Tomorrow (Saturday, June 7th), Flynn and I are headed up to Daegu for their One-Shot Extravaganza TTRPG event. It actually starts this evening and goes through Sunday afternoon. But honestly, the games we wanted to get in the most were Saturday morning and afternoon. So we'll drive up tomorrow morning (about an hour's drive on the expressway) and come back tomorrow evening after the games.
Flynn prefers sci-fi to fantasy, so he's got a Traveller game in the morning (called "Death Station" and honestly, this was my first pick for this time slot as well), and in the afternoon will be playing Cyberpunk Red. He's been playing the Cyberpunk 2077 PC game, and loves it, so he's hyped for this game.
In the morning, I'll be playing in what looks to be a sorta whimsical D&D 5E game. The DM seems much more focused on "telling a story" than running an adventure...but more on this in a bit. In the afternoon, I'll finally get a chance to try out Dragonbane (my first pick, Cyberpunk being my #2). I've been curious about it for a while now. The DM for this game sent a list of pre-gens, and I'm torn between the shifty human wizard and the wolf-man monster hunter. There's also a duck-man knight that could be interesting, but may be too similar to my morning character so I'll try to get one of the above two PCs.
For the 5E game, the DM has some pre-gens, but said we could also make characters and submit them for approval. I considered playing a Sorcerer, which along with the Warlock are the two classes in 5E that I've never tried to play. Or a Druid, which I did try once, and had fun with. But in the end, I went with a classic Dwarf Fighter, Level 3 (Battle Master archetype). Since it's a custom point-buy system, of course his physical abilities are really good (although I didn't go so far as to give myself a 20 in Strength...merely an 18). He's got the Noble background, and I had fun filling out a short list of titles he bears that would make Lwaxana Troi proud. And that's why I'll try to avoid the Sir Duck character in the Dragonbane game.
The DM said we each have 250gp to spend, so plenty of normal gear or a small magic item or two. But looking through 5E's selection, I was reminded of just how chintzy a lot of the magic is in 5E. Many of the cheap magic items listed online seem to be mostly cosmetic. And the few useful ones mostly refer to spells, which reminded me of just how unimpressive a lot of magic is in 5E.
A potion of growth in old school D&D makes you giant and doubles your damage (I just checked 1E, though, and it only makes you big, no damage bonus...)! In 5E, it makes you giant and gives you +1d4 damage on your attacks. Helpful, but not impressive.
A potion of climbing in old school D&D gives a 95% chance to climb sheer surfaces (99% in 1E!), but in 5E it only gives advantage on your climb checks and lets you move at full speed.
And I'm sure I don't need to rehash how many magic effects that used to be instant effect (sleep), save-or-die, or at least save-or-be-out-of-combat in old school games are now make-a-save-each-round-until-you-escape-it.
Old school magic users may not get as many spells, but it sure is a lot more fun to play one when the spells you do prepare pack a punch!
Anyway, to end on a positive note: I'm looking forward to my first face-to-face game convention. And I'll be taking notes to see how easy it will be for me and a few friends to put on one here in Busan.
That was one of the things I never liked about D&D5; the meanness of it, in the tight-fisted Scrooge sense.
ReplyDeleteI remember in one of the playtests, one of the classes had an ability that would add something like +1d6 to rolls, except they told you to ignore and reroll if you got higher than 3. Putting aside the wonky practicalities of that, it gave an impression of giving a bonus but then taking it away again. That sort of miserly attitude carried through into the final game, as you've noted in the magic items.