My first 40 years as a role player

Today, I turned 51 years old. And, as I've mentioned on numerous previous birthdays (and probably numerous "how did you get into gaming" posts), I got my Mentzer Basic Set for my 11th birthday. So I've been a D&D and other RPGs player for four decades now. 

For the first decade, 1984 to 1994, I both ran and played BECMI with my friends and family. We also ran a lot of Star Frontiers. We also played some AD&D of both the 1E and 2E variety, but not that much. And occasionally we'd play, or at least make characters but never get around to playing, lots of other games. Gamma World. Star Wars d6. Cyberpunk 2020. TMNT and Other Strangeness. Marvel Superheroes. I'm sure there are others we tried or at least sampled that I'm forgetting. We played a LOT of BECMI D&D though. Tales of this decade are labeled as The Old BECMI Group, obviously.

For the second decade, 1994 to 2004, after a bit of interruption in RPG play due to Magic: The Gathering and not wanting to associate with the campus Gaming Guild who embodied most of the negative gamer stereotypes that were out there at the time, I got back into gaming with a group that played a mix of 1E/2E AD&D. Then I went to Japan, and by the time I got a group to game with, 3E had just come out. So we dove into the world of the d20 system, playing 3E D&D and a bit of d20 Modern and d20 Star Wars. The final few years of this era, I had moved to a different part of Japan, and started gaming on RPOL.net since I hadn't found a group to play with there. These tales are under the Evansville Group (1E/2E), and Toyama Group (initial 3E stuff) tags.

From 2004 to 2014, I got in with a group playing in Tokyo. Again, we mostly played d20 stuff, including 3E, d20 Modern, and d20 Conan. But through this group, I also got to try a variety of Forge-style story games, and also it rekindled my love of old school D&D. I also got involved (finally) with some local gamers, and we played some Abberant (an obscure White Wolf game), 3E, and old school D&D. We also developed Presidents of the Apocalypse, which I know I've mentioned many times before, but no, it will probably never get released because it's so scattershot. In the middle of this era, I moved to Korea. For a few years, the emphasis was on board games, but eventually I got some old school D&D going, using the house rules that have by now evolved into Treasures, Serpents, & Ruins. I also got to try 4E and we sampled a few One Page and microlite RPGs, played a bit of Gamma World (the 4E D&D stuff AND classic GW), Pathfinder 1E, and a few other games here and there. I continued to game on RPOL, and also got to sample various OSR offerings through online realtime play (Google Meet, when that was a thing). I also developed, play tested, and released Flying Swordsmen. You can find these stories in the tags Ebisu and Yamanashi Gamers for the Japan era, and Busan Gamers for the Korea era.

My fourth decade, 2014 to today, coincides with the release of 5E D&D, and I've played it a fair amount. As a player, it's fun. As a DM? Not so much. So I've mostly stuck to my TS&R old school D&D rules as a DM. And I've been running my d6 Star Wars game for many years now. As a player, there have been a wealth of games and game systems, that are face to face, online realtime, and play by post. While I've mostly given up on 5E (except for a really good game on RPOL), my TS&R game and SW d6 game are both going well. I've sampled lots of OSR and micro-games, both in person and online. I've recently started both a Gamma World and Star Wars game on RPOL. And very recently, just joined a game of RECON. I developed, play tested, and released Chanbara, and have recently finished up releasing everything to make TS&R a complete game that others can play. I've been too busy to post about that. These last few years of gaming can again be found under the Busan Gamers tag, as will most games I post about going into my fifth decade of gaming. 

The first 40 years of gaming have been on the whole really good. I'm excited for the next 40 years!

Self-taught

JB put up an excellent post recently asking the question: why aren't there any good guides for beginning DMs? It's a lot easier to be a novice player and get into RPGs. Alexis at Tao of D&D has taken the challenge and has made some excellent posts about the poor writing in the old TSR books, and how their need to market the game, as well as inexperience as writers, gets in the way of actually teaching. He has an ongoing series of posts, three and counting at the moment (start here). Check them out.

While I could give it my own try (I will eventually when I start releasing TS&R books), here I'm just going to reminisce a bit about my own experiences, as best I remember them, of trying to figure out the game from the books. 

I got the Mentzer Basic set for my 11th birthday, back in 1984. I'd seen the D&D cartoon, had a few Endless Quest books (plus Choose Your Own Adventure and similar 2nd person fiction game-books), and was into fantasy and mythology. I was a pretty avid reader. As the son of a librarian, I spent a lot of time at the local library as a kid. So I wasn't a complete newbie to some of the concepts around D&D. And of course I'd done plenty of make-believe play. But I was completely new to the rules and procedures of RPG play. I hadn't done any war gaming. I hadn't played any really complex board games. Video game options were limited to my friends' Atari 2600s and Colecos. I'd had one acquaintance who had the BX books sort of explain a bit about it, but he was a bit of a condescending jerk and thought I was too immature to get it (as a 10 year old when he was 12). 

Anyway, that birthday gift changed my life. 

I remember reading the Mentzer set's player introduction. There's the little tutorial where you meet Aleena the Cleric and Bargle. It gives you a bit of railroady interactive fiction and makes you roll some dice here and there. Explains some terms as they come up. 

