Monetary/Magic)
10. Fantasy Setting (Dungeons/Wilderness)
I began thinking about the concept of D&D in earnest when I learned of Dave Arneson’s passing. I hate to admit it, but I suppose it is human nature to react this way. I did the same with Gary’s passing, reflecting upon his body of work and appreciating it more once he was dead than before. Surely there is a term for this state of mind. The sudden realization that there will be no more. It’s rather pathetic, honestly.
As I mentioned before, the above Essentials were all present in Dave Arneson’s formative Blackmoor games (not to be confused with Supplement II, Blackmoor). From what I gather, much of what is considered D&D was defined by Gary Gygax into the form we recognize today. For that matter, Blackmoor was influenced by Gygax’s own Chainmail game. But as far as the nuts and bolts of D&D, I am under the impression that Gygax applied his vast war gaming know-how to Arneson’s Blackmoor features. Not to say that Arneson was not an accomplished war gamer. The fact of the matter is that Gygax was simply better at explaining things with the written word. And he owned a typewriter, as Dave put it.
Gygax’s Greyhawk campaign, which preceded OD&D, was born of Blackmoor. Gary heard about Dave’s Blackmoor game, and that it used some bits of Chainmail, and he witnessed the game for himself. Gygax returned home and began his own Blackmoor inspired game named Greyhawk. Thus Blackmoor and Greyhawk became OD&D when the two agreed to publish some rules. Perhaps it is best that the events transpired this way. Accomplished game writer meets visionary gamer, and the two agree to turn the idea into a reality.
Unfortunately, Arneson’s planned D&D add-on, Supplement II, Blackmoor ended up being something not quite expected. I cannot remember the exact details, but if I have it right Arneson submitted reams of handwritten notes for the Supplement. The story I hear is that it would’ve taken many man hours to make heads or tails out of the disorganized pages. Someone else extracted some bits and threw a book together, but in my opinion really screwed the pooch. Get your hands on Arneson’s First Fantasy Campaign to see what Supplement II probably should have looked like.
Dave later took a position with TSR in what would turn out to be a very short-lived period of employ. It ended rather abruptly, and then the lawsuits began over the future use of the D&D name in other TSR publications. Sadly, history threatens to forget that Dave Arneson created the Essentials of D&D, the concept itself.
The above list must be credited where credit is due. Thank you Dave Arneson for creating and sharing this concept with us. Your presence in the gaming world will be missed, but your impact will never be forgotten. I hope that the next time you log into World of Warcraft, dear reader, you will realize that the concept is all Dave Arneson’s. WoW is an MMO that in fact blends all ten Essentials of D&D together. There would be no such game were it not for that creative college kid from Minnesota who dreamt up the perfect, heady concoction for endless entertainment.
~Sham, Quixotic Referee
Sham’s Essentials of D&D
1. Characters (Race/Class)
2. Ability Scores
3. Hit Points
4. Experience/Levels
5. Mechanics/Randomization
6. Adventuring Groups
7. Exploration
8. Hazards/Challenges (Monsters/Traps/Tricks, etc)
9. Treasure (Monetary/Magic)
10. Fantasy Setting (Dungeons/Wilderness)
I began thinking about the concept of D&D in earnest when I learned of Dave Arneson’s passing. I hate to admit it, but I suppose it is human nature to react this way. I did the same with Gary’s passing, reflecting upon his body of work and appreciating it more once he was dead than before. Surely there is a term for this state of mind. The sudden realization that there will be no more. It’s rather pathetic, honestly.
As I mentioned before, the above Essentials were all present in Dave Arneson’s formative Blackmoor games (not to be confused with Supplement II, Blackmoor). From what I gather, much of what is considered D&D was defined by Gary Gygax into the form we recognize today. For that matter, Blackmoor was influenced by Gygax’s own Chainmail game. But as far as the nuts and bolts of D&D, I am under the impression that Gygax applied his vast war gaming know-how to Arneson’s Blackmoor features. Not to say that Arneson was not an accomplished war gamer. The fact of the matter is that Gygax was simply better at explaining things with the written word. And he owned a typewriter, as Dave put it.
Gygax’s Greyhawk campaign, which preceded OD&D, was born of Blackmoor. Gary heard about Dave’s Blackmoor game, and that it used some bits of Chainmail, and he witnessed the game for himself. Gygax returned home and began his own Blackmoor inspired game named Greyhawk. Thus Blackmoor and Greyhawk became OD&D when the two agreed to publish some rules. Perhaps it is best that the events transpired this way. Accomplished game writer meets visionary gamer, and the two agree to turn the idea into a reality.
Unfortunately, Arneson’s planned D&D add-on, Supplement II, Blackmoor ended up being something not quite expected. I cannot remember the exact details, but if I have it right Arneson submitted reams of handwritten notes for the Supplement. The story I hear is that it would’ve taken many man hours to make heads or tails out of the disorganized pages. Someone else extracted some bits and threw a book together, but in my opinion really screwed the pooch. Get your hands on Arneson’s First Fantasy Campaign to see what Supplement II probably should have looked like.
Dave later took a position with TSR in what would turn out to be a very short-lived period of employ. It ended rather abruptly, and then the lawsuits began over the future use of the D&D name in other TSR publications. Sadly, history threatens to forget that Dave Arneson created the Essentials of D&D, the concept itself.
