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Showing posts with the label old-school

Standing up for D&D's Gen X: 2e (Part 2)

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This is part 2 of a 2 part series. Part 1 is about 2e rules. Part 2 is about 2e 'culture'.  Here's my dirty little secret that I never told anyone before: I actually really liked the Complete Book of Elves. I am just going to leave that bombshell hanging in the air and return to it later in this post, in the hope that the shock value of that statement will minimise the impact of what I am going to say next. The aesthetic of 2nd edition expanded and improved the D&D genre of fantasy. I am going to interject here and say that this post covers two 'cultural' parts - Genre/aesthetics and Style of play. Right now we're obviously talking the first part, but I will get to the second further down. Alright, back to the topic at hand: Let's ignore the masochistic"I prefer the cheapass sketches to top of the line artists" argument that you see 1st editioners espouse every now and then as insular nostalgic nonsense and go to a second point:  Most 1e grogn

Standing up for D&D's Gen X: 2e (Part 1)

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This is part 1 of 2 about 2nd edition. Part 1 will focus on the rules aspects. Part 2 on the nebulous 'culture' aspect of 2e. Out there in real life, I just about made the cut for an elder millennial. But in terms of DnD generations, I am very much Gen X - The Forgotten Generation.  Sandwiched in between the cantankerous curmudgeons of the B/X and AD&D 1e old schoolers who from their loftily perched blogs, abrasively champion their refined and sophisticated simple gaming ways and dour-weird piss-bag adventure aesthetics (all hail Erol Otus!) and the guileless charoppers of 3e that revelled in posting "build guides" on message boards for prestige classes and tricked out feat chains, considered Wayne Reynolds real cool and thought planning out their Conjurer 3/Incantatrix 10/Fatespinner 4 15 levels in advance to be a fine act of character development Is the un-championed generation X of 2nd edition romantic railroaders and the sad fools who learned their naive D&

Ability Score Improvements have been a terrible addition to D&D

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This is going to be one of them rants I fear.  It relates to my previous meditation on the heft of levels across various editions  and my recent contemplation on ability checks in B/X , specifically my desire have the unmodified numbers mean something in and of themselves, rather than something purely to derive other numbers from that do  have mechanical relevance. In a way, this posts is like a concluding remark on the heft of levels in TSR vs WotC D&D. To summarise, if the mechanical relevance of ability scores are almost always somewhere on a scale of -3/+5, why do we bother with rolling 3-18 instead of just using the derived numbers to begin with? Why has that never changed? And why do I have a firm impression that there'd be a great outcry if it were ever changed in a future edition? And it occurred to me that ability scores do have a relevance in the unmodified form, one that has remained across all editions - They are the formative narrative components of the character s

Using Ability Checks in B/X

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One gripe I have always had with D&D ability scores is - what are they for? Regardless of edition, they are only ever used for deriving other numbers. It would be much clearer if it were simply a -3/+3 stat since that is how it actually gets used. And yet, no one wants that. We all love our 3-18 rolls that we end up never using. It annoys me that such a prominent feature of PCs mechanically means so little. The exception of course, is the ability check in TSR D&D, introduced in B/X and which achieved peak infamy with 2e non-weapon proficiencies. The mechanic where you actually get to roll against your ability score. To begin with, let's acknowledge that there are many good old school reasons not to roll for ability checks in B/X: Most things that DMs in later editions require rolls for,  shouldn't require a roll in the first place as long as the players can describe what they are doing properly - And the ability score should be factored in by the DM in those cases an

I just picked up the original 1e boxed sets for Greyhawk and Forgotten Realms

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 30 dollars a pop on ebay from the same seller. Good deal I think. The Greyhawk set is missing the maps, but I have the sturdier versions from the folio already so no loss for me I have owned both in pdf for a good while, but having physical copies is definitely different. I have had the 2e set of Forgotten Realms since the 90s and the Folio of Greyhawk since the 00s, so it will be interesting to compare these two to them. I will probably blog on this soon.