Then there's the "choose your own adventure" tutorial. Numbered paragraphs or sections of text with CYOA type choices of section to go to lead you through a solo game. It's possible to fail. Since it's just you and the book, it's VERY easy to cheat. But again, it helps guide you through some of the game mechanics and introduces not just game terms and systems (in a watered down fashion), but also the sorts of situations you could expect as a player. 

And it worked pretty well. I got it. I think I cheated on the CYOA adventure the first time I did it, but I played it a few more times until I was able to beat it fair and square. 

So for a potential player, so far so good!

Now, after reading through the rest of the players' book, I had some better idea of the game. But I still hadn't played it, and some things didn't make sense yet. 

I moved on to the DM's book. At the beginning, there's another CYOA adventure, except this time you're supposed to lead the players through the castle dungeon as their DM. It holds your hand, and explains some of the concepts and helps get your feet wet. Again, I read through it, and the rest of the book. Not everything made sense. But I got the gyst of it. 

I ran the Castle Mistamere dungeon for my two best friends that Christmas break (2 weeks after I'd gotten the books -- I'm a December baby). I explained the basics. We rolled up characters. Todd was a fighter and Ben was an elf. We played. They should have been eaten by the first encounter, a carrion crawler. Both were paralyzed, but I misunderstood turns and rounds, so Ben's elf was only paralyzed for 3 rounds, and managed to finish off the crawler which Todd's fighter had wounded before he was also paralyzed. They loved it. 

They took on the kobolds at the ruined gate next, and as suggested, the sleep spell did the trick. I think they explored a bit more, getting to the magic beds and being stumped by the cursed one. I was inexperienced, and to be honest the tutorial didn't make it clear that I should give hints that the other bed will cure a cursed sleeping PC. 

So it wasn't perfect. But it was great fun! We kept playing. Todd and Ben both soon had their own Basic Sets. In fact, Ben also later started collecting the AD&D books (Todd and I stuck to BECMI). We ran a sort of shared campaign among the three of us...although I was most often the DM. It went on until sometime when I was in college. I ran a few games while back on break, but me going to college in a city a 6 hour drive away pretty much ended the campaign. 

So I managed to figure it out on my own (and then with help from my friends). But I didn't know many other people who played. One of my other cousins played, but other than one summer when I spent a month at my aunt & uncle's house, we didn't play together much. I don't remember if he was also self-taught, or if he'd been inducted by other more experienced gamers. I only learned recently that another cousin-once-removed (grandson of my mom's & the above uncle's second oldest brother) played. He was the age of my younger sister, but if I'd known he played I would have invited him to our games! 

My school was pretty small. I think there was only one other person I knew at our school who owned D&D besides myself and Todd, a guy named Greg. He was a few years older than us. This guy's younger brother Brian played with us a few times since Todd and Brian were good friends. But Brian never really got into it, and I never approached Greg about playing together. I had tried to get a few other classmates and friends to play. My brother played often and younger sister played sometimes. Ben's brothers (one older, two younger) also played from time to time. A few other kids would give it a try, but none stuck around. 

I hate to speculate too much about other kids. Most were just not into geeky stuff. There was a stigma. There was the Satanic Panic (which also slowed but couldn't stoop my getting into hard rock/metal music). But I'm the only person I know of from those days who I can 100% say was self-taught by the books. Maybe Greg was, too? I'm not even sure how often he played or who he played with. They were kids 3-4 years older than me, so not really in my circle. Maybe Charlie and Adam (my cousins), maybe not. I can ask Adam, but Charlie was killed in a car accident years ago. Maybe I could as his sibling Kay-Cee, but I don't know if they would remember. Kay-Cee was familiar with D&D when Charlie and I were playing it that one summer, but I don't remember if they joined in our games or not.

The old TSR books were definitely written in such a way that the game could be figured out on your own, if you stuck with it. But we did have a lot of misconceptions that took time to overcome which might not have happened if we'd been tutored by more experienced gamers. 

And even though I was in a pretty rural area, considering the popularity of the game and supposed huge volume of sales for the various Basic sets, I suspect there were other kids in my area who had the game but were never able to figure it out.

2E: The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly

James M. has a new post up where he re-evaluates 2E AD&D. I read it, and the comments section (up to time of writing anyway) and it certainly seems to have got people thinking. And instead of write a big long comment there, I figured I would put some thoughts here on my own blog. And yes, I will be continuing with my ideas about Prince of Nothing's axioms on what makes old school D&D old school D&D, but not tonight. 

I've mentioned many times here that I started with the Mentzer BECM books (minus Immortals), but my cousin had a lot of the 1E AD&D books. We messed around with it a bit, but other than the occasional monster or magic item, we tended to keep D&D and AD&D separate back then (mid to late 80s), and when 2E came out, he picked up the PHB but it was mostly just a curiosity for us -- hey, it has arquebuses! Bards are a class instead of some crazy hard to qualify for dual classing monstrosity with unclear rules! I don't think he got much more of the 2E stuff, since it was more or less compatible with 1E, which he already had and hardly played. BECMI was our jam.