The above list must be credited where credit is due. Thank you Dave Arneson for creating and sharing this concept with us. Your presence in the gaming world will be missed, but your impact will never be forgotten. I hope that the next time you log into World of Warcraft, dear reader, you will realize that the concept is all Dave Arneson’s. WoW is an MMO that in fact blends all ten Essentials of D&D together. There would be no such game were it not for that creative college kid from Minnesota who dreamt up the perfect, heady concoction for endless entertainment.
~Sham, Quixotic Referee
Sunday, April 19, 2009
D&D Truths and Expectations
Having considered D&D conceptually or by name only, and explained labels, titles and expectations with the past three posts, I thought it might be interesting to actually put more emphasis on the lists I threw together along the way. Tomorrow Sham’s Essentials of D&D, and today Sham’s OD&D Truths.
Readers will certainly disagree with my lists, that’s a given. The point of compiling the Truths is not to identify what is or what isn’t OD&D. It’s an effort to share what I think the average devotee expects when a game is labeled OD&D. The missing Truth is of course that the Concept trumps the guidelines, and that everything is open for tinkering. If we push that missing Truth too far, there is no point in labeling our games at all. They’re just D&D then. Therefore Concept is not an OD&D Truth. Concept is the motivating force behind the Essentials. For that matter, the lists could be renamed. Truths could be Expectations, and Essentials could be Concept.
If I merge the lists, in other words if I maintain the Truths and pursue the Essentials, I can end up with a heavily tinkered game of D&D which I can proudly declare to newcomers is in fact OD&D. If I begin by designing my game or campaign with the Essentials first but follow the Truths I’d probably refer to the game as D&D using OD&D as a foundation. If I ignore the Truths and combine the Essentials, it’s pure D&D.
Sham’s OD&D Truths
1. Class and Level based Characters
2. Six Cardinal 3d6 Ability Scores
3. Combat Model (including RTH, HD, HP, AC)
4. Saving Throws
5. Spells and Spell Levels
6. Fantasy Milieu (the world and features)
7. "Fill-in-the-Blanks" Design
One of the Truths, the one added in hindsight, creates an interesting dilemma. Around the gaming table, in your personal game, you will organically grow house rules and features unique to your game. This is a feature of OD&D, that the flexibility of the rules allows the players to define them further. You are fleshing out the skeleton as you play. If you compile all of your tinkering and homebrew, even if you maintain the other six Truths, and publish your campaign, it is no longer OD&D. Why? You’ve filled in the blanks over the years. Around the table, it is OD&D. To an outsider, it is no longer OD&D.
From a purist standpoint, and really there shouldn’t be any purism associated with D&D to begin with, anything you change or add makes OD&D something else when taken away from the game table. All bets are off. For example, I create a complex system to handle something not covered in OD&D, but I continue to maintain the Truths. Perhaps I made a six page tactical Combat Procedure. I still used the Combat Model, with RTH, HD, HP and AC, but I went into great depth and homebrewed many unique, complicated rules.
As far as I’m concerned, this is the height of the D&D concept. I relish seeing other referees’ own house rules and tinkering methods. They can call it OD&D around their own gaming table, but if the envelope is pushed too far, from a (cringe) purist standpoint, it is no longer OD&D. BUT, it IS D&D.
It’s amazing what that little O means to many people. And, admittedly, to me at times.
~Sham, Quixotic Referee
Readers will certainly disagree with my lists, that’s a given. The point of compiling the Truths is not to identify what is or what isn’t OD&D. It’s an effort to share what I think the average devotee expects when a game is labeled OD&D. The missing Truth is of course that the Concept trumps the guidelines, and that everything is open for tinkering. If we push that missing Truth too far, there is no point in labeling our games at all. They’re just D&D then. Therefore Concept is not an OD&D Truth. Concept is the motivating force behind the Essentials. For that matter, the lists could be renamed. Truths could be Expectations, and Essentials could be Concept.
If I merge the lists, in other words if I maintain the Truths and pursue the Essentials, I can end up with a heavily tinkered game of D&D which I can proudly declare to newcomers is in fact OD&D. If I begin by designing my game or campaign with the Essentials first but follow the Truths I’d probably refer to the game as D&D using OD&D as a foundation. If I ignore the Truths and combine the Essentials, it’s pure D&D.
Sham’s OD&D Truths
1. Class and Level based Characters
2. Six Cardinal 3d6 Ability Scores
3. Combat Model (including RTH, HD, HP, AC)
4. Saving Throws
5. Spells and Spell Levels
6. Fantasy Milieu (the world and features)
7. "Fill-in-the-Blanks" Design
One of the Truths, the one added in hindsight, creates an interesting dilemma. Around the gaming table, in your personal game, you will organically grow house rules and features unique to your game. This is a feature of OD&D, that the flexibility of the rules allows the players to define them further. You are fleshing out the skeleton as you play. If you compile all of your tinkering and homebrew, even if you maintain the other six Truths, and publish your campaign, it is no longer OD&D. Why? You’ve filled in the blanks over the years. Around the table, it is OD&D. To an outsider, it is no longer OD&D.
From a purist standpoint, and really there shouldn’t be any purism associated with D&D to begin with, anything you change or add makes OD&D something else when taken away from the game table. All bets are off. For example, I create a complex system to handle something not covered in OD&D, but I continue to maintain the Truths. Perhaps I made a six page tactical Combat Procedure. I still used the Combat Model, with RTH, HD, HP and AC, but I went into great depth and homebrewed many unique, complicated rules.
As far as I’m concerned, this is the height of the D&D concept. I relish seeing other referees’ own house rules and tinkering methods. They can call it OD&D around their own gaming table, but if the envelope is pushed too far, from a (cringe) purist standpoint, it is no longer OD&D. BUT, it IS D&D.
