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Showing posts with the label old-school

The Hobbit's Wilderland is classic D&D

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Somewhere on reddit recently, I saw someone casually mention the different types of fantasy implied by The Hobbit vs Lord of the Rings . And it set my mind spinning on isolating and bringing forth the world of The Hobbit' s Wilderland. What I mean is the Wilderland as seen in The Hobbit , without any reference to the rest of the legendarium. Let's forget the sagas of the Silmarillion  and the detailed tapestries of Lord of the Rings  and dwell for a moment simply on the world of Wilderland we are exposed to in The Hobbbit.  It's actually a rather different place. It's a world where Gandalf (correct pronunciation: "Jandalf") is just another wandering wizard, where the Necromancer is just an evil warlock in a tower in the dark forest, where Elrond is just a wise elf lord encountered on the journey. Wilderland is a world of goblins under misty mountains, trolls in the woods, giants in the mountains, shape-shifting woodsmen, capricious elves, good hearted but al...

B60 "Dungeon Mastering as a Fine Art"

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Somewhere in the Dragon Magazine issues I've been perusing lately, Moldvay comments that the part of the Basic set he is most proud of is B60 "Dungeon Mastering as a Fine Art", where he gets to impart his own experiences as a DM to newbie DMs. I leave the entire passage transcribed here below without further comment: The success of an adventure depends on the DM and his or her  creation, the dungeon. The DM should have the dungeon carefully  mapped out before play begins. Even so, a DM will quickly find  that it is impossible to predict every possibility. After all, there are  several players, and only one DM! It is not unusual for players to  find a solution, or pose a new problem, that the DM has not even  thought of. It is very important for the DM to be flexible. It is important that the DM be  fair , judging everything without  favoring one side or another. The DM is there to see that the ad venture is interesting and that everyone enjoy...

From the House Rule Register: All 1s are 2s

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One simple houserule I use during character creation is to simply treat any 1 rolled as a 2. "The House Rule Register" might become an ongoing feature on this blog, so I made a tag for it. It means that: The minimum ability score is 6, which I think should be the baseline anyway. But the chances of getting extraordinary (15+) scores are not increased, and there is only a +2.77% added chance of rolling a 13 and a +1.39% increased chance of rolling 14. No one starts with 1 hp unless they have also have CON 6-8 and rolled a 1 or 2 for HP. Minimum starting gold is 60 gp. I initially went with re-rolling all 1s as that seemed a bit more fun, but the implications of that are a bit wider reaching. For clarity, here's the chart for proabilities for "at least" outcomes in anydice, respectively for "3d6", "3d6 treating1s as 2s", "3d6 re-rolling all 1s" and "4d6, drop lowest". There is a whopping +16,47% of rolling a 13 when you re-r...

The 3 Mile Hex - The Natural Unit for Exploration

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There will be interludes between the AD&D Appraisal series, to keep my own writing motivation going. I was going to do a 3-mile hex post outlining the virtues of it, but turns out Silverarm did that already and stole all my points  (even down to the "Outdoor Survival also uses 3 miles") and added more points I wasn't aware of myself. So go read that excellent piece and come back here. What I instead want to talk about is how the 3 mile hex is a very close fit to our natural sense of distance and visualisation and how the that makes the 3-mile hex the perfect blend between immersion and usable game artifact and how to actually bring that into your game.  Minaria hexmap. Scale: 1 hex = 50 miles. Not what we're going for here. A while back, Noisms contemplated the difficulty of creating a sense of wonder in journeys . The difficulty with journeys in RPGs is the scale of it. It becomes too big, and thus too abstract, to visualize, to immerse oneself into.  I tried, un...

Appraising ADVANCED D&D - Part 1 (Ability Scores)

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It's time. A detailed and opinionated appraisal of the best, or possible second best, version of Dungeons & Dragons ever made. I mean of course Advanced Dungeons & Dragons, Second Edition. There are many things to love about the Classic D&D line (B/X, BECMI, Cyclopedia). Its streamlined, narrow and intuitive numbers. Its focused presentation. The way it knows, better than any other version of D&D, what it wants to be and then just executes that vision. Its superb chassis that makes it as good for running as-is, as it does for extensive houseruling. It is thus perhaps a tad ironic that many of the things there are to love about Advanced  Dungeons & Dragons are diametrically opposed to the reasons for loving Classic D&D. Extolling the virtues of Classic D&D often end up as an implicit critique of AD&D. And many of the reasons for playing AD&D are a stark rejection of the virtues of Classic D&D. Nonetheless, I want to be understood here. When I ...