In the mid to late 90s, before I moved to Japan, I was working at Waldenbooks (remember those?) and was able to purchase books at a substantial discount (but not making enough to really afford lots of books, not that that stopped me!). I got into a group that ran AD&D, but it was a weird hodge-podge of 1E and 2E because the games were something like 90% compatible. And so when I could, I picked up the black cover core 2E book revisions. The plus side? The Monstrous Compendium was an actual book instead of a bunch of loose leaf binder pages. Down side? Not sure there is one (other than it being 2E, if you're a 2E hater!). 

I was never a huge fan of the 2E rules, but I'd never read through the entirety of the 1E books, so I never really knew what I was missing (at the time). I enjoyed 2E well enough, but like I said, the game I played in was not pure 2E. Half-Orcs & Assassins, UA Barbarians and Cavaliers, 1E OA, Illusionists as either their own dedicated class or as a mage specialization (not that anyone played an Illusionist that I recall). And it worked. My original group had pretty much used the BECMI engine with 1E classes/spells/monsters/magic items bolted on when we played 1E. And with the Evansville group, we just used whatever worked from 1E and/or 2E. And when I ran an OA campaign for them, we used 1E OA, the 2E Complete Ninja's Handbook, and my DMing was still basically BECMI procedures. And again, it worked just fine.

I've cracked open the 2E books from time to time over the years. I've pulled a few things from it into my TSR house rules. Would I play it straight? Probably not. But there are some good things in it. Here is my VERY SUBJECTIVE and incomplete (because it's late and I want to get this done and go to bed) evaluation. 

The Good: 

The rules are a lot easier to read and understand than 1E, and the books make good references. Like BX, in that regard, and like BECMI in that they serve as a good tool for learning the game without a group to teach you (to an extent). 

I like the way they keep classes fairly simple, but with lots of options for customization. Obviously anyone who has downloaded Flying Swordsmen or purchased Chanbara knows that I like kits/subclasses! Did they go overboard with splat books? Of course they did. But the concept of the kit to offer a small customization to the main class is still a good one. 

Illustrations for every monster! 

Consolidation of a lot of spells, magic-items, and monsters that were scattered around different books in 1E. Again, makes for a good reference.

Some general cleaning up and streamlining of rules for combat (closer to Classic D&D, but not quite).

I really like the single class Bard in 2E. It's far from a powerhouse, but it has style (although yes, the picture is kinda cringe). Also I liked, at the time, the customization of Thief skills by point allocation. Makes leveling up take a bit longer, but being able to specialize your Thief as the lock-picker or sneak or pickpocket was nice, and not overly complicated.

The Bad: 

Too much emphasis on creating a story for the players, and enforcing it with railroads and XP awards for compliance. Now, I know a lot of people were big fans of all the settings TSR put out back then. There's definitely some cool stuff out there. But the focus on story awards and RP awards really made 2E the mother-may-I edition of D&D, if played by the book. 

The endless stream of splat books. Some were good. Some had good things in them. There was just too much, junking up what was otherwise a nice, streamlined version of the game. 

The non-weapon proficiency skill system became the default. It has some problems, but I don't have time to go into them now. In brief, too limiting and created too much focus on ability scores, that has lasted through three WotC editions.

The Ugly:

The art, as James M mentioned in his post linked above, was much more technically well executed, but not always as evocative as in previous editions. Some of it was, but not a lot. I do appreciate that they put in full page, full-color art plates. And, as I mentioned above, every monster had a picture. But a lot of those pictures are pretty blah. And they're just the monster in a white field, no context. 

The "cleaning up" of the rules. BECMI gets some shade thrown its way for sanitizing the game for kids, but 2E turned that up to 11. Now, Half-Orcs and Assassins aren't 100% necessary for a D&D game. Neither are devils/demons (not in BX or BECMI, after all). But the emphasis on having to play heroes, and avoiding things that might make parents upset -- that is really what makes this game so different from other TSR editions. But as with my experiences with the game, if you run it like Classic or 1E, it still has all the old school charm. 

The technical manual tone, while good as a teaching tool and reference, is just not that evocative. BECMI taught me how to not just run a game, but to create dungeons and wildernesses. 1E has all sorts of random stuff that adds to world building and immersion. With 2E, you need supplements and splat books for that.

_________________________

In the end, I think the too strong story emphasis is what keeps me from returning to 2E for more than just inspiration for a few things to grab for my own Frankenstein-edition. That's the biggest flaw. Splat books and bland art can be ignored (and again, the Rules Cyclopedia for BECMI is much like 2E in that it's a great rules reference, but bland appearance -- no surprise, as they came out in the same era).

Gaming as an Ex-Pat Part 1

A friend of a few friends (she used to live in Busan and play board games, but I never met her) was asking on Facebook about RPG gaming in Korea. She's now in Cambodia and has a gaming group there, and was curious as she only ever played board games while here in Busan. One of my friends tagged me in the post, and since I'm the sort of guy who will ramble on about this sort of stuff, I did. And I figure I might as well re-post it here on the blog, because it might be interesting and also because I'm curious about your experiences, if you have any, as a gamer living outside of countries with big gaming communities.

Glaiza's question that set this off:

Out of curiosity, are any of my friends in Korea playing or have played in tabletop roleplaying games (like D&D or games like it) while living in Korea?
Like is their a dedicated group that you know of that meet on a regular basis? What was your experience in that? Did you DM or where you a dedicated player?