It’s amazing what that little O means to many people. And, admittedly, to me at times.
~Sham, Quixotic Referee
Saturday, April 18, 2009
More My D&D
My two most recent entries concerning D&D served to share some of my own evolving theories and opinions about the game. This post revisits a topic I wrote about last year; the question of at what point does tinkering with OD&D turn it into something else? This is one of the problems with using specific labels and titles for your D&D games. As soon as you declare an edition, players will have certain expectations for your game.
I’m aware that my own D&D essentials are not shared by other fans of the game. There are certain features, even in OD&D, that translate to “D&D” for the players. If I tackle the essential categories I shared in the last entry, and homebrew each by tinkering and reworking the rules, I’m certain that other OD&D devotees would say my game is no longer OD&D. As far as I’m concerned, it is still D&D, but this is only due to the fact that I approach the game more so now than ever from the conceptual side. The concept is what I have come to appreciate more than the framework of guidelines presented in 1974.
My point is that by utilizing an exact edition title, I am presumably enforcing more narrowly focused parameters. Even by using the OD&D tag. This theme has been visited by a few threads over at Finarvyn’s OD&D site in the past year. Here, here and here.
But how much tinkering can you get away with and still call your game OD&D? If you fool with it too much you’ll be better served just calling it D&D. Or making up some new name and pretending it’s NOT D&D, even though everyone knows it is. There are countless examples of NOT D&D out there, and everyone knows while they might not be D&D by Name, they are Conceptually D&D. That is, they combine the Essentials of D&D and claim to be some new game.
Apparently, Dave Arneson was the first to define and combine these essential elements in his original Blackmoor games. With Gary Gygax’s input, expertise and organizational skills, the two were able to create D&D. How much of it was Arneson and how much of it was Gygax I’m not sure, but I do find it interesting that the Ten Essentials I wrote in the last post were evident in Arneson's formative Blackmoor. Nonetheless, D&D introduced the concept and this blend of features which still has game geeks such as me writing about it 35 years later.
As usual, I digress. The question at hand is how much tinkering can you do and still call your game OD&D? Last year I summarized some OD&D Truths:
1. Class based Character progression
2. d20 Combat Model
3. Rules as a 'skeleton'
4. Six Cardinal Character Abilities
Yes on Class based Character progression. Yes on Six Cardinal Character Abilities. No on d20 Combat Model. I can use Chainmail 2d6 as well, but I think the point was using the whole Armor Class, Roll to Hit, Hit Dice system, or some reasonable facsimile. So Yes to that. Rules as a ‘skeleton’ is kind of the entire point to this post. Having Rules as a ‘skeleton’ as a truth serves to remind players that the referee will be fleshing out the guidelines and filling in the gaps prior to or during play.
But what about changing OD&D? Even the category OD&D can mean many things. My OD&D game might be limited to Volumes I-III and my homebrew additions, or it might include the Supplements and The Dragon articles. Supplement I, Greyhawk, blew up a lot of the conventions introduced in the first three volumes.
Rules as a ‘skeleton’ looks to be the most important truth now that I look back at that post. But aren’t there other nuances or features found in OD&D that come to be expected in a game described as such? What might those be? Saving Throws. Hit Dice and Hit Points. Spells and Spell Levels. Armor Class.
I can’t think of much else. To make it feel like D&D of course we set it in a fantasy milieu with Classes, Races, Monsters and Treasure that fit that particular theme. A theme which can be tailored or taken from the books.
Sham’s OD&D Truths
1. Class and Level based Characters
2. Six Cardinal 3d6 Ability Scores
3. Combat Model (including RTH, HD, HP, AC)
4. Saving Throws
5. Spells and Spell Levels
6. Fantasy Milieu (the world and features)
7. "Fill-in-the-Blanks" Design
Unlike Sham’s Ten Essentials of D&D, the above Truths are to be used as presented in the original volumes for the game to be called OD&D. These aren't simply categories or features which need to be present, but Truths that should be followed as presented in OD&D. I added number 7 in hindsight, but it's a vital Truth which is spelled out in a few places in OD&D.
Damn it, now there I go trying to label someone else’s game of OD&D.
Remember, no one can tell you how to play D&D. Let the above serve to remind you what outsiders might expect when you tell them you are running a game of OD&D. For what it’s worth, just make mine D&D. As long as I can explore dark labyrinths, trackless wastes, gloomy hollows or lost cities while not becoming some nameless horror's lunch all in the name of gold and glory, I’m in! That’s D&D.
~Sham, Quixotic Referee
I’m aware that my own D&D essentials are not shared by other fans of the game. There are certain features, even in OD&D, that translate to “D&D” for the players. If I tackle the essential categories I shared in the last entry, and homebrew each by tinkering and reworking the rules, I’m certain that other OD&D devotees would say my game is no longer OD&D. As far as I’m concerned, it is still D&D, but this is only due to the fact that I approach the game more so now than ever from the conceptual side. The concept is what I have come to appreciate more than the framework of guidelines presented in 1974.
My point is that by utilizing an exact edition title, I am presumably enforcing more narrowly focused parameters. Even by using the OD&D tag. This theme has been visited by a few threads over at Finarvyn’s OD&D site in the past year. Here, here and here.
But how much tinkering can you get away with and still call your game OD&D? If you fool with it too much you’ll be better served just calling it D&D. Or making up some new name and pretending it’s NOT D&D, even though everyone knows it is. There are countless examples of NOT D&D out there, and everyone knows while they might not be D&D by Name, they are Conceptually D&D. That is, they combine the Essentials of D&D and claim to be some new game.