The Nebulous Heft of Levels in TSR vs WotC D&D

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One thing that weighs favourably towards TSR D&D rulesets for me is the different experience of character levels. Character levels in TSR D&D just strike me as having far more heft  to them, than levels in 3e onwards.  I remember being much more proud of my AD&D fighter reaching 5th level than I ever was of reaching much higher levels in 3e or 5e. And it's not just due to nostalgia. The achievement felt more significant, as if 5th level in AD&D meant more than 9th level does in 5e. Not only in terms of my investment as a player, but also in terms of what that meant for the character in the world. A 7th lvl fighter in B/X or AD&D setting is a big deal to my mind. A force in the world. A 7th lvl fighter in 5e strikes me as a somewhat more run-of-the-mill character. The AD&D 7th lvl fighter seems somehow further removed from 1st lvl than the equivalent 3e/5e character, It's a nebulous impression that is hard to explain or justify. And I am partly writing th

Forgotten Realms: Old School Redux

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I've reviewed the Forgotten Realms as a setting before.  To sum up the issues with the setting: In its present incarnation it's an unmanageable mess, plain simple. The tabletop equivalent of the Marvel universe - Overburdened with an absolute immensity of 'canon' , loads of 'story line' developments that have no relation to gamers, universe-wide 'crossover events', desperate retcons and a handful of mary sue novel characters blazing a trail of shit through the setting that no one cares about.  WotC have done what they can to salvage the wreckage in 5e. An ill defined event to normalize the wreck that was 4e, move the timeline forward to let the passage of time erase as much of the canon baggage as possible, be intentionally vague about what has actually changed and otherwise just leave the setting the fuck alone, so gamers can walk around without tripping over 'setting lore' at every step. It's ok I guess, as a cardboard background f

Alternate Oerths - Mythic Greyhawk: More on Iuz

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First, a little sidenote further on the nature of gods from Appendix A in  Temple of Elemental Evil.  Here we get a full list of deities and they are classified in three: "Greater", of which there are roughly a dozen, "lesser", of which there are many, and "demigods", of which there's a handful.  Looking at the number and nature of the greater gods, it tallies well with my assumption that lesser gods are the kind of embodied, fallible deities who busy themselves with human affairs I discussed in my previous article , whilst greater gods are genuinely transcendent; pantheon fountainheads. more akin to sentient cosmic principle than to the kind of "divinely endowed people" the lesser gods are. With that out of the way, on to Iuz... Representing Iuz the Old as something more out of a slavic mythic north, a la  Koschei the Deathless The description of Iuz in the Folio as "Old Iuz of fear-babe talk", who has ruled the lan

Alternate Oerths - Mythic Greyhawk: Deities & Demi-gods

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I already wrote about the deities and pantheons of Mythic Greyhawk before , but after reading Dragon Magazine #67's article The Deities & Demigods of the World of Greyhawk  I'm inspired to doodle a bit more about this, taking the implications of that article as a springboard. The first thing that jumps at me from that article is the initial coverage of the nature of gods. We are told what kind of spell-like abilities gods of various statures have. Each of the four deities (Heironeous, Hextor, Iuz & St. Cuthbert) are statted out as conventional (albeit powerful) critters who, apart from being deities of certain things, can be encountered and killed like any other. We learn this from the note stating how Iuz has a soul object  secreted away in the abyss that leaves him free to roam outside his domain with no fear of permanent harm. No mention of 'avatars', or other divine trappings of later editions. From left to right: Heironeous; Hextor; Iuz & St. C

Alternate Oerths - Mythic Greyhawk: Central Flanaess

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The central Flanaess. Home of the city of Greyhawk & the Nyr Dyv; the Wild Coast, Fyrondy and Veluna; Celene & the Pomarj; the Urnst states. Verbobonc & Dyvers; the bandit kingdoms and shield lands. Also desert. When I wrote a review of the Darlene maps , I scribbled this about the central regions: Appealingly, the 'safer' area to go through from old Aerdy East to Old Aerdy West is adventuring area numero uno - The Wild Coast. I love its placement on the map and its relations on the map. Anywhere is in feasible reach for an adventurer on the wild coast. The Nyr Dyv and Wooly Bay gives you plenty of means of getting around. For adventurers in the Wild Coast, the Flanaess is your oyster. The whole Nyr Dyv/Wooly Bay/Relmor Bay area is just really well constructed for bringing these lands into contact with each other and opening routes of travel. No wonder the City of Greyhawk is such a big fish - The Nyr Dyv is obviously a really central area. The rivers flowin