 I decided to break my responses into three parts:
1) my gaming experiences in the U.S. which also had some issues with gaming not so different from those I've experienced overseas
2) my experiences gaming in Japan (which actually I ended up writing two posts, because I forgot to write about how great living in Japan was for collecting gaming minis, but I'll combine them here on the blog)
3) my experiences gaming in Korea (which at the time of writing this blog post, I still need to write...)

Here's my gaming background in the U.S. I know I've covered a lot of this before on the blog, but it's been years since I did so, and I don't expect all of you to have kept notes, so I don't mind reposting.

Gaming in the U.S. in the 80's/90's

I'm from rural Illinois, so growing up, access to RPG stuff was sort of limited. Our local bookstores stocked mostly D&D and other TSR stuff, but I remember seeing Palladium and some other RPG stuff as a kid. Toy stores and big box stores like Sears or JC Penny (this was before Wal-Mart came to the area) also had the D&D box sets. For extra dice, minis, etc. we were out of luck. We had our rule books and the dice that came in the box sets, plus extra six-siders scrounged from old board games.

We mostly played Classic (box set) D&D. Some friends had AD&D, and we'd mix stuff in from there if the books were available. When we weren't playing D&D, we mostly played Star Frontiers (also a box set with its own dice). My best friend got the TMNT game (not sure where), so we played that a bit, too. And WEG Star Wars a few times. But mostly D&D.

When I got to college, I had access to a great comics shop that had plenty of RPG stuff (and Magic: The Gathering), and I ended up getting involved with a group of AD&D (mixed 1E and 2E) players through my part-time job. I picked up the 2E books at a discount because I worked at Waldenbooks. Also, back home, a hobby shop had opened up, and I could get dice cheap there. Cheaper than the comics shop in my uni town, anyway. I started playing Gamma World and tried a few other games in those years. At home or at school, though, my groups were limited to friends of members already in the group. Not a lot of cross-pollination of gamers going on then.

Dr. Half-love, or how I learned to stop worrying and love the halfling

Back when I first got the Mentzer Basic Set for my 11th birthday, I still hadn't read The Hobbit or LotR.  None of my friends had, either.  And Elmore's art really played a big part in how we viewed the Halfling.

OK, not so bad here.  The chubby Halfling is complaining to the cute Elf chick about something the Dwarf obviously did but is pretending he didn't.  But the other images of Halflings in the set are of one running from a big, shadowy monster, and of one getting put to sleep by a Magic-User (probably Bargle).

We also had all read Dungeon of Dread, the first Endless Quest book, where wimpy and cowardly Laurus the Halfling is the hero Caric's sidekick.

So we didn't have the most heroic image of Halflings in our early games.  And they tended to be used as the butt of jokes.

One summer vacation day, our library was playing the Rankin-Bass animated Hobbit in the background while they had some other activities going on.  So I saw parts of it, between checking out the books on Bigfoot or reading compilations of Garfield comics.  I don't remember much, other than it was on, and the blue elves were freaky.

After a few years, one guy I knew but didn't hang out with so much (Killingmachine spent more time with him) named Bryce had read The Hobbit and LotR, while I had gotten into the Dragonlance books (the original Chronicles trilogy was a step above quite a bit of the fantasy drivel available at the public library that I was scarfing up).  We had a debate once about the merits of the two, even though I had no idea what Tolkien was really about.  It starred Hobbits, who are Halflings, and we all knew how lame they were from D&D.

Then George Lucas came out with Willow.  It looked like a kick-ass fantasy movie, but it was called such a girly name and the main character was a Halfling.  Of course, eventually I saw it, and it was a fairly kickass movie, even though it was about a Halfling.  Madmartigan made up for that.

In high school, Killingmachine read The Hobbit in his English class.  He told me there was actually some good stuff in it, such as the Mirkwood spiders, Gollum, and Smaug.  That got me to read The Fellowship of the Ring, and it also had some good stuff in it.  Ringwraiths, barrow wights, killer trees, goblins/orcs, a Balrog, more Gollum!  Great stuff!  Maybe I'd been wrong about Bryce.  (insert Afterschool Special style lesson learned moment here).

About the same time, I rolled up a character with a 3 Int, and an 18 Dex.  He had a high enough Con, so I made him a Halfling.  Farley the Halfling.  He had amazing AC 0 - platemail plus Dex bonus, a short bow - with Dex and Halfling bonus to hit made him very accurate, and the ability to hide if need be.  Of course I played him as this happy retard who would always talk about how he once "shot deer like this" while picking off whatever targets he was against.  No matter how many orcs, trolls, dragons or vampires he helped slay, it was always that deer he was proudest of.  Dumb as a brick, but friendly and helpful (in his oft mistaken way).  I realized that the Halfling didn't suck, and could be quite fun to play.

Since then, I've played a few here and there.  They're still not my favorite Classic D&D class, or my favorite AD&D race, but I do still get an idea for a fun Halfling every now and then and have at it.  I'm currently playing one in an online RPOL game, and so far he's been pretty fun to play as well. 