Apparently, Dave Arneson was the first to define and combine these essential elements in his original Blackmoor games. With Gary Gygax’s input, expertise and organizational skills, the two were able to create D&D. How much of it was Arneson and how much of it was Gygax I’m not sure, but I do find it interesting that the Ten Essentials I wrote in the last post were evident in Arneson's formative Blackmoor. Nonetheless, D&D introduced the concept and this blend of features which still has game geeks such as me writing about it 35 years later.
As usual, I digress. The question at hand is how much tinkering can you do and still call your game OD&D? Last year I summarized some OD&D Truths:
1. Class based Character progression
2. d20 Combat Model
3. Rules as a 'skeleton'
4. Six Cardinal Character Abilities
Yes on Class based Character progression. Yes on Six Cardinal Character Abilities. No on d20 Combat Model. I can use Chainmail 2d6 as well, but I think the point was using the whole Armor Class, Roll to Hit, Hit Dice system, or some reasonable facsimile. So Yes to that. Rules as a ‘skeleton’ is kind of the entire point to this post. Having Rules as a ‘skeleton’ as a truth serves to remind players that the referee will be fleshing out the guidelines and filling in the gaps prior to or during play.
But what about changing OD&D? Even the category OD&D can mean many things. My OD&D game might be limited to Volumes I-III and my homebrew additions, or it might include the Supplements and The Dragon articles. Supplement I, Greyhawk, blew up a lot of the conventions introduced in the first three volumes.
Rules as a ‘skeleton’ looks to be the most important truth now that I look back at that post. But aren’t there other nuances or features found in OD&D that come to be expected in a game described as such? What might those be? Saving Throws. Hit Dice and Hit Points. Spells and Spell Levels. Armor Class.
I can’t think of much else. To make it feel like D&D of course we set it in a fantasy milieu with Classes, Races, Monsters and Treasure that fit that particular theme. A theme which can be tailored or taken from the books.
Sham’s OD&D Truths
1. Class and Level based Characters
2. Six Cardinal 3d6 Ability Scores
3. Combat Model (including RTH, HD, HP, AC)
4. Saving Throws
5. Spells and Spell Levels
6. Fantasy Milieu (the world and features)
7. "Fill-in-the-Blanks" Design
Unlike Sham’s Ten Essentials of D&D, the above Truths are to be used as presented in the original volumes for the game to be called OD&D. These aren't simply categories or features which need to be present, but Truths that should be followed as presented in OD&D. I added number 7 in hindsight, but it's a vital Truth which is spelled out in a few places in OD&D.
Damn it, now there I go trying to label someone else’s game of OD&D.
Remember, no one can tell you how to play D&D. Let the above serve to remind you what outsiders might expect when you tell them you are running a game of OD&D. For what it’s worth, just make mine D&D. As long as I can explore dark labyrinths, trackless wastes, gloomy hollows or lost cities while not becoming some nameless horror's lunch all in the name of gold and glory, I’m in! That’s D&D.
~Sham, Quixotic Referee
Friday, April 17, 2009
My D&D
As everyone knows I am not a slave to the rules. My favorite aspect of D&D is making things up. Now that I have learned the concept, the one introduced by D&D to the gaming world in 1974, I don’t need to ever spend another penny on anything to continue playing the game for the rest of my life. Everything I create and run using this concept is D&D to me.
Let’s pretend that I learned how to play D&D in 1974. I paid particular attention to the Introduction in Volume I, Men & Magic, and the words: “[These rules] provide the framework around which you will build a game of simplicity or tremendous complexity - your time and imagination are about the only limiting factors…”. Notice that the quote says game and not world or campaign. So I grasped the concept and never, ever picked up another game book from TSR or any other RPG company.
The game I end up playing, let’s say three decades later, is D&D to me and my players. Others might see strange house rules and unconventional interpretations, and to them it might not appear to be D&D at all. Such an observation from an outsider would be an opinion based on subsequent events, those that occurred after 1974. Observations based on 35 years of game evolution which have brought about expectations and the need for labels and categories. If my make believe game no longer uses dice, hit points, alignment or character classes, it is still D&D in so far as the original concept was presented over three decade ago.
This is an extreme, unrealistic example of the concept, but one which serves to support the adage that every RPG is really just a house ruled game of D&D.
I like to call my D&D exactly that, D&D; and I like to call my other games by their titles: Gamma World, Traveller, Call of Cthulhu, and so forth. So what exactly then is D&D to me? Is it little more than simply the role-playing game concept that it created? As I’ve mentioned before, D&D could’ve been published with no more than a dozen pages from Men & Magic. The amount of pre-game work required by the referee would have been problematic for beginners, to be sure, so the other 100 or so remaining pages in OD&D filled out some of the details for referees. As far as I’m concerned, those “other 100” pages are no more than examples of what a referee can do with D&D.
If I had to distill my D&D down to the essentials, the list would look something like this:
Sham’s Essentials of D&D
1. Characters (Race/Class)
2. Ability Scores
3. Hit Points
4. Experience/Levels
5. Mechanics/Randomization
6. Adventuring Groups
7. Exploration
8. Hazards/Challenges (Monsters/Traps/Tricks, etc)
9. Treasure (Monetary/Magic)
10. Fantasy Setting (Dungeons/Wilderness)
If hard pressed, it comes down to Characters, Mechanics, and Environment. I added the other features which I feel are hard coded into the game. If I left the list simply at Characters, Mechanics, and Environment, I just described every RPG ever made. But hey, that IS the concept. It’s Distilled D&D.