Long story short, I'm really looking forward to the Peter Jackson Hobbit movies.  My son, however, wanted to watch the Rankin-Bass Hobbit with me yesterday, but about the time they got to Rivendell he got bored, ran into the bedroom, and called me to come play with the dragon toys with him.  Well, he's only 3.  He'll learn!

The bandwagon still has room for one more hireling

So today's topic around the OSR-type blogs is hirelings/retainers/henchmen.

I'm pretty sure I've blogged in the past about my own early experiences with them, but I'm too lazy to look up a link to that old post right now.  So I'll briefly recap.

Starting with Mentzer, his Basic set tried to discourage retainers.  I'll need to double check the actual books, but the way I read them was very similar to the excerpts of Moldvay Basic that James M., Lord Kilgore, and others are talking about.  PCs can hire help, but they're discouraged from doing so at early stages of the game.

My idea of the 'retainer' that I got from Mentzer, though, was that they were free-lance classed NPCs who would hire on with your group for a share of the treasure.  Sorta like henchmen in AD&D, only contracted on an adventure by adventure basis.  We never got the idea from Frank's set that hiring Normal Man type soldiers/men-at-arms, or other porter/linkboy types was even an option.  Frank's Expert set reinforced this, with the admonition that mercenaries would guard your castle or clear the land of monsters, but wouldn't go down in a dungeon.

Since Frank had stated that it was preferable to have players each play multiple characters rather than resort to hiring retainers, and since we would often just roll up new characters when we were bored (to put off doing homework for another few minutes), we all had a dozen or so characters at any one time, and our adventuring parties usually consisted of each of our 1-3 players playing 3-5 of their characters, plus the DM 'NPCing' some of their own as well.  So we didn't need to hire extra help most of the time.

But that's what comes of playing D&D in a tiny farm community with a very limited player pool.

More recently, I've been encouraging the hiring of NPC help.  Some of my players take to it, some don't.  That's up to them.  I find that having a few hired spearmen along on a dungeon delve, or some extra sacks and backpacks for hauling out loot (or hauling in more oil, holy water, rations, etc.) can help a lot.  But if a group wants to go without them, OK by me.

So what have I got to add to the discussion?  Not much really.  But it was easier posting this than writing up the post that's on my mind, which is all about literary critique theory and how that may possibly be messing up some people's ideas of what RPGs should be about.  I'll save that one until I get over the headache I've got today.

Play by Post idea for a Megadungeon

I've mentioned before that I'm one of the players in the online play by post Megadungeon game being run by David of Tower of the Archmage. 

I've had plenty of experience with PbP games in the past, both as a player and as a DM.  One thing I've learned about them is that because they go slow, they tend not to last long.  Lots of people just can't hold their attention to the story that long.  So as posts slow down because everyone's waiting for that one person to post, others start to lose interest, too.

This is not a slight on David in the least.  I'm enjoying the game he's running, even if it is slow going (and Renee has apparently stopped checking the site and is instead having her husband Rick surrogate post for her).  Even though we've just barely begun to explore the place, we've already had a memorable encounter and seen enough to make us curious about the place.  I'm at least eager to keep going with it.

But the pace is slow.

I was thinking that if I ever run a PbP game again, I'd likely limit it to just myself as DM and one player.  Maybe two if I knew they would both post often.  I get the feeling that that sort of game would progress a lot faster.  And I'd have no worries about that one player actually running an entire party.  Heck, back in the old days, we often played with just two of us, one DMing (and bringing a few of his own PCs along for the ride) and the other playing several of his characters.  We had a lot of fun that way.

So no big revelations here, nothing ground-breaking.  Just me thinking out loud that if I ever start running my Megadungeon online, I'd likely just try to recruit one player to play through it.  That way, we'd never really have to wait for posts.  As soon as I post something, the player will be able to post.  And as soon as the player posts, I'd be able to post a response.  No need to wait to give everyone a shot to give some input, then waiting extra long just in case they might feel like giving some later.

Rethinking My Stance

Last year, when I was trying to get the Board Game Group to play D&D a bit more, there were more than a few grumbles about my 'old school' approach.

Not everyone minded rolling 3d6 down the line for ability scores, but some did.

Not everyone minded the lower power level of starting Classic characters, but some did.

Not everyone minded the less heroic style of play, but some did.

Well, yesterday I was re-reading this old post over at Cyclopeatron.  In it, he posted some house rules Gary Gygax used in an OD&D game in 2005 (originally chronicled by folks at K&K Alehouse and Dragonsfoot, and collated by Robert Fisher on his old Infogami site).  I'll repost them here:

• Not using the supplements. Only the three little books.
• Ability scores rolled as best 3 out of 4d6. Arrange scores to taste.
• All PCs get 1d6 hp/level. HP rolls are rerolled on a 1.
• Fighters get +1 HP/die. All PCs get +1 HP/die if Con > 14.
• Fighters do +1 damage if Str > 14.
• Dex doesn't affect AC. (It does affect missile attack "to hit" rolls.)
• PCs started at 3rd level.
• PCs are unconscious at 0 hp. They can go as low as level +1 before death. (A 4th level fighter can be brought as low as -5 hp & just be unconscious.) A healing potion or cure spell restores them immediately.
• 1d6 for surprise. 1=1 round. 2=2 rounds. 3 or more=no surprise.
• PCs must declare actions before initiative. Casters must declare the specific spell being cast.
• 1d6 for initiative. A tie means simultaneous.
• A casting caster who loses initiative will lose his spell if hit.
• No training necessary to gain a level.
• To acquire new spells: Casters must find scrolls, spellbooks, or a friendly higher-level caster.
• Clerics don't need spellbooks. (The original books can be read to imply that they do.)
• Gary IDs most magic items immediately (charging large sums of money when they return to town to rest & recuperate for this service). (This is because the players are anxious to get back into the dungeon & don't want to bother with in-town adventures.) Potions must still be tasted to ID, though. Unusual items require a trip to the striped mage.

Reading this again made me rethink some of my current ideas.  While I think it's fun playing in a more 'hard core old school' way, the guys I've got to play with don't all agree.  And since we're playing to have fun, and I'll have fun DMing no matter which forms of character generation we use, what level we start at, and whether or not there's a high mortality rate among PCs.

I can always try to find some players like me in the future.  For now, I know I'd be playing more D&D if I instituted some (possibly all) of the following rules:

1. Ability Scores: Roll 4d6 drop the lowest (re-roll 1s), or possibly 2d6+6 (no re-rolling of 1s).  Arrange to taste.  I'd keep the normal Classic D&D ability bonus/penalty spread, though.
2. Hit Dice/Hit Points: I already allow Max HP at level 1 and re-rolling 1s, but I might consider upping the die types to match AD&D (something I've considered in the past).
3. Level: Not sure if I'd want to up the starting level to 3rd or not.  I kinda like the low levels of play.  I'd likely just try to make them go quicker by being generous with rumors of where the phat lootz are hidden.
4. Spells: Use Labyrinth Lord Cleric spell progression (spell at 1st level).  Allow a bonus spell for Wis 13+ for Clerics/Druids, 13+ Int for M-Us/Illusionists, 13+ Cha for Bards.  Magic Users and Illusionists bonus spells would not need to be prepared, it could be anything from the spell book, cast as needed.
5. Death's Door: No negative hit point crap, but 0 HP is knocked out/incapacitated from wounds.  Any attack on such a character would then be an instant kill (like with a sleeping victim).  [not sure about this one, that might be going too soft...]
6. Magic Items: Back in the old days, I usually just told the players what magic items they'd found.  It was simple, and didn't ever detract from the game.  I'd likely go back to that (of course, cursed items like potions of delusion or swords -1 would not be revealed until used).
7. Encumbrance, Schmencumbrance: Yes, the logistics of hauling half a ton of gold up out of a maze may be fun for some, but it can also be a pain in the butt for others.  You find the gold, you've earned the gold if you can get out alive.  Realistic, no.  Fun, yes.

With these rules, I think my friends would be happier at my table.  Too bad I'm not gonna have time to DM much in the next few years.  I'm going to start taking grad school courses at night in March, so DMing will definitely be out.

The Haunted Keep! (Non-BX version)

Somewhere back when I was in high school, I finally got around to drawing up an adventure in The Haunted Keep on the Karamiekos map.  Since I'd started with Mentzer and had only ever had the slightest perusal of the Moldvay/Cook BX edition, I had never seen the sample dungeon in Moldvay's Basic book.

Which means, to my Castlevania inspired mind, my version of the Haunted Keep became the lair of a vampire.  And it was broken up into several sub-sections, each with a sort of 'boss' encounter, and a place to magically rest and recharge (just like how Castlevania levels end with that orb dropping to recharge your health after you beat the boss).  OK, maybe kinda lame, but the dungeon did have some pretty cool stuff in it, though.

Particularly, I'm fond of the castle's courtyard, which was a maze of semi-sentient thorn hedges.  You could chop your way through or try to fly over them, but you'd take damage doing so.

Maybe I'll get ambitious and type up the notes to go with these maps and make it into a downloadable PDF.  Don't think I'll have it done in time for Halloween this year, but oh well.

First, you had to make your way through the secret tunnels.

Then you had to go through the courtyard thorn maze.

Then you had to work your way through the crypts to get into the Keep.

Finally, you had the five levels of the Keep to deal with.

I remember that Killingmachine and I ran through this one night at his house. He played several of his PCs, and I ran several of mine to fill out the party. We had a blast, and I know we finally beat the vampire, and I don't think anyone got level drained too badly. :D

More scans: My first original dungeon

So this is the dungeon I whipped up after completing the Mentzer starter dungeon that I posted earlier. This was created during the Christmas vacation of 1984 (got the Basic set as a birthday present 2 weeks earlier).


Level 1, a system of caves, except the walls are all smooth. I don't think it ever came up why the place was like this, apparently natural caves from the outside, but apparently worked from the inside.

The big room at the top was expanded later on. The gold dragon that lives there became an important NPC when my friend Todd's fighter, who had a ring of telekinesis (probably from the red dragon), tried to steal a few gold coins as we were passing through one day. Once our characters had made it up to the Companion levels, I thought I'd better beef him up, so he became a Huge Gold (toughest of the tough) and his room was expanded.