As long as a game embraces these elements I would consider it D&D. And I suppose even a game with no Dungeons at all could still be D&D, even though it pains me to admit that.
Keep in mind that when I say distill my D&D down to the essentials and list categories such as Class or Monsters, it does not mean that one needs to use the published entries. On the contrary, what I am trying to clarify is that the only aspect required is the category itself. I can take these categories and completely homebrew each. If I mix them all together the end result is still D&D as far as I’m concerned.
Being D&D “as far as I’m concerned” doesn’t amount to a hill of beans to others, though. The question then becomes is it D&D in Name Only? If I’ve been running that imaginary D&D game, letting it evolve and change over the past 35 years, I might have something which would be considered D&D only conceptually. I’ve bought into the concept, but I’ve changed or overhauled every guideline found in Men & Magic. The modern term for the above example might be Homebrew D&D, but that’s a rather loose, catchall category.
To me, it is still D&D. Anything which combines the Essentials of D&D is, by all rights, D&D.
What does D&D mean to you?
~Sham, Quixotic Referee
Let’s pretend that I learned how to play D&D in 1974. I paid particular attention to the Introduction in Volume I, Men & Magic, and the words: “[These rules] provide the framework around which you will build a game of simplicity or tremendous complexity - your time and imagination are about the only limiting factors…”. Notice that the quote says game and not world or campaign. So I grasped the concept and never, ever picked up another game book from TSR or any other RPG company.
The game I end up playing, let’s say three decades later, is D&D to me and my players. Others might see strange house rules and unconventional interpretations, and to them it might not appear to be D&D at all. Such an observation from an outsider would be an opinion based on subsequent events, those that occurred after 1974. Observations based on 35 years of game evolution which have brought about expectations and the need for labels and categories. If my make believe game no longer uses dice, hit points, alignment or character classes, it is still D&D in so far as the original concept was presented over three decade ago.
This is an extreme, unrealistic example of the concept, but one which serves to support the adage that every RPG is really just a house ruled game of D&D.
I like to call my D&D exactly that, D&D; and I like to call my other games by their titles: Gamma World, Traveller, Call of Cthulhu, and so forth. So what exactly then is D&D to me? Is it little more than simply the role-playing game concept that it created? As I’ve mentioned before, D&D could’ve been published with no more than a dozen pages from Men & Magic. The amount of pre-game work required by the referee would have been problematic for beginners, to be sure, so the other 100 or so remaining pages in OD&D filled out some of the details for referees. As far as I’m concerned, those “other 100” pages are no more than examples of what a referee can do with D&D.
If I had to distill my D&D down to the essentials, the list would look something like this:
Sham’s Essentials of D&D
1. Characters (Race/Class)
2. Ability Scores
3. Hit Points
4. Experience/Levels
5. Mechanics/Randomization
6. Adventuring Groups
7. Exploration
8. Hazards/Challenges (Monsters/Traps/Tricks, etc)
9. Treasure (Monetary/Magic)
10. Fantasy Setting (Dungeons/Wilderness)
If hard pressed, it comes down to Characters, Mechanics, and Environment. I added the other features which I feel are hard coded into the game. If I left the list simply at Characters, Mechanics, and Environment, I just described every RPG ever made. But hey, that IS the concept. It’s Distilled D&D.
As long as a game embraces these elements I would consider it D&D. And I suppose even a game with no Dungeons at all could still be D&D, even though it pains me to admit that.
Keep in mind that when I say distill my D&D down to the essentials and list categories such as Class or Monsters, it does not mean that one needs to use the published entries. On the contrary, what I am trying to clarify is that the only aspect required is the category itself. I can take these categories and completely homebrew each. If I mix them all together the end result is still D&D as far as I’m concerned.
Being D&D “as far as I’m concerned” doesn’t amount to a hill of beans to others, though. The question then becomes is it D&D in Name Only? If I’ve been running that imaginary D&D game, letting it evolve and change over the past 35 years, I might have something which would be considered D&D only conceptually. I’ve bought into the concept, but I’ve changed or overhauled every guideline found in Men & Magic. The modern term for the above example might be Homebrew D&D, but that’s a rather loose, catchall category.
To me, it is still D&D. Anything which combines the Essentials of D&D is, by all rights, D&D.
What does D&D mean to you?
~Sham, Quixotic Referee
Thursday, April 16, 2009
It's all D&D to me
Longtime readers will recall my posts from last year wherein I spoke about how we played D&D back in the early days. D&D was a catchall term describing whatever edition was being used at the time. At one point back then, the following editions were being actively used by various players: OD&D, AD&D 1E, Holmes Basic D&D, Moldvay/Cook D&D. One could easily move between editions with no issue whatsoever. Most players eventually graduated to AD&D 1E as it was nice owning the large hardcover books. The thing is, due to the methods by which most of us learned to play, few if any really played AD&D 1E by the book. It was just D&D.
The most obvious rules differences in each game of D&D had little to do with edition at all. All of the above mentioned versions had a shared concept which was clearly understood by all involved. Players didn’t seek out particular editions simply because there wasn’t that much of a difference between the way they were used back then. The variations came from the individual Dungeon Masters. It was commonly accepted that each game would have house rules and unique interpretations. I cannot recall many players at that point who cared to point a finger and say “Hey, this isn’t AD&D here!”. It was just D&D. It wasn’t until years later that I encountered rules lawyers who probably knew nothing besides AD&D 1E. Sure I used those hardcover books more than any other in all of my campaigns because they were very useful, but really we could’ve run our campaigns without them just as successfully.