The highlight of level 2 of course is the red dragon. Why a red and gold both lair in the same dungeon, no one knows. How the red gets in or out is also a mystery. Maybe enough low level adventurers keep coming that he doesn't need to go anywhere?

Back then, I sometimes restocked dungeons, but other times, certain monsters 'respawned' (to use a more modern term) and were always there. Realism and consistency were not issues back then. The red dragon, of course, always respawned. The Cloud Giant is obviously a later addition through restocking, as I didn't get the Expert Set until a year later, as a Christmas present.

You go up to level 2 in this dungeon, but down to level 3. I don't remember if anyone ever found and used the secret entrance/exit to level 3 or not. The 'bottomless pit' at the dead end on the lower left did come in handy a few times, including one time when the red dragon was tricked into drinking a potion of diminution, stuffed into a bag of holding, and then a race was on to get there and dump him in before the potion wore off. Good times.

Looking back on these maps, of course the stocking of them is random and pointless, but the design of the dungeons is actually not bad for a beginner. There are lots of paths and loops, secret ways that can be discovered (several concealed doors and the secret entrance), and some cool atmospheric weird things like a talking skull and a small lava lake.

Motivation Emerging from and through Play

I had some good, thought provoking comments to my Klondike Bar post the other day.

When I said that I think for D&D a character only needs a desire to explore the world and get rich through looting tombs/battling monsters, I do only mean that as a part of character creation.

Once the dice hit the table, characters should begin to be fleshed out by actions that happen to them within the game, choices the players make for them, and goals the players set for the characters themselves.

A few examples from past experiences I've had, both good and bad.

1. My first D&D character to make it to 2nd level, Gwydion (hence my internet alias), about the time he hit 5th level or so, decided his goal was to purchase a longship and crew so he could return to the Isle of Dread any time he felt like it. The first time we played the module, we didn't have any ships among our characters, so we used one of the provided hooks of a loaned ship. I wanted more IoD fun for my character, so my short term goal became to save enough for that.

2. My brother Tim's main character was a Dwarf named Larry, and when one day he rolled up another Dwarf as a replacement character for one that died, he named him Gary and said the two were brothers. Because of the TV show Cheers, where the rival bar was Gary's Olde Towne Tavern, Tim decided that the Dwarven brothers were going to open their own inn rather than build traditional strongholds when they hit name level. If one other character hadn't died, we might never have seen that brother appear, and this all never would have happened.

3. In a mixed 1E/2E game with the Evansville group, I was running a Dwarven Fighter/Thief. Due to very poor rolls by me in combat, compared to very good rolls by certain monsters, my guy was always getting knocked around in combat to comic effect. I ended up changing the way I roleplayed him because of that--originally he was a gruff but honorable trapspringer. He ended up being more of a willey, dastardly anti-hero just because he'd learned that fighting fair didn't work for him.

4. In one of the many short-lived 3E games with the Ebisu Group, we had one game where we started at 10th level with 2 characters each. I'd written up linked backstories for my two characters, a Half-Orc Rogue and a Human Ranger, who were half brothers, sons of a famous human Bard and members of the same Thieves' Guild. The first encounter with giants and a Pit Fiend sees my Ranger biting the dust to some uber save-or-die spell, and there went all that hard work within 30 minutes of starting the game.

5. In Paul's BECM game with the Yamanashi group, I rolled up a Magic-User who had all scores average or lower, except an Int of 13. I took Charm Person as my first spell, and lots of various equipment for dungeoneering. Using those scores, I made him an offensive braggart (low Cha) named Valentio the Pungent who lorded it over all the other characters how much smarter he was than any of them (because a slightly above Int was all he had to work with!). I never would have come up with a character like that if a) we'd been playing with a high rolling method like 4d6-L, or point buy, or whatever, and b) the way things went in the first adventure, when I was using some smarts and gear cleverly in ways most of the other players, who hadn't been playing as long as me, never thought of.

Another take on Gamer ADD (and my 100th post)

Reading about Gamer ADD makes me rethink my own games for the past 15 years or so.

Of course I suffer from Gamer ADD. Back in the day, we had D&D and Star Frontiers, and we just played either when someone had a dungeon or adventure ready. We had two long campaigns that lasted from late elementary school into the early years of university summer vacations. 10 years for D&D, 8 for Star Frontiers. We'd try out the occasional other RPG, usually during the summers when we had lots and lots of free time. But the only ones we stuck with were the above.

Then, after I graduated, with the Evansville group and every group I've had since, the big problem with Gamer ADD was NOT that the DM wanted to switch systems or campaigns.

The problem has been (and still is) that EVERYONE WANTS TO BE THE DM.

Too many chiefs, not enough Indians. Especially in my current board game group, there are always one or two of us dissatisfied with whatever is being played, so the usual response seems to be to offer to DM a game the way you like it as a player (which of course then makes someone else want to DM their way).

On another note, I've got the Character Creation rules for the Flying Swordsmen (Dragon Fist retro-simu-something) RPG finished. Character creation basics, classes and kits are done. Next is the martial arts maneuvers and combat section.

And this is my 100th post. Huzzah!

We're getting the band back together

I've got Josh and Alex confirmed for tomorrow night. We're finally getting the Maritime Campaign going. Dave may not make it, but he said he'll be there if he can.