As a culture we feel compelled to categorize and label everything. It’s a requirement when there becomes a proliferation of any item. From art to music, and even D&D now, there is a need to fit things under a title simply to keep them organized. D&D appears to have these categories covered since the editions all have their own names, so it’s not quite the same as pigeonholing music into the Bluegrass category, or Art under the Cubist movement. It’s just that now, with the multitude of editions, there is a need to clarify what is meant when one says D&D.
It’s not enough to simply say D&D anymore. We have managed to classify the versions by edition. For better or worse, we pigeonhole the grand old game of D&D into nice, neat categories. I always played a hodge-podge game, with influences from various early editions, as well as additions from whatever seemed useful or inspirational at the time. Such influences included not only Arduin but later even things from Dark Sun and The Forgotten Realms. I knew no other way to play D&D. Nothing was forbidden, nothing was sacred, and nothing was off-limits or out of bounds. If I wanted to bring some Fascist Ninja Wombats with powers derived from the Champions game, I did so. It was still D&D.
No one should be able to tell you how to play D&D. Each game should feel unique. The experience should be different from one GM to another, and from one play group to another. That is one of the endearing aspects of the game, in my opinion. It’s probably exactly why we were never specific about our games. It was D&D. We didn’t come out and declare we were playing OD&D, or Holmes Basic. We were simply rolling dice and exploring our imaginations.
When pressed about my favorite edition, I answer OD&D. The reasons are simple and quite clear to me now. OD&D exemplifies the pure concept better than any other version. I can get away with a lot more and still declare that I am running OD&D. The original volumes are littered with reminders that the rules are simply guidelines; that each referee should be running the game his or her way. Imagination, creativity and flexibility are the cornerstones of OD&D.
Surely at some point, if you declare you are running OD&D, though, even with these notions ingrained in those little brown books, you are opening yourself up to scrutiny. It’s best to just call it D&D.
~Sham, Quixotic Referee
The most obvious rules differences in each game of D&D had little to do with edition at all. All of the above mentioned versions had a shared concept which was clearly understood by all involved. Players didn’t seek out particular editions simply because there wasn’t that much of a difference between the way they were used back then. The variations came from the individual Dungeon Masters. It was commonly accepted that each game would have house rules and unique interpretations. I cannot recall many players at that point who cared to point a finger and say “Hey, this isn’t AD&D here!”. It was just D&D. It wasn’t until years later that I encountered rules lawyers who probably knew nothing besides AD&D 1E. Sure I used those hardcover books more than any other in all of my campaigns because they were very useful, but really we could’ve run our campaigns without them just as successfully.
As a culture we feel compelled to categorize and label everything. It’s a requirement when there becomes a proliferation of any item. From art to music, and even D&D now, there is a need to fit things under a title simply to keep them organized. D&D appears to have these categories covered since the editions all have their own names, so it’s not quite the same as pigeonholing music into the Bluegrass category, or Art under the Cubist movement. It’s just that now, with the multitude of editions, there is a need to clarify what is meant when one says D&D.
It’s not enough to simply say D&D anymore. We have managed to classify the versions by edition. For better or worse, we pigeonhole the grand old game of D&D into nice, neat categories. I always played a hodge-podge game, with influences from various early editions, as well as additions from whatever seemed useful or inspirational at the time. Such influences included not only Arduin but later even things from Dark Sun and The Forgotten Realms. I knew no other way to play D&D. Nothing was forbidden, nothing was sacred, and nothing was off-limits or out of bounds. If I wanted to bring some Fascist Ninja Wombats with powers derived from the Champions game, I did so. It was still D&D.
No one should be able to tell you how to play D&D. Each game should feel unique. The experience should be different from one GM to another, and from one play group to another. That is one of the endearing aspects of the game, in my opinion. It’s probably exactly why we were never specific about our games. It was D&D. We didn’t come out and declare we were playing OD&D, or Holmes Basic. We were simply rolling dice and exploring our imaginations.
When pressed about my favorite edition, I answer OD&D. The reasons are simple and quite clear to me now. OD&D exemplifies the pure concept better than any other version. I can get away with a lot more and still declare that I am running OD&D. The original volumes are littered with reminders that the rules are simply guidelines; that each referee should be running the game his or her way. Imagination, creativity and flexibility are the cornerstones of OD&D.
Surely at some point, if you declare you are running OD&D, though, even with these notions ingrained in those little brown books, you are opening yourself up to scrutiny. It’s best to just call it D&D.
~Sham, Quixotic Referee
Saturday, April 11, 2009
Shameless Self Link
I wrote this five months ago and in the wake of Dave Arneson's passing I'm going to copy and paste it below.
What If?
Remember that old Marvel Comics series? No? That’s OK. I’m playing it today anyway here at Ye Auld Grog and Blog. What If…Dave Arneson, rather than Gary Gygax, had wrested control of D&D? What If, by some strange twist of fate, Gary had returned to the insurance business, and left the direction of D&D to Blackmoor’s creator, Dave Arneson?
Less prose and more punch
Less realism and more free wheelin’
Less medieval and more alien invasion
Less tables and more what the f**k just happened
Less concern about standardized tournament rules and more kung-fu theatre
Less D&D is fantasy, and more D&D is anything you can imagine…D&D is a concept; not a place or time in history or mythology
I love me some Gygax ‘purple prose’ as James M calls it. On the other hand, I wonder…What If?
~Sham, Quixotic Referee
Friday, February 6, 2009
Sand Castle What?
What constitutes a Sand Castle World?In the comments to yesterday's Sand Castle Worlds post, a well respected reader, Dwayanu, put together a very poignant response. Dwayanu pointed out some important details which I had failed to spell out in that post. I feel the concept of a Sand Castle World does need further elucidation, and thankfully someone else with a slightly different view has been kind enough to share his thoughts and experiences.
First I'd like to define Homebrew. Like the word Campaign, Homebrew has evolved into a catchall phrase that often needs further definition. It can mean tinkering with the rules, making house rules, or creating new material for the game in the way of monsters, items, spells and classes. It is also used to describe a personalized campaign setting. People often say such things as “in my Campaign” when they want to tell you about some small bits of tinkering, house rules or creations they have Homebrewed. When they say “in my Homebrew” it means something else to me. It means they are referring to their campaign setting which is specifically a personally crafted world, not one based on a published setting at all.
The roots of these terms are of great interest to me. Campaign was clearly intended to describe a series of adventures. Settings grew from the adventures, and thus the term describing these collected adventures was also used to label these settings, as in Gary's campaign, or Dave's campaign, aka Greyhawk and Blackmoor respectively. This is an important detail in this post, that the Settings grew from a series of adventures, or Campaigns.
I not certain of the origins of Homebrew, but it is clearly NOT a term used in the original concept of the game. Why? The very act of making things up was assumed. Part of playing D&D involved a referee who made things up. The rise of the term Homebrew is a reflection of the evolution of the game itself. This harkens back to my observations on the origin of the term Megadungeon. In the original game, the description of an underworld dungeon was nearly synonymous with our modern definition of Megadungeon. It wasn't until decades later that the community felt the need to coin this term to describe something which was assumed in OD&D.
Perhaps that is why I feel there is a need to use the phrase Sand Castle World. These are not simply Settings, Campaigns or Homebrews. They are Homebrewed Campaign Settings with some other important characteristics.
Dwayanu made some excellent observations on Settings. First off that there is an implied Setting, even with OD&D. It is essentially a medieval Setting of fantasy and mythology. A few tidbits here and there hint at expanding the scope of the game, and Robots are even mentioned, but the fact is that most players assumed they were in for a generic medieval fantasy game.
D&D continued on this path for years, primarily using Gygax's Greyhawk as the assumed milieu. Not necessarily the prescribed Campaign Setting, but the assumed medieval fantasy theme for D&D in it's entirety.
With the proliferation of alternate milieus heralding the 2E era, such Settings as Planescape, Al-Qadim, Red Steel, Ravenloft, Dark Sun and Hollow World showed once more how D&D need not be driven down such a narrow path. Dwayanu states that this is possibly when the actual term Setting was coined. Before then, the Setting was medieval fantasy. Again, I'd mention that in some small way, this was the community redefining the history of the game. In OD&D, even though there was an implied Setting, there was still no published example of such. It was wide open at that time. AD&D and Greyhawk created a narrow focus, and the plethora of alternate Settings reminded everyone that it was not the only way to play.
OD&D was a concept. We are told in the original books that it “need not be restricted to the medieval”. Like many things explained, or open to interpretation in the 1974 unveiling of the game, this notion was forgotten for a time, only to be rediscovered later.
There is though a salient point in regard to the original notion of the game versus the modern way of thinking. We are shown quite clearly in The Underworld & Wilderness Adventures how to begin a game of D&D. Make a Dungeon, make a Town near the Dungeon, create a basic overland map of the Wilderness area immediately around the Dungeon. The seeds of adventure for those referees who wish to dive right in. It was the other visionaries who paid particular attention to the mention of scope, restrictions, guidelines, and robots that took things in a different direction entirely. Nevertheless, the basic format was:
Dungeon, Town and Wilderness.
Sounds like a Sandbox game to me. Sandbox is another term coined in the same manner as Homebrew, Megadungeon and Campaign. Sandbox play has always been in the original rules. The term arose from the need to differentiate that style of play from the plot-driven, adventure hook, story book style which became popular later.
Enter MAR Barker. Tekumel was not a new idea. MAR Barker had been writing about his fantasy world for decades before the notion of D&D was even formed. When the two ideas collided, the result was a Sand Castle World published in 1975 as The Empire of the Petal Throne. Clearly it was not an organically grown Setting built through extensive Sandbox play. It was a collection of ideas, stories and notes which were crafted into game form using the D&D concept.
MAR Barker took D&D into his creative sandbox and began from the granular level. The foundations of the game were molded to suit his vision. The rules were changed to such a point that, unfortunately, the game was not called D&D. It should have been called Dungeons & Dragons in The Empire of the Petal Throne. I think the hobby would have been better served. For whatever reason, it was not marketed as such, and I think it suffered due to this fact.
Shortly thereafter organically grown Settings, those which actually claimed the meager Dungeon, Town, Wilderness beginnings, began to reach published format. Many of them were also not considered D&D. In reality, they were the same concept unveiled in the original 1974 booklets with foundational rules changes, the primary difference being that they were not published by TSR. But I digress. I want to focus on D&D specifically.
When I read OD&D, it seems quite clear to me that I am being told to take creative license and craft my own rules, theme and setting. It's still D&D even if I veer away from the implied milieu. At least, in 1974, and in the mind of the authors at that time, it was still D&D. It is easy to see simply by considering the terms Campaign, Homebrew, Megadungeon, Sandbox and Setting, that D&D does mean something much more specific now.