So I'm pretty pumped about that, and I'm going through all my stuff to make sure I've got enough prepared. I never do, but at least I have enough that I can make it look like I do...

Anyway, getting back to gaming with the guys has gotten me nostalgic about my old gaming groups.

The original group: Todd (best friend #1), Ben (best friend #2, and 2nd cousin), Tim (little brother) and myself were the core. Bridget (my little sister), Josh, Adam & Jacob (Ben's brothers) and the occasional other friend would sometimes play. We grew up in the country, so it wasn't unusual for a 'game session' to be just one DM and one player. We mostly played BECM (Ben had Immoratals Set I think, but we never did more than look at it), and Star Frontiers.

Magic the Gathering and some members of my university gaming guild who were the stereotypical gamers you don't want to game with kept us from playing much in college, but after graduating I fell in with Tim (not my brother), Kenny, Jason and Steve. Tim and Jason were co-workers with me at Circuit City, Kenny was Tim's roommate, and Steve was a friend of theirs. We played a lot of short lived campaigns that were a mish-mash of 1E and 2E AD&D, including me running a game set in Feudal Japan for a few sessions. This is the Evansville Group.

Then I went to Japan, and after a couple years 3E came out. A few other teachers had also played, and we were all curious about the rules so I picked up the PHB when I was at home for the summer and ordered the DMG and MM when they came out. With the nature of the expat life, we had a bit of a revolving membership, which included Billy, Chris, David (he's Puerto Rican so it's pronounced Da-veed), Nick (who was actually the exchange student at the high school I taught at), and Gene. This is the Toyama Group. We played 3.0 D&D.

I moved to another part of Japan, and Billy, Chris, Gene and I tried gaming online with voice chat and OpenRPG, but it didn't go so well. We did get to try out d20 Modern and d20 Star Wars though.

After a few years, I got to talking with some other gamers in Tokyo on the Wizards message boards, and we formed the Ebisu Gaming Club. The members were Steve (not Steve from Evansville), Pete, Gene (from the Toyama group, he'd also moved), and toward the end Tim (number 3). We met once a month at Steve's apartment in Ebisu and played marathon 8 hour sessions on Sundays. We played 3.5 D&D, d20 Modern, d20 Conan, and tried out several Forge Indie games including one Steve was working on himself.

Concurrent to the Ebisu group, I fell in with some local guys who were playing a game of White Wolf's Trinity. This was Paul, Brent, Tanya, Mish, and another guy whos name is escaping me at the moment. The other guy was frequently absent, so they asked me to join up. After that game ended, Brent, Tanya and Mish all left Japan, but Paul and I recruited some other friends and formed a second group.

This second group was Paul, Atley, Josh, Jacob, Michelle, and Mark. Later, Lauren, Rick and Renee joined after Mark left the country and Atley lost interest. We started out with a d20 OA game that I ran, but then switched to a Classic D&D game run by Paul. Another guy named JD also ran a 3.5 game with some of the same players, but I was too busy to join them for that. Collectively, this is the Yamanashi Group.

And then I moved to Korea and fell in with my current Board Game Group.

SEX!!!

Over at BX Blackrazor, JB has had a series of posts on Sex in D&D. He describes how sex and matters related to sex made his games better back when he was a kid, and how he feels something has been lost in later editions.

He asks the question:

Am I the only one that experienced campaigns like this? Somehow I doubt it. Perhaps it wasn’t as explored in as great o depth by other gamers, but SEX is present in AD&D for those with eyes to see it.

Reading through the posts, I gotta say that my old group (myself, my two best friends, my brother, and the occasional other friend or sibling) played fairly similarly to JB. Maybe not to quite the extent, but we did have romance in game (even though the only female player was my little sister occasionally joining us). Most of the romance, therefor, was Player-NPC. But it did happen.

We didn't play AD&D much, mostly BECM. But even in those books, it seemed obvious to us that characters, especially higher level ones who became rulers, were spawning offspring. We had quests to save the princess, assassins posing as prostitutes, ass-kicking female adventurer retainers (before Xena, and before I'd read any Fritz Leiber), and plenty of other opportunities for our characters to get it on.

And not just in D&D, but also in Star Frontiers or other games we played.

And like JB, since we were young and mostly inexperienced, we tended to just drop the curtain when that sort of thing happened.

But yes, just like in JB's games, our teenage gaming had quite a bit. Characters got it on, characters got married, sometimes divorced, etc. In one memorable adventure, my best friend Todd's character with a Charisma of 3 had been forced into marriage as the result of an adventure we went on. Later, he found out (through a scroll of communication or a two-way crystal ball or something) that Archduke Stephan Karamiekos was moving in on his wife while he was out saving the world again. This led to two things--the wife was also an adventurer, and when she bit the dust in a trap-filled dungeon, the 'bereaved' husband ended up using her corpse as a trap-finding method. "Just throw her against the door and see what happens."

Crude, but we thought it was hilarious at the time.

Later, also, that character ended up deposing Karamiekos and setting himself up as ruler. That ended up being pretty much the capper of that campaign, since I was in college by then, and we were only playing when I was home on breaks.

So sex did have an impact on my early gaming, and it also made things more fun for all of us involved.