As Dwayanu mentioned, he understands what is implied when his players say “normal D&D”. I'd contend that it is something different than using the term “normal OD&D”. There was no normal OD&D. There was an implied milieu, though. To me, “normal OD&D” would mean starting with Dungeon, Town and Wilderness in a medieval Setting.
Sand Castle Worlds therefore are not quite “normal OD&D”. These begin with Settings which might veer away from the implied milieu. Like Tekumel and others, Sand Castle Worlds also build with the notion that D&D is not limited in scope. The notion that OD&D is a concept and not a set of rules is embraced by the authors of Sand Castle Worlds. As intended by Gygax & Arneson, the message has always been that the rules are a guideline, to be altered and added to.
Whether these individual worlds are created, like Tekumel, or grown organically, like Arduin, they are clearly not quite the same as what has become known now as a Campaign, or a Homebrew. They feel and play quite differently than “normal D&D”.
Are they D&D? I think in many cases that Sand Castle Worlds are the purest form of D&D. The purest form meaning, to me, the D&D concept itself. D&D means something more specific now, so to many, they are something else.
I see this type of talk quite often in the OD&D circles. Referees speak of house rules, alternative race treatments, personal interpretations, homebrewed Thief classes, unique milieus, settings based on Howard, Burroughs, Lovecraft or any number of other authors, movies or even cartoons (Masters of the Universe!). I've even entertained the idea of a Sand Castle World based on Black Sabbath's album, Paranoid. This type of banter is welcome in OD&D circles. OD&D almost requires such foundational work. It's quite simple to take a small step back from that original edition, knock down the rudimentary foundations therein, and find oneself starting from the granular level.
Look no further than Carcosa, Xothique and World of Thool to get an idea of this type of creativity. Sand Castle Worlds need not be as narrowly focused as Tekumel, Harn or any of the above examples. They can be a kitchen sink of ideas like Arduin as well.
There are currently a vast number of Sand Castle Worlds in the works, being run, or gathering dust in someone's attic. Unfortunately there are not very many in print for us to appreciate.
~Sham, Quixotic Referee
Tuesday, December 2, 2008
Something Unsettling
My list of preferred RPG's, which I absolutely and fully endorse to anyone who will listen, is relatively short. It consists of D&D, Call of Cthulhu, Gamma World and Traveller. In that order (today, anyway).
So I was chatting with a gaming friend recently about my quandary in putting together many of my house rules and home brew ideas in a cohesive campaign setting. A supplemental rendering of tidbits from the past three decades tied together with a particular theme and world. No Future was the original setting plan, but I feel that particular blend of pulp influences simply doesn't have the zing for me that it once did. Perhaps with an interesting twist it still might.
I've often felt the need to start with a core of six character classes, each using one of the six abilities as a prime requisite. This calls, of course, for classes that use Constitution, Dexterity and Charisma for modifiers to experience (a topic I addressed in a recent submission to Fight On!, which may or may not ever see the light of day as it might be a bit off-the-wall as written for an OD&D game). Anyway, I was complaining about Clerics and how they didn't really fit in my envisioned world, and how perhaps I could ditch Wisdom altogether, or instead replace it with Luck.
"Like Tunnels & Trolls?" I was asked. "No, this is not your typical fantasy setting..." I began to respond. "I mean the Luck thing, like Tunnels & Trolls." I was asked…Long pause..."I never played it..." I continued. "Its pretty much exactly what you are doing now with D&D LOL" I was rather rudely informed.
From then on I have become unsettled. I never considered T&T in the past. Sure, I knew it was some crude knock-off of D&D, and that some weirdoes actually liked it better than my favorite game back in the day...but ME? Play T&T? I think not!
Well, I did a wee bit of oracular internet research in order to put my mind at ease. This led to further discomfort.
Pretty much everything I have learned about T&T is exactly what Mr. Smart-Ass was trying to tell me, or so it seems. There really isn't that much information on the game out there, not when you compare it to even say, OD&D. But isn't it really just D&D in a different costume? Maybe it is.
The only thing I can do now is ask my readers to enlighten me. Is Tunnels & Trolls really a rules-light, fast paced, open-ended version of OD&D? And perhaps most importantly, is the solo aspect of the game lame, like every other solo RPG I have ever tried before?
This is all very unsettling. Its akin to telling me that Vampire: The Masquerade would suit me better than Call of Cthulhu; or that Aftermath is more appropriate for me than Gamma World. It means that possibly, I have been playing the wrong game for thirty years.
In all seriousness, I would like to investigate Tunnels & Trolls, and I’m asking for some comments in regard to that venerable game system. I know little about it, other than there are available copies of editions 5, 5.5, 7 and 7.5. If I am going to look into a rules light game that I can potentially use for some fun solo gaming, and even one shots here and there, I’d appreciate some direction. I assume that the older editions are for me, but what I’ve been led to believe is that even T&T 7.5 is somewhat old school in its approach.
Recommendations?
~Sham, Quixotic Referee
Edit to add the following:
Thanks to Matthew's link in the comments, I printed off the free quicky rules, and played the solo adventure included with them. Goblin Lake, a mini solo adventure that was ummm...quaint.
The rules are silly easy to pick up (but then again, as quicky rules they should be). I'll do a proper report at a later date. I managed to kill six characters before I completed 'most' of Goblin Lake and decided I was done with it. The final character (all Goblins, by the way) found a ridiculously powerful item and emerged from the adventure looking for new challenges.
I'm not sure yet whether I like the T&T mechanics, but I wanted to post a link with three online solo T&T adventures. You can seriously dl, print and be playing one of these in under 20 minutes